When movie pundits attacked the Best Actress Oscar nomination of Andrea Riseborough — that’s been the raison d’être for Variety and The Wrap these past two weeks — their disingenuous politics were exposed. Pretending to defend underappreciated black actresses (media faves Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler), Hollywood’s media crusaders pit white filmmakers against black filmmakers. This shame game stifles personal judgment and is not a good look for film journalists. Yet the progressive mien is so irresistible to Hollywood that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has fallen for the media’s pressure, dignifying it with a response that embarrasses the institution — again.

Academy CEO Bill Kramer publicly apologized in an email that promised the organization would reconsider the rules of the Oscar nomination process: “It is apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive, and unbiased campaigning.”

Kramer’s wording can be simplified as “We caved to woke media.” He doesn’t object to the indignity of “campaigning,” the groveling for Oscar votes as if at political hustings. (When movie awards resemble political electioneering, it stinks of the current election-integrity crisis.) The Academy once chided Harvey Weinstein’s no-holds-barred awards-stumping, but most of Hollywood shamelessly replicated Weinstein’s brazen tactics, everything from swag, parties, trade-paper ads, and celebrity peer pressure. Now Hollywood conveniently disavows the fact that Weinstein changed the game — never mind Hollywood’s own narcissism and culpability. (“Greedy, greedy, greedy” is how Meryl Streep once described her own awards-season lust.)

Indie producer Ted Hope regaled The Wrap readership with a lengthy diatribe about the industry’s post-Weinstein Oscar fatigue — a mea culpa that eventually turned into an apologia pro vita sua. It was a preposterous self-exoneration effort. When media hacks determine the function of the Academy and the awarding of the Oscars, the tail wags the dog.

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To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke: What we got here is a failure of principles. In this age in which media dictate public behavior and ethics, the Riseborough incident is just another attempt at cancel culture. It’s how media, ever since Covid, act in bad faith as our high priests.

Kramer’s claim that social-media campaigns by Riseborough’s admirers “caused concern” is a politician’s hedge. Political correctness has become threatening and coercive. Honest, sincere response and good intentions are now open to censure. Kramer didn’t mention that the Riseborough camp did nothing new (celebs such as Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, Frances Fisher, and Edward Norton touted her performance in To Leslie). They waged exactly the same “word of mouth” strategy that Julia Roberts and friends did for Javier Bardem’s little-seen Mexican film Biutiful in 2010, but to no consternation back then.

Doesn’t Kramer recognize how emails between colleagues differ from actual campaigning — such as full-page ads in the trade press as well as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times? To ignore that detail, as Kramer does, while an individual’s career is being demeaned, indicates either an insensitive or moronic worldview. (Hollywood media treat Riseborough like George Santos, as if she has done something dishonest — the latest example of perfidy that bigger names routinely get away with.)

The media’s idea that black performers are entitled to awards is an insane reaction to historical prejudice. It’s also unfair to contemporary performers — say, the casts of Benediction, Father Stu, Nitram, or Dead for a Dollar — who, because of their race or gender, don’t get media support. Hollywood’s race-grifters would give awards to black actresses because of their skin color not for their talent.

Our culture is being dismantled, and so is our sense of art and fairness, by devotion to “respectful, inclusive, and unbiased” virtue-signaling. After the #OscarSoWhite movement of 2015 alleged a “lack of diversity” among the Academy’s acting nominees, it’s undeniable that race is now a barometer of “excellence.” Race is conveniently used as a liberal cudgel, browbeating the culture into progressive posturing, applying reprimand and jeopardy.

Yes, the Academy finally declined to rescind Riseborough’s Oscar nomination despite the media’s urging. Yet Kramer’s bad-faith disavowal of bad faith only perpetuates cancel-culture crookedness — especially because his statement ignored influence from Chinese-American film producer Janet Yang, the Academy’s current president. Yang publicly displayed her personal prejudice in broadcasting her hopes for Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, a Best Actress nominee for Everything Everywhere All at Once. A Yang tweet gushed about “four decades of love” for Yeoh; now her fangirl enthusiasm seems inappropriate. Bad-faith punditry embarrasses everyone, everywhere, all at once.