#OscarsSoPolitical: Impassioned Speeches, Trump Jokes Highlight 89th Annual Oscars Telecast
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — President Trump was hosting a dinner of the nation's governor's Sunday evening but for all the mentions he garnered directly -- and indirectly -- at the 89th annual Academy Awards, he might as well have been in the room.
Variety questioned whether the telecast was the most political Oscars ever? -- which is saying something.
In his opening monologue, host Jimmy Kimmel kept the Trump jokes coming.
"Maybe this is not a popular thing to say, but I want to say thank you to Donald Trump, I mean, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist?" he quipped to huge applause.
Asghar Faradi, the Iranian filmmaker who won for best foreign language feature with "The Salesman" made a statement that was anything but a joke.
PHOTOS: Political Moments At The Oscars
Faradi boycotted the ceremony even though he would have been able to attend. A woman speaking for him denounced Trump's actions as an "inhumane law."
Faradi said he was upset by Trump's travel ban that singled out Iran and six other mostly-Muslim countries.
"Dividing the world into the 'us' and 'our enemies' categories creates fear, a deceitful justification for aggression and war," he wrote.
"Moonlight" writers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney,won best adapted screenplay. They poke from the heart to the disenfranchised -- black men, brown girls, the LGBT community, people who feel they don't belong.
"This goes out to all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender conforming who don't see themselves, we're trying to show you you and us," McCraney said.
Gael Garcia Bernal, presenting the award for animated feature and animated short, spoke out on Trump's plan to build a border wall.
"As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I'm against any form of wall that wants to separate us," he said.
Rich Howard, co-director of "Zootopia," which won for animated feature, said, "We are so grateful to the audiences all over the world that embraced this film with this story of tolerance being more powerful than fear of the other."
Many others talked about love, helping downtrodden communities, brotherhood.
Mark Rylance, presenting supporting actress, talked of "opposing without hatred."