“There are risks in speaking out. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a unified liberal elite – if there were, people like Casey Affleck and Mel Gibson wouldn’t receive award nominations. (Or it means that the liberal elite is open-minded and forgiving, but that’s for another column.) But this year’s speeches have been overwhelmingly liberal. That may turn off some viewers, or make people with other opinions feel silenced. It may affect Hollywood’s bottom line: Based on box-office figures from the week before and the week of the Oscar nominations, none of the contenders I checked – Hidden Figures, La La Land, Moonlight, Fences, Lion and Jackie – showed an Oscar bump, an immediate post-nomination surge.”