The Oscar!

Today is the Academy Awards Show celebrating the best of the motion picture industry. The word "best" in the previous sentence is, of course, subjective
But whether or not the moving pictures and actresses and actors who are awarded the little golden idols are the best in their respective fields is, in the long run, meaningless.
The Oscar ceremony is really nothing more than a back-slapping festival put on by a group of rather emotionally needy and superficial people who are really not all that sure if their trade is of any real worth to the greater society. They, like professional athletes, are paid a lot of money and adulation that children do for free, or even have to pay to do.
Ask yourself this question: Is there an awards ceremony for the best in my trade or profession? A company my have an employee of the month, or even of the year, but that Starbuck's barista is not competing with other store's, or even those in the over-priced coffee world to receive that award. Who would be truck driver of the year? Or the engineer? Or the doctor?
We, outside of the motion picture industry, slog through 50 weeks a year (allowing for a two week vacation) expecting nothing more than a paycheck and perhaps a bonus of some sort. But in the entertainment industry there are awards given every time one turns around.
A violinist studies at Julliard for four years, at least, hoping to get a paying chair at any orchestra or symphony and working up o the first chair, receives not much more than a paycheck despite the fact that he has probably spent his life since the age of seven playing the fiddle. There's no chance nor expectation of walking down the red carpet in a trick tux accompanied by a quarter dressed babe. But an actor with good cheekbones and an ability to read, in a convincing way, the words written by another person, and who has probably not studied acting in the classical manner, is adulated and fawned over for pretending to be something that he is not.
John Donne, the English poet of the 17th century, despite his misspent and rascal early life, called actors "idiot actors." And Donne knew of what he spoke. He knew personally Ben Jonson and perhaps Shakespere. His son-in-law was a famous actor at the time. And he was right. Few actors are as smart as the people they portray and even fewer are as wise.
But they are eye-candy and that's what the populace seems to want. And that's rather sad.