Avoiding the Oscars has been effortless on my part for the last several years. This year held a bit of intrigue, considering the elitists’ mutiny over the lack of skin color among Oscar nominees. It was a tad beguiling to see how the whole of liberal Hollywood would handle being in the shoes of conservatives.

In other words, watching the self-professed inclusive group join the battle with the victims of the oft-repeated propaganda that conservatives/Republicans are just a bunch of rich, old white racists.

Host Chris Rock highlighted the absurdity but lost it in closing the show with the saturated “Black Lives Matter.” He simply erased all of the messages he sent throughout the show.

So much for authenticity; but then, Rock is of that Hollywood genre.

One of the show’s latter speeches was Leonardo DiCaprio accepting for Best Actor. He didn’t address skin color. He could not find graciousness in the prestige of the win; global warming was just too tempting for him with his crowd. The term “global warming” has been shown to be unconvincing and hollow. It is stigmatized, so the left has casually re-termed it to “climate change.”

DiCaprio said: “Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.”

Of course there is climate change — ask a dinosaur if you can find one. The argument is whether it’s caused by free-wheeling, greedy Americans. After all, it seems no one blames the lack of refinement or hyper-polluting actions of India, Russia or China.

No one has ever said uber-liberals, elitists and that ilk of Hollywood-ites ever minded their hypocrisy being blatant.

In mid-2014, there was a U.S. State Department’s “Our Ocean” conference. President Obama spoke via video; then Secretary of State John Kerry introduced DiCaprio, saying: “Leo DiCaprio is lending his powerful voice to our call to action to work together to protect the world’s ocean.”

Kerry was once again demonstrating his cluelessness. He either missed or overlooked the fact that his honoree has a practice of renting a $678 million yacht named Topaz.

Topaz is owned by Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. The 482-foot yacht is docked in Rio de Janeiro where DiCaprio and his 21 millionaire friends went to party and watch the World Cup in 2014.

In June 2014, guardianlv.com reported: “But all these luxuries come at an environmental cost. A super yacht like the Topaz can burn thousands of liters of marine diesel every hour as it cuts an impressive swatch through the ocean waters, leaving behind trails of smoke and tones of carbon dioxide. Additionally, such crafts can use up to 1,000 liters a day or more just for its air-conditioning and electrical systems, according to Yacht Carbon Offset, a company that provides carbon offsetting for its seafaring clients.”

That’s all probably OK because DiCaprio’s foundation donated $3 million to Oceana, an environmental advocacy group, “to protect the ocean habitat and vital marine species.”

We can also guess at the size of the carbon footprint stamped with DiCaprio and friends traveling to Rio via chartered jets.

It would take a forensic accountant and an actuary to calculate the size of the carbon footprint made by the Oscars as a whole. The travel, the limos, the pre- and post-parties…

We can’t negate the $220,000 swag bags given to all nominees and their guests. DiCaprio in particular has a net worth of $245 million and owns two apartments in the Manhattan borough of New York, a home in Los Angeles and an island in Belize.

It’s hard to determine what’s more incalculable – the wealth and greed of these people or the vastness of their hypocrisy.

Betty Arenson has lived in the SCV since 1968 and describes herself as a conservative who’s concerned about progressives’ politics and their impacts on the country, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She says she is unashamed to own a gun or a Bible, couldn’t care less about the color of the president’s skin, and demands that he uphold his oath to protect and follow the Constitution of the United States in its entirety.