On Sunday night, Moonlight shocked America by defeating heavily favored best picture competitor La La Land.

It won for one simple reason. Those in Hollywood decided that intersectionality should defeat

Hollywood self-aggrandizement this year. Here's the thing about Moonlight. It's not a very good

movie. It's interesting in the way that all character studies are kind of interesting. It's a look at a

place and at a time and at a person, but it doesn't truly uplift or sore or actually do much of anything.

It won because the Academy voters preferred not to hear another year of griping about hashtag Oscars so white,

and because those same voters could feel good about supposedly slapping Donald Trump in the face with diversity.

It's no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars was racist, ended with the Academy giving the best picture Oscar to broke back inner city Miami. This isn't to say there can't be a great movie made about a black gay coming of age story. There can, but this wasn't it. This isn't the first time the Academy has bowed to political correctness rather than quality, of course. And this year's Oscar battle featured two battling Hollywood

priorities, honoring itself, and honoring the most politically correct picture of the year. In recent

years, this battle has become pretty much the entirety of the best picture race. In 2014,

Hollywood rewarded its own importance with Birdman instead of the far superior whiplash or

American sniper. In 2013, Hollywood rewarded the rather forget with Birdman instead of the far superior whiplash or American sniper.

In 2013, Hollywood rewarded the rather forgettable 12 years of slave instead of Gravity or Dallas Byers Club.

In 2012, Hollywood gave an Oscar to Argo.

Yay, Hollywood does foreign policy.

Instead of Zero Dark, 30 or Lincoln.

In 2005, Hollywood had its biggest PC off in a best picture fight between Brokeback Mountain,

Crash, and Munich. Capote was actually a better picture than all of those three.

One of the reasons Hollywood no longer rakes in the big bucks other than on tent pole features

is that it sees only the profound movies as those that center on intersectional concerns,

upholding the virtue of identity politics or the importance of art itself,

rather than movies that tell people's stories that they want to see. Lala Land is a far better, more watchable movie than Moonlight, but there were at least three other movies that were better than either this year. Hell or High Water, Arrival and Hacksaw Ridge, and all three were nominated. That doesn't include what I thought was the most entertaining flick of the year, 10 Cloverfield Lane. Unfortunately, for those pictures, they weren't concerned with black gay children or the wonders of Hollywood. If somebody ever makes a movie about a half-black, half-Native American, bisexual, transgender, trying to make his or her way in Hollywood, you can hand them the Oscar right now. And this is how you know Hollywood is dying. Instead of telling particular stories with general appeal, Hollywood tells stories

...