While I love good movies, it's been over 15 years since I've bothered to watch the Academy Awards. By all accounts, the recognition of motion picture art is secondary to honoring the generation of income for the industry, its producers, actors and support personnel.

Special effects prevail over writing and storytelling. I understand that it's a business, not that there's anything wrong with that. But the glamour, glitz and selfcongratulatory hypocrisy of the program are over-the-top and then some.

Do we really need political and social rhetoric from elitists with a cause to assuage their narcissist guilt? America's selfanointed royalty pontificate the goals of equality and fairness, while wearing $30,000 gowns and switching from limos to eco-friendly cars near the event.

True American heroes neither appear nor are mentioned at the Oscars. My champions are Thomas Jefferson; Abraham Lincoln; Charles Darwin; Drs. Jonas Salk and Louis Sabin—who saved millions from the scourge of polio— Helen Keller; sports figures John Wooden, Michael Jordan, Cal Ripken and Jackie Robinson; jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis and Clarence Darrow; even a few actors, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin, who served our country with honor.

Let's not forget educators, healthcare providers, police and firefighters. They merit our admiration and our applause.

Performers are often presumptuous charlatans of virtue. People we choose to emulate or become role models for our children should be the real thing, not imposters. Jeff Wissot Westlake Village