Is Hollywood too woke?

Sasha Stone has recast herself as a voice against what she perceives as the industry's liberal status quo

- MARC TRACY NYT

Earlier this month, Sasha Stone watched the Oscars alone at her home in a town outside Los Angeles.

For someone who has spent more than two decades as one of the premier commentators on awards season, it was a notably unglamorous seat to take in the ceremony. But she was thrilled that Anora, the frantic story of a New York stripper’s romance with a young Russian man, took top honours as part of a historic haul.

Stone believed the film had the virtue of not pushing a partisan agenda, which has become one of the top criteria for her when judging a movie. When she made her name as an Oscars blogger, Stone believes she fit neatly into the Hollywood status quo and she found its liberalism to be rewarded — often on screen. She says now she sees the error of her old ways, even if she continues to understand the old ways better than conservatives who were never even part of that world.

“Here is where I run into problems with the right,” Stone said in an interview the day after the ceremony. “They’re never going to give any credit to the Oscars or Hollywood. I knew the script was going to be ‘the Oscars suck,’ and I was going to have to sort that first out.”

Stone’s advice is the right: Take the win. And after some Monday morning carpining, it collectively did. The ceremony drew praise from conservatives for its largely apolitical content (just one minor statement about President Donald Trump by the late comedian O’Brien) and for Kieran Culkin’s acceptance speech, in which he publicly asked his wife for more kids — “relatable to any middle-American,” said D’Adario, the other writer.

Stone, 60, is that increasingly familiar figure in conservative life: an apostate from the mainstream, in recovery from her earlier liberalism. During the 2010s, as popular culture appeared to be moving to the left, she had been out in front, celebrating films lionizing women like Moonlight and