The Golden Globes in a Burning Landscape

The Golden Globes are no longer just an awards show. They are a perfect metaphor for what has happened to journalism in this country. A system that was supposed to expose corruption now profits from it. A press that was supposed to hold power accountable is now entangled with the very institutions it covers. When that happens, truth becomes optional and performance becomes everything.

That is why Sunday night mattered.

We are living in a week when a woman was killed by an ICE agent, when state power again reminded us how little accountability remains, when political violence and institutional force are no longer abstract. And inside the Beverly Hilton, the people who shape culture chose silence. Sequins, jokes, crypto sponsorships and applause replaced any acknowledgment of the world outside the ballroom.

The disconnect was not subtle. It was obscene.

What made it worse was that it would have been easy to do it right. One honest sentence from the host. One line from a winner. A moment of recognition that art does not float above history. It sits inside it. None of that would have ruined the celebration. It would have made it human.

The silence was not neutral. It was a choice.

And that choice is rooted in what the Golden Globes actually are.

For decades the show was controlled by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a tiny club of about ninety foreign journalists who were famously wined, dined and gifted by studios in exchange for votes. This was not rumor. It was so blatant that Pia Zadora’s win in the 1980s became shorthand for pay to play after her wealthy husband flew HFPA voters to Las Vegas and treated them like royalty.

In 2021 the Los Angeles Times exposed what Hollywood had long known. The HFPA had zero Black members. None. In an industry built on Black stories and Black talent, the people handing out one of its biggest awards had managed to exclude Black journalists entirely. The investigation also revealed widespread self dealing, undisclosed payments, junkets and financial conflicts tied directly to the voting process. The organization collapsed under the weight of its own corruption.

What replaced it was not reform. It was corporate capture.

In 2023 Penske Media bought the Golden Globes. Penske also owns Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and GoldDerby. The same corporation that profits from the awards show now controls the outlets that are supposed to objectively cover it. That is not journalism. That is a closed loop. The watchdog has been bought by the house.

This year the broadcast made that even clearer. It was stuffed with corporate stunts, including open promotion of Polymarket, a crypto based betting platform tied to Trump world. The show was no longer even pretending to be about art. It was about monetizing attention, gambling on outcomes and keeping the machine running.

So when the Golden Globes chose silence about the real world, it was not an anomaly. It was the logic of the system. This is not an institution designed for truth. It is designed for appearance.

Wanda Sykes cut through that for a few minutes. She used comedy the way it is supposed to be used, to puncture power, to name absurdity, to make people uncomfortable in the right way. Her presence felt like oxygen in a room that had been sealed off from reality. Everything else felt like insulation.

And that is why the Golden Globes are not just an awards show that missed the moment. They are a perfect reflection of the moment we are in.

We live inside systems that look legitimate, sound authoritative and feel real but are hollowed out by conflicts of interest, corporate capture and performance. We are surrounded by institutions dressed in credibility that no longer answer to truth. The emperor is not naked anymore. He is wrapped in designer clothes, sponsored by powerful interests and protected by the very media that is supposed to hold him accountable.

This is how we got here. Not through honesty, but through smokes and mirrors. Not through transparency, but through pageantry. Not through reckoning, but through applause.

Sunday night, the Golden Globes showed us exactly what kind of world we are living in.

A glittering room full of people pretending not to see what is burning just outside the doors.