2016 Emmys Most Diverse Ever; Rainbows, and Sunshine, and Shit
The 2016 Emmy Awards, held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, CA, marked the most diverse series of nominees in its 68 years of existence. The entire show left the crowd, both there and those at home, with a sickening sense of happiness and genuine delight. The host, Jimmy Kimmel – You remember, the once-fat, beer-swilling co-host of the college frat boy-targeted shit-show The Man Show – set forth to assuage the country’s animosity toward race-relations by making light of recent events, to include the Black Lives Matter uprising and the increase in Muslim-related terrorist attacks. His opening line was straight out of Full Metal Jacket, bellowing his best Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann voice and shouting, “I don’t discriminate against niggers, kikes, wops, and greasers. Here, you are all equally worthless!” Which brought delighted squeals from the crowds.
Among the winners in the diversified nominees were: The People v OJ Simpson, which won “Outstanding Limited Series about a Black Dude Who Murdered His Wife and Tried to Evade Police in a White Bronco.” Series actor Courtney B Vance, who is actually a dude with a woman’s name, won “Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series About Something Other Than Caucasian People.” Also winning an award was skit comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele for their skit show Key and Peele. Their award was for “Best Skit Comedy Show Starring Anything but White People.” Tatiana Maslany, a Canadian, won an Emmy for ”Let’s Knock Out Two Birds with One Stone and Give a Foreign Woman an Award for a Drama She was in,” for her performances in Orphan Black.
Game of Thrones unsurprisingly won the “Best Rape-y, Murder-y, Incest-y Drama” for the third year in a row.
During one intermission, a “fake PSA” advertisement, starring famed actress Kristin Bell, played. It delightfully touched on the very real issue of gender pay gaps. In it, she describes that while pay gaps DO exist between the genders, it’s only in “safe for work” fare, such as network television and most theater-friendly movies. If women want to make the big bucks, they need to enter the pornography business, where they’re worth triple the amount of their male counterparts. Thanks, Kristin, for bringing these hard truths to light.
The show wasn’t just about diversification of the races, however; it was a chance for fashion designers to strut their stuff and outfit beautiful people in terrible apparel. Sarah Paulson (The People v OJ Simpson) was seen wearing a Prada dress that looked like The Dead Marshes from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) was seen in a Naeem Kahn outfit resembling a stale, three week old half-eaten Cinnabon, stuck to the curb at Newark International Airport. Most egregious, however, was Angela Bassett (American Horror Story, Strange Days), whose Christian Siriano dress made her look like a peeled banana that you were totally bent on eating, but discovered the first three bites were bruised, so you threw it in a freshly emptied trash can, and now it’s totally going to smell until Thursday.
When the curtains closed, all ethnically diverse “winners” were held at gunpoint by Kimmel until they handed over their Emmys to their Caucasian counterparts, then battened down the hatches to prepare for the inevitable race riots to follow.
In Other News:
Some bullshit happened somewhere. There were bombs and stabbings, and we think people were injured, but not killed. We may have heard the terms “Muslim,” “ISIS,” and “act of terrorism” thrown out there, but we were too worried about whether or not Maisie Williams won the Emmy for “Best Child Actor Turned Murderous, Homicidal, Beacon of Vengeance” as Arya Stark, the angsty meat pie maker in Game of Thrones.