Will Smith smacks Chris Rock upside the head at the Oscars.

President Biden visits Europe where he proceeds to gaff all over himself and Russia shifts strategy as their offensive stalled out.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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Thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data. Join them at ExpressVPN.com. Slash Ben, we'll get to all the slap happy news in just one moment. First, if your retirement account has been heavy on stocks for a while, I have some excellent news for you. You have won. The value of your IRA or 401K is probably balloon thanks to the longest bull market run in American history. Here is the thing. After the bull run comes the bear. Well, right now, stock valuations are at historic highs only seen before the Great Depression and the dot-com crash, and we are seeing the global economy teetering in terms of stability, in terms of volatility. So maybe it's time to cash in, take some of those trips off the table, Secure your winnings and your future with gold from Birch Gold. That is correct. Birch Gold will help you convert the gains you have on paper into a real physical asset, and it will still be in a tax-sheltered account. So Uncle Sam can't grab it. Get started right now. Text Ben to 98-98-98 with thousands of satisfied customers and A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, Birch Gold can help you protect your savings. Text Ben to 98-98-98-9-98. Get a free information kit on gold. There's no obligation to get this information. Text Ben to 98-98-98-to protect at least some of your winnings with gold. Go check them out right now. Text Ben to 98-98-98, and get started with my friends over at Birch Gold. All righty, so the Oscars, it's a time when a bunch of preening morons get together and pat themselves on the back, give each other awards, give each other thousands of dollars in swag bags, fly in on their private jets, lecture about climate change, and then tell us why they ought to be the moral guides for the rest of us. People wonder why the Oscars have been sliding for years and years and years and sure, it's the quality of the films. And sure, it's the fact that the theater experience has been watered down by streaming and has been watered down by the fact that there's so much good TV. And sure, it's the fact that fewer people watch each of these best picture nominees than they did back in, say, 2000, 2001. However, there's another problem. And this is something that the Oscars simply cannot get over, and they will never get over. And this is why the Oscars are never coming back. The problem is, people in Hollywood have always thought of themselves as America's moral betters. And they just are not. And that gap between Hollywood and the rest of America

becomes clearer every single year. And this year was just excellent, like par excellence,

like chef's kiss example of why these people should never run anything about your life,

why people associated with them should never run anything about your life, why they are a bunch

of low IQ idiots with no moral compass

and why when they stand there and lecture you about your moral code and how Hollywood is supposed

to be America's representative to the world, we should really be looking for another representative

to the world because my goodness, my goodness. The only reason to talk about the Oscars, of course, because no one watched them. More people will hear about them on the show than probably watched the Oscars in its entirety last night. The only reason to talk about this is because the Oscars used to be a sort of cultural totem for the United States. It was our chief export abroad. Hollywood was the exporter of American ideas and American ideology and the

American visions of the rest of the world. This is true in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. And now

Hollywood has largely become an afterthought in these sort of global cultural milieu.

And if people do think of Hollywood, it's only how do we ban the Hollywood movies so it doesn't corrupt the youth, right?

That seems to be the way that authoritarian countries approach Hollywood movies.

And yet here in the United States, the media treat the Oscars as though it is a gathering of great luminaries, intellectual luminaries, moral luminaries, who are going to come together in a sort of conclave to figure out the moral code by which we must all live.

So it began last night. The Oscars began last night with a small controversy over whether the president

of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, was going to appear on the Oscars. Now, I have to say,

I'm not sure why Vladimir Zelensky should appear on the Oscars. Every time there's an international

conflagration, should that person appear on the

Oscars? Seems like a weird take. But Sean Penn was very hot and bothered about the idea that Vladimir

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