by Apostolos Kotsabasis

The 2026 Oscars arrived like yet another glossy media kit for ostentatious grief. Onstage, millionaires in borrowed Armani and vintage Dior waited their turn, delivering the same staged sincerity: immediate ceasefire, end the occupation, stop the war with Iran.

Their voices cracked at the right moment, their eyes gleaming for the cameras, while the words “genocide,” “humanity,” “resistance” fell like a perfectly timed product commercial. Timothée, Zendaya, Bardem, all nodded, the audience applauded, the TV projector ablaze with approved talking points. Political correctness has become the only acceptable costume.

Then the Vanity Fair party spilled into the Hollywood Hills: Cristal towers, sushi flown in from Tokyo, tables of caviar. Gauche caviar, the French call it — caviar leftists who preach equality when their carbon footprint alone could feed a small country. They were all there, laughing between TV statements about Gaza and Tehran, posting glam snaps on social media, while real people, three time zones away, tried to dodge drones and missiles. These were the same people who once lamented the climate, now the Middle East, between bites of Wagyu.

Nothing had changed. Everything seemed glamorous. The war was still burning. The stars were still shining. Same night, different year.