Get woke, go broke.

It should be a phrase printed in big, bold letters that takes up its own page in the proverbial book of best practices. Everything the disease of social justice and identity politics touches wilts and dies. Hollywood has proven time and again that it’s not immune.

In fact, Hollywood might be its most tragic victim.

Self-importance has taken over the Hollywood scene, and actors and actresses who gather for these circular back pat-a-thons love nothing more than to signal their virtues up and down the gilded stage. Usually, they preach about something like togetherness, understanding, and acceptance, but there is always an enemy, and that enemy is pretty much the majority of middle America, who don’t sign on to the identitarian nonsense pushed on them by the coastal elite.

My colleague Alex Parker highlighted the Golden Globes ratings have been the worst in a decade, but it should be known that this is a continuing trend ranging across multiple Hollywood award shows. Last year’s Oscars were a ratings disaster too, and I sincerely doubt they will be much improved during this coming year too, that is unless Kevin Hart agrees to host the program after all.

As it stands, the Golden Globes found their audience was 18.6 million viewers strong. That’s still a lot of people, but it’s a two percent loss compared to last year, dipping lower than it had in 2015. The consolation to NBC, who hosted the awards ceremony, is that the 18-49 demographic was up four percent, likely due to the presence of hosts Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh. It also didn’t help that the Golden Globes were coming fresh off the end of the Eagles and Bears wildcard games. They probably lost a few eyes to celebrations or ruminations.

Regardless, the loss of viewers should be no surprise.

Imagine showing up for a concert with your favorite bands. They play songs here and there, but during almost every song, they stop everything to tell you how you’re intolerant and that the guy you voted for is evil. They tell you that all your concerns are bigoted and racist. They start to queue up the next song, but you’re left hoping that they actually just play and not preach.

That’s kind of award shows now. If you really liked a movie that is nominated or winning awards, you might have to suffer through a few jabs at your beliefs by a room filled with applauding people who believe they’re better than you. That they can speak for you, or for others against you. It also starts to seem like the movies that are winning these awards are movies that best represent a message contrary to your values. All the glitz and glamour, expensive dresses and jewelry, and shiny awards suddenly start to look like awards given to your enemies for being your enemies.

What’s more, it seems that all of these award shows follow the same recipe.

Comedians make jokes about the right, celebrities wrongheadedly preach against long-held American values, virtue signal, virtue signal, virtue signal, applause, applause, applause, and scene.

It all looks the same. Only the award changes.

Award shows, and indeed all of Hollywood, could bring back the audience they’re bleeding by just having fun and leaving the political nonsense out of it. However, in this day and age, it’s almost impossible for them to do. You might as well ask a hyena not to be a scavenger.

As Regina King summed it up on the stage during her acceptance speech, celebrities fully believe that they have a responsibility to say the things that they do.

“So often everyone out there, they hear us on the red carpet and they say celebrities, we’re using the time to talk about ourselves when we are on our soapbox and using a moment to talk about the systemic things that are going on in life,” said King while holding her Golden Globe. “Time’s Up times two. The reason why we do this is because we understand that our microphones are big and we are speaking for everyone.”

They aren’t, and it takes being filled with an overdose of self-importance to think they are.

The people don’t seek out escapism to be preached at, yet the coastal elite have convinced themselves that all their guilt for their riches and fame can be assuaged by preaching values to people who don’t believe in them while treating them like their enemies.

It’s old hat from an industry that has run out of ideas, partly due to the fact that they don’t let opposing ideas in.