Actors kept thanking a non-existent body at the Golden Globes

A whole lot of things went wrong for the Golden Globes Journalists last night. They messed up the seating chart. Comedian Jo Koy made a queasy bid for Worst Awards Show Host Of All Time. They scared the hell out of Elizabeth Debicki and even flubbed what should have been an easy ace with a hollow Suits reunion. On top of all that, a bunch of award winners couldn’t even get their name right.

Earlier this year, as a response to their years-long track record of racism, corruption, and general popular disfavor, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association dissolved and rebranded as a new, for-profit organization owned by Penske Media. The new, 300 person voting body is now known as the “Golden Globes Journalists,” although the only people who actually seemed to know that were Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and Robert Downey Jr., who thanked them for “changing their game, therefore changing their name” in his acceptance speech for Supporting Male Actor in a Motion Picture for his performance in Oppenheimer last night.

Other actors did not get the memo. Da’Vine Joy Randolph thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press for her award for Supporting Female Actor in a Motion Picture for her The Holdovers performance early in the night, as did The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Oppenheimer composer Ludwig Göransson.

All in all, this is a pretty neat metaphor for the lingering status of this dumb yearly tradition. Despite Downey’s praise, did anything really change? The broadcast still lionized money and power with new awards for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement in Motion Pictures and “Best Stand-Up Comedian on Television. Celebrities’ faces throughout the night still screamed “my agent forced me to be here.” The Golden Globes Journalists may be more diverse than their progenitors but last night definitively proved that their shiny, new hedge fund-owned status certainly can’t erase the past. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.