Hollywood hosted another star-studded weekend as the world's A-list celebrities dawned the red carpet at the Dolby Theatre for the 2024 Academy Awards. The awards ceremony was laced with the usual anti-conservative rhetoric that one comes to expect from Hollywood's elites. Jimmy Kimmel took the cake by asking Trump, "Isn't it past your jail time?" in what he likely thought was both a daring and clever jab, taking Trump to task on his age and indictments. He received the contrived gasps and laughs and headlines that he was likely seeking.
While such political virtue signaling tickled the ears of the upper-crust attendees, "everyday" Americans are suffering from the consequences of their complicity with our corrupt political elites. And one artist wasn't going to let them get away without a fight.
Famous anti-woke street artist SABO took to the streets of Hollywood to remind the entertainment elites of the real issues plaguing the American people—issues for which shallow virtue signaling provides a pitiful anesthetic. In particular, SABO took the entertainment industry to task about their culpability in the fentanyl crisis that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans through their unholy affair with China.
Courtesy of SABO
SABO's most recent work depicts Chinese President Xi Jinping, with outstretched hands drenched in blood, standing over the harrowing statistic of "100,000 US fentanyl deaths a year." Behind Xi are illicit pills laced with fentanyl which is raining money down on Xi's most complicit American political allies: President Biden, California's Governor Newsom, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former Representative and current Californian Senator candidate, Adam Schiff. McConnell's presence on this list is indicative that politicians' blood money from China transcends party lines. As SABO says, "The artwork depicts those in power from both the Right and the Left who’ve stood by and no doubt profited from the crisis."
Courtesy of SABO
Glenn has long discussed China's war on the U.S. through its domination in illicit fentanyl production. In a recent op-ed, Glenn reminds his readers how China is "the big dog" in the illicit drug industry, and the drug cartels do their bidding. China sells the pill presses and raw materials to the cartels who do the "dirty work" of manufacturing illicit drugs, particularly fentanyl, and smuggling it across our borders, which is facilitated by Biden's open border policies. SABO put it poignantly, "What we’re watching is the deliberate dismantling of this country through drug use [...] China is destroying this country without firing a shot." And 100,000 Americans a year pay the price
For SABO, the 100,000 annual overdose deaths aren't merely a statistic. It's personal. He says:
I’ve had very close friends suffer and die because of addictions. I myself am an alcoholic. Were it not for AA, Lord only knows how my life would have turned out while living in Hollywood.
He continues:
Thank God I’m not a drug person because given what we’ve been seeing, I’d no doubt be dead like so many every year here in America. I can’t believe the number of people who die every year in America alone from fentanyl can overfill an NFL Stadium. It’s crazy how it takes the death of the very rich or famous for it to really take hold like the deaths of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojicick’s son or Pawn Stars lead Rick Harrison’s son Adam.
SABO's positioning of his street art is strategic. He places one banner on a street bench outside of the Museum of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Another is placed in front of SAG-AFTRA's headquarters. Others are plastered in front of the Hollywood sign, Capitol Records, and other iconic landmarks of the entertainment industry. It's clear that SABO wants his viewers to draw the connection between the fentanyl crisis and the Hollywood elites. But what's the connection?
Courtesy of SABO
SABO makes the bold claim that "China isn’t just killing us with drugs" but rather "focus[ing] on our other desires as in money." And Hollywood took the bait. He continues, "Hollywood had prostituted itself out for decades now in hopes of profiting off their billion people population only to realize it was a raw deal."
SABO points to Hollywood's amenable posture towards the Chinese Communist Party's demands for censorship in exchange for profiting off of access to their large population. He specifically calls out Greta Gerwig's Barbie for "ben[ding] the knee to China with their editing or narrative."
Courtesy of SABO
The Hollywood and political elites alike will continue the same talking points to tickle the ears of their peers and appease those to whom their strings are attached. However, the American people are yearning for boldness, for truth, for accountability, and for the absurdities they are forced to endure to be called out as they truly are. Though this is a tall order to expect from our elite class, perhaps it is the artists—street artists in particular—who are among the few capable of rising to the occasion.
Check out SABO's last art drop in downtown Los Angeles and Dallas.
