Sacha Baron Cohen — "not hot as himself, by the way" — confronts his cancel-worthy alter egos...

 ... as he accepts a "comedic genius" award:

 

"Thank you MTV; to the millions of fans out there who voted for me, I salute you. This is yours, I’d be nothing without you. I’m so humbled by this. I’m just a human being creating complex nuanced characters — sophisticated tools to expose …"/"Did somebody say they want me to expose my sophisticated tool?"

Black Obsidian Sound System (BOSS) — a collective of "queer, trans and non-binary Black and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism" — critiques the art industry that nominated it for the Turner Prize.

The London Times reports in "Turner Prize nominee paints Tate and awards culture as villains":  

It said the art industry failed to financially reward collectives, had an “in-built reverence” towards individuals, and regarded “black, brown working class, disabled and queer bodies [as] desirable, quickly dispensable, but never sustainably cared for.”...

In a statement released this week BOSS said that while arts institutions were “enamoured by collective and social practices” they were not “properly equipped or resourced to deal with the realities that shape our lives and work.”...

The Turner Prize jury were passionate about the work of all the collectives they shortlisted, recognising that these collaborative practices reflected the solidarity and community demonstrated across the UK in response to the pandemic....

I'm enamored by this phrase "an 'in-built reverence' towards individuals." I know it's meant as a criticism, but it seems like a good thing — an in-built reverence towards individuals. "In-built" sounds like a synonym — a good substitute — for "systemic." And I like "in-built" better than "built-in." I would have written "built-in," but it's perfectly easy to understand "in-built," and it feels like the familiar English words "inborn" and "inset."

I wonder if the criticism makes BOSS more likely or less likely to get the award. It sounds like the jury wanted credit for nominating a collective and the collective called bullshit on using them that way. It's not an honor just to be nominated.

The actor who plays Prince Charles in "The Crown" and the actress who plays Princess Diana both won Golden Globes last night.

Here they are — Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin — in their biggest scene together in the finale of Season 4:

 

I've watched Season 4 twice (and the rest of "The Crown" once), and I love this scene. Charles is both horrible and yet — somehow — sympathetic. 

"You think we couldn't do that too? Theatrically hug the wretched and dispossessed and cover ourselves in glory all over the front pages?"

On the occasion of the NYT winning a Pulitzer Prize for the history/fantasy "1619 Project," Scott Adams reveals why the Pulitzer Prize is meaningless.

And he used to want one (for his comic strip):



I've always remembered what Saul Bellow said about the Pulitzer Prize — recounted in the May 11, 1984, NYT article "PUBLISHING: PULITZER CONTROVERSIES":

For years it seemed that Saul Bellow would never win the Pulitzer, although he was often a serious contender. In addition to ''Henderson the Rain King,'' his ''Adventures of Augie March'' was a finalist in 1954, and ''Mr. Sammler's Planet'' was a 1971 finalist. Both times the board decided to forgo a fiction award.

What a kick in the head! They didn't give the award to somebody else, but to no one.

In ''Humboldt's Gift,'' published in 1972, Mr. Bellow's narrator, Charlie Citrine, is depicted as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who nevertheless agrees with Humboldt's assessment: ''The Pulitzer is for the birds - for the pullets. It's just a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates. You become a walking Pulitzer ad, so even when you croak the first word of the obituary is 'Pulitzer Prize winner passes.' ''

Reminded of that passage soon after ''Humboldt's Gift'' won in 1973, Mr. Bellow laughed and said he thought it would be best to accept the award ''in dignified silence.''

Now, when Saul Bellow died, they did not say "Pulitzer Prize winner passes." They said Nobel Prize winner passes:

Saul Bellow, the Nobel laureate and self-proclaimed historian of society whose fictional heroes -- and whose scathing, unrelenting and darkly comic examination of their struggle for meaning -- gave new immediacy to the American novel in the second half of the 20th century, died yesterday at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 89.

If you have to be a walking billboard for some prize-bestowing outfit, it's best to be a Nobel ad.