• “One Night Only,” director-producer Will Gluck‘s latest romantic comedy, is everything that’s troubling about the current conservative capitalist hellscape that is the United States of America writ large.
• “Romance, too, is depicted in deeply conservative, heteronormative terms—casual sex is looked down on, open relationships only lead to guilt, etc.”
• “Sex workers are thrown under the bus, shown only as thieves who fleece men in the woods at night, while queer sexuality is relegated to a few scenes…”
• “This… largely comes off as straightwashing the history of anti-LGBTQ legislation in this country that led towards raids of queer clubs and incarceration of queer people in the not-too-distant past (let alone the current barrage of anti-Trans and LGBTQ legislation currently in the works and on the books).”
• “And perhaps that’s the point of the movie; that we’re already this deep into a fascist state of emergency, yet only a few people can actually be bothered to do anything about it beyond putting signs in their window.”

There’s more, but I presume you get the gist. Christian Toto, the conservative Hollywood blogger, asks, “Is this the most woke movie review ever?” He writes that “a critic can let a personal political or cultural view slip in now and then. And, if you’re working for an ideological site, that’s to be expected.” Roger Ebert.com, however, is not an ideological site. Toto’s analogy to Gates’ review, which he characterizes as “you can never be woke enough”: “If only ‘When Harry Met Sally’”’ had brought up the Iran-Contra scandal, it might have been a classic. Oh, well.”

These people…and I mean hyper-progressive, Trump Deranged fanatics like Marya E. Gates who see the world through shit-stained glasses and take every opportunity to divide, polarize and insult anyone who doesn’t share their grim view of the nation and life in general—are aptly described by the great French balladeer Jacques Brel’s line, “If you leave it up to them, they’ll crochet the world the color of goose shit.”

Ethics Alarms hasn’t awarded its Jacques Brel Award in four years; the last recipient was Washington Post environment reporter Allyson Chiu after she wrote the silly essay, “How you can make more socially conscious Halloween candy choices.”

Gates is worse. To be honest, I had forgotten about the Jacques Brel Award. I suspect it’s going to get a real workout now, though.