The 2017 Emmys

Tears, Laughter and a whole lot of Politics

Adriana Martinez, Staff Writer

This years Emmy’s had  laughter, tears, and politics. The host of the 2017 Emmy’s was well known Late Time show host, Stephen Colbert, that opened with a musical number and a political ode towards Donald Trump. The night contained surprise guest, history being made, and many words of action. Sean Spicer, former head-press secretary for the Trump administration, showed up shocking not only the audience watching at home but the audience in the room. Melissa McCarthy poked fun at Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live, creating a drastic air of awkwardness in the room.

As for the winners of the night many records were made this past Sunday, Donald Glover became the first African American man to win an Emmy for directing, Riz Ahmed was the first man of Asian descent to win for his role in “The Night Of’s”, and HULU becoming the first streaming network to win for Outstanding Drama for “Handmaid’s Tale”. Many women of the night accomplished a milestone in the film industry, Julie Louis-Dreyfus won her sixth consecutive Emmy for her lead comedic role in HBO’s “Veep”. Lena Waithe became the first African American woman to win an Emmy for comedic writing in her work, “Maters of None”, and Reed Morano, the first woman to win for Drama Directing in twenty-two years, for the new show the “Handmaid’s Tale”.

With plenty of wins, came many speeches that took part the controversial political leadership, and natural horrors seen across the world. Stephen Colbert took the time to speak to his audience to donate to the ‘Hand-in-Hand’ donation relief for those endangered with the Hurricanes. Many of the winners also commented on Trump’s leadership. Julie Louis-Dreyfus joked, “We did have a whole story line about an impeachment, but we abandoned that because we were worried someone else might get to it first,” that lead the whole room to laugh and applaud in response. Alec Baldwin who won an Emmy for his role as Donald Trump in the comedic late night show, “Saturday Night Live”, stated that, “I suppose I should say, At long last, Mr. President, here is your Emmy.”.

The words that got the room roaring with applause was when Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin came out to present and said, “In 1980, we refused to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot boss,” Fonda opened. “And in 2017 we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot boss,”. Referring to President Donald Trump.

Despite the disasters that surround the film industry members at the Emmy’s, they were unafraid of the consequences of what they would say and took action with their position to be televised for not only the President to see but those who voted for him. One of the at home audience viewers, and fellow ERHS senior, Danny Nguyen shared his response to this year most political Emmy show, “The Emmy’s have always been political and made fun of the administration and current issues in our government, but I thought that it was unfortunate that they vilified Trump and took it a little too far. Which is why I think some of the viewer ship had gone down this year, there are some conservative watchers that choose not to watch The Emmy’s because of all the jokes towards  Trump. It’s not like it wasn’t done before, I just believe that maybe it divided everyone a little bit, continuing the dispute between the liberals and conservatives.”