The Original Oscars Blogger Takes on Hollywood as a MAGA Pundit

Sasha Stone, who has been covering awards season since the ’90s, has recast herself as a voice against what she perceives as the industry’s liberal status quo.

Earlier this month Sasha Stone watched the Oscars alone at her home in a town outside Los Angeles. For someone who has spent more than two decades as one of the premier chroniclers of awards season, it was a notably unglamorous way to take in the ceremony. But she was thrilled that “Anora,” the frantic story of a New York stripper’s romance with a young Russian man, took top honors as part of a historic haul.

Stone believed the film had the virtue of not pushing a partisan agenda, which has become one of the top criteria for her when judging a movie. When she made her name as an Oscars blogger, Stone believes she fit neatly into the Hollywood status quo and the brand of liberalism it represented — often onscreen. She says now she sees the error of her old ways, even if she continues to understand the old ways better than conservatives who were never part of that world.

“Here is where I run into problems with the right,” Stone said in an interview the day after the ceremony. “They’re never going to give any credit to the Oscars or Hollywood. I knew the script was going to be, ‘The Oscars suck,’ and I was going to have to stand apart from that.”

Stone’s advice to the right: Take the win. And after some Monday-morning carping, it collectively did. The ceremony drew praise from conservatives for its largely apolitical content (just one brief comment about President Trump by the host, Conan O’Brien) and for Kieran Culkin’s acceptance speech, in which he publicly asked his wife for more kids — “relatable to any middle-American,” said a Daily Caller writer.

Stone, 60, is that increasingly familiar figure in conservative life: an apostate from the mainstream, in recovery from her earlier liberalism. During the 2010s, as popular culture appeared to be moving to the left, she had been out in front, celebrating pathbreaking Oscar winners like “Moonlight” and “Parasite.” She also publicly supported Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr.