Well, no-one black, that’s for sure. The Oscars don’t do ‘colour’, aren’t interested in ‘minority’, I’m amazed that they even have prizes for women. But I suppose otherwise they’d have to do away with the ‘casting couch’ and other fringe benefits. So keep the women in. Just don’t pay them too much. You can always find another ‘babe’ to do some acting, when she’s finished ironing my shirts.

I’m not going to the Oscars tonight. Its a ‘protest’. Of course I was invited, they still let jews in, but I decided that the whole Academy thing is just too racist for my liberal sensibilities.

But its nothing new. When they filmed Zulu in 1964, the cast comprised of Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and 22,759 Zulus from South Africa. Yet the white men won all the awards. Which is almost statistically impossible. If not institutionally racist. I make no rash judgments or unsupported statements. Ever. Unless I choose to.

The only real surprise about ‘no black nominees’ this year is that anyone’s surprised by it. That people still ‘believe’ (not like Spurs fans ‘believe’; we do it different) that America is some wonderfully homogenous melting pot, land of the brave, home of the redneck, bring us your poor, your sick, blah, blah, wonderland of tolerance and equality. Well wake up and smell the JD on ice.

We, as Europeans, visit selective places in America, like New York, Washington, San Francisco, and unconsciously extrapolate from that tiny and very unrepresentative sample to the rest of that vast and sprawling nation. In which the races were still segregated in just 50 years ago. Ok, that was ‘darn Sarth’ but without wishing to use facile generalisations: a redneck’s a fucking redneck, whether he’s from Mississippi or Minnesota.

And before high horses start getting mounted (in that stiruppy way, I quickly add), we in Europe even hate most white people. Poles, Slavs, Bulgarians.

My main issue with the Oscars is that they are now, and probably always have been, terribly politicised. Awards aren’t given because of merit but because of fear of insult, because someone failed to win one last year, because of virtually anything other than who was the best actor, actress or movie.

So next year, we will be having the conversation about how great it is having 50% of nominees being representative of black and minority communities.

Then we can work on the police over there. And good luck with that.

Meanwhile, I’m voting for Jennifer Lawrence. Whether she’s in it or not. Whatever colour she might be.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx