The 75th annual Golden Globe Awards show approaches this Sunday, and this year's host Seth Meyers has hinted that it will be just as tone-deaf as other heavily-politicized Hollywood awards programs.
The host of Late Night With Seth Meyers has reassured his fans that his Golden Globes hosting gig will be politically charged, according to Fox News.
Meyers revealed to People magazine that his opening monologue will include the juvenile, leftist political humor that has helped his show stay afloat. But considering how Hollywood's smug , hypocritical moralizing during recent awards shows has contributed to plunging ratings and a backlash from the flyover country which celebs hold in such contempt, maybe he and his fellow coastal elites should wise up and concentrate on entertaining audiences rather than alienating them.
As for the political content of the upcoming show, Meyers says he will focus more on the sexual harassment scandals that have rocked Hollywood lately:
“With the monologue, as far as talking about anything in the news right now, it seems like this year more than ever Hollywood has its own internal politics that obviously deserve to be talked about. Going into it our focus is far more on the worlds that make these films and less on anything that’s happening in Washington.”
But Fox News notes that this doesn’t mean President Trump won't also be a predictable target.
“He holds the keys to us not talking about him, which would to be to just behave differently,” Meyers said of Trump. (Maybe Meyers is a funny guy after all, because it's amusing to hear the clueless hypocrites in Hollywood lecturing anyone on behavior.) “But while he continues on this path, we’ll continue on ours.”
And that path will take the Golden Globes off a ratings cliff, as Hollywood continues to politicize its way toward self-destruction.
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Both Netanyahu's detractors and supporters view his long stewardship of Israel as largely inconsequential because Netanyahu has not overseen any grand, headline grabbing initiatives.
He didn't declare Israel's independence, as Ben-Gurion did. He didn't lead Israel through the 1967 Six Day War and so oversee Israel's greatest military victory to date, as Eshkol did. He didn't recognize the PLO, like Rabin. He didn't withdraw from Gaza, like Sharon did. He hasn't withdrawn from Judea and Samaria, as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert tried to do. He didn't surrender south Lebanon to Hezbollah, as Barak did.
True, grand initiatives like all of these have left their marks on Israel – for better and for worse. And no, Netanyahu has no grand initiative in his record.
Netanyahu has operated in a media environment more hostile than any his predecessors ever faced. Despite this, beginning with his first term in office in the late 1990s, Netanyahu authored and implemented the economic reforms that transformed Israel from a sclerotic socialist backwater into a prosperous first world economy. All of Israel's citizens have benefited from the change. Consider, for instance, that when Netanyahu replaced Olmert in office in 2009, Israel's per capita GDP stood at $27,000. By 2016, it had risen to $37,000.
Rather than seeking to transform Israel's diplomatic weakness through a grand gesture of appeasement to the PLO, as so many of his predecessors tried to do, Netanyahu opted, instead to leverage the economic prosperity. He turned Israel's economic strength into the foundation of a new, far more powerful diplomatic strategy. It served to return Israel to Africa after a forty year absence.
More importantly, Netanyahu used Israel's comparative economic advantages to develop strong diplomatic and economic relations with China, India and other major markets and great powers for the first time in Israel's history.
As for Russia, far from the spotlights, Netanyahu has skillfully and quietly cultivated a strong personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin based on mutual respect. Military and intelligence officers credit the understandings Netanyahu has reached with Putin regarding the war in Syria as the reason Israel was able to avoid getting sucked into the conflict on its northern border while still protecting its strategic interests.
As for Israeli-US ties, for eight years, Netanyahu deftly ducked and parried and waited out Barack Obama's presidency. He kept Israel strong and safe and able to defend itself despite Obama's support for its enemies and hostility toward the Jewish state.
No other Israeli leader could have withstood the Obama administration's pressure to make strategically cataclysmic concessions to the Palestinians. So too, no Israel leader would have been capable of leading the opposition to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran as Netanyahu did.
Had Netanyahu remained silent as Obama gave the keys to the nuclear club to the ayatollahs, Obama and his echo chamber would have successfully demonized opposition to the deal.
It was Netanyahu with his unswerving, reasoned opposition to the centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy that empowered Republicans and even some Democrats to maintain their public opposition to the deal. Their opposition in turn paved the way for President Donald Trump's decision last October to refuse to certify Iranian compliance with its terms.
As for Trump, Netanyahu has deftly cultivated his relations with the new president. Trump's respect for Netanyahu's statesmanship empowers the president to break with the failed Middle East policies of his predecessors and base his policies on support for America's allies and opposition to its enemies.
So yes, it is true that Netanyahu's long tenure in office has been largely undramatic. But his record of accomplishments makes clear that drama is not what we should be seeking.
Under his quiet, workaday leadership, Netanyahu has transformed into an economic and military power. He has cultivated good relations with Israel's regional neighbors and with the nations of the world.
He has developed constructive and mutually beneficial ties with all the major world powers while preserving and enhancing Israel's strategic alliance with the US. All of these accomplishments render Netanyahu one of Israel's most successful leaders. Indeed, they place him second only to Ben Gurion as the most significant leader Israel has ever hand.