The Golden Globes Will Soon Be Made of Plastic
Better to be the Rock than Kerr. More money, less beatings.
The Golden Globes were on TV the other night. Did you catch it? I did not. And, of all the movies that necessitated the annual awards show, I watched exactly one of them. The rest, I never even heard of. The only one I did see was the Smashing Machine – where The Rock played UFC fighter Mark Kerr. In real life, Kerr got his face beaten in, one of his ears looks like a giant wad of chewing gum, and if he doesn’t have CTE – that’d be a sheer miracle. For every ounce of punishment he provided, he got at least twice as much in return. Tough dude.
After a lifetime of training and punishment, Kerr earned about $250,000 in the UFC. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson got $4 million to pretend to be Kerr in a 2-hour, 3-minute movie. I find it interesting that the actors and actresses who get in front of a camera and pretend to be someone or do something get so many more accolades than those who really carry the weight. For instance, Michelle Pfieffer got paid $6 million in 1988 to pretend she was a teacher in Dangerous Minds. When she made that movie, the average teacher's salary in the USA was around $30 thousand. Michelle earned the annual salaries of 200 teachers to pretend to be one for 14 weeks.
Then Pfieffer got an award for pretending, while all the real teachers watched from home.
Never had to prepare for her annual teacher evaluation, either
27 million people viewed the Golden Globes in 2004. In 2026, around 7 million people tuned in. I suppose some wanted to see the outfits, and most wanted to laugh while Nikki Glaser made fun of the 1% of the 1%. Without Ms. Glaser’s input, this silly awards show is not a show at all. If the Golden Globes were a publicly traded stock…sell now. At some point, the coolest actors and actresses will stay home, Nikki will decline the invite, and you’ll only be able to catch it on AMC. If you even know what that channel is.
Airtime. Fame. Money. Power. What do they do with it? Nothing great. I mean, what would you do if you were given the honor of tens of millions of dollars, a trophy, and 60 seconds to talk into a microphone with 7 million watching? Merrill Streep used it to swipe at Trump, and Oprah used it as a test to see if she had a shot at being President. They’re entertainers. But only one of them was actually entertaining – and she’s never been nominated for anything. Go, Nikki.
There’s an unequal distribution of intelligence, money, fame, and power in this world. And under no circumstance does any one of those things guarantee any of the others. This is why the Globes got me thinking about a story I read…twice. The same story was written by two different authors. It’s a true story about a meeting, at which both of the writers were in attendance…with nobody else. The meeting wasn’t recorded, and all we have to go on is what each of them said about it.
In 2003, then-President George W. Bush met with U2 lead singer Bono in an oval-shaped office located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. Bono wore his tinted sunglasses and a leather jacket. The meeting was scheduled. I think Bush was intrigued to meet Bono, and I think Bono was a little intimidated by Bush. Everyone knows the command-and-control that presidents have, Bono included. But Bono – that guy has something too. He’s a rock and roller who knows his bible, loves his wife, and having grown up around the explosions and killings that rocked Ireland for years – has a little more in the tank of understanding…about the positions people take on things. The damage that can be done.
Bush’s book was called Decision Points. Bono’s was called Surrender. A book about a presidency and a book about some songs. Men with some different opinions on things, different versions of the same conversation, and an outcome that saved the lives of millions. The outcome of that meeting was around $15 Billion toward combating AIDS/HIV in Africa. Bono used his fame to get Bush’s attention. Bush used his intelligence to listen, and his power to act.
What sticks with me about that story isn’t the money, or the office, or the fame of the men in the room. It’s that neither one of them did it alone. One had a voice that could reach the world. The other had the authority to move it. One came in with conviction. The other came in with responsibility and the pen. They made something real happen. Something that mattered. Something that outlived both their egos.
That’s the part we forget when we get cynical about power.
We assume that influence is wasted. That microphones are used for vanity. That the people with the most reach are the least worthy of it. Far too often, this is far too true. But once a singer walked into a room with a president. Sometimes a teacher walks into a classroom with a kid no one else believes in. Sometimes a neighbor knocks on the door. Sometimes a regular person says, I can’t fix it…but I can help.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
The Golden Globes are fading. The red carpet has become a symbol of stupidity. But the world still turns on moments like that in 2003, when two very different people chose to listen to each other rather than dismiss. When Surrender and Decision Points became one and the same.
We don’t need a stage or a trophy to matter. We don’t need seven million people watching. Most of the good that’s ever been done in this world happened quietly, in rooms without cameras, by people who never trended.
In a time when our country feels frayed, loud, and divided, that story reminds me that connection, listening, and showing up can still work. If a rock star and a president can sit across from each other and save millions of lives…maybe a bunch of us can still do something beautiful, too.