Pete Cashmore: The Oscars envelope mix up? It's an award-winning boo boo

These aren't the latest reactions to my columns (The Editor tends to limit his own feedback to words of four letters or less).

They're actually just some of the words used to describe the situation at last weekend's Oscars ceremony, in which the wrong envelope was given to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and so, briefly, the makers of La La Land were led to believe that they had won the Best Picture statuette, only to have it snatched away from them and given to the actual winners, the team behind Moonlight.

If the subsequent hoo-ha reminded us of anything, it's that film people live in a different world to us, one in which a minor, easily rectifiable clerical error takes on the gravitas and severity of a global pandemic.

If you were to judge the scene solely on the hand-clasping stunned incomprehension of the A-list audience, you would have thought that Donald Trump (pictured far right) had just walked onstage, clutching an Uzi and grinning maniacally, rather than a bunch of rich people being told that they have to give their prize back and make do with the several other ones they'd won.

La La star Emma Stone (pictured) had, by this time, been declared Best Actress, but still she described the episode as 'the most horrible moment in my life', which suggests that she has been incredibly fortunate and crisis-free up to this point.

Apparently, the words 'keep calm and carry on' do not exist in Hollywood, and indeed may as well only ever be written in some ancient, indecipherable glyphic language unspoken by humankind for millennia. It makes one wonder how the room would have reacted in a genuine calamity, like an earthquake or the sudden collapse of all the Botox in the venue.

The main winner in all this was not Moonlight's producers, but the aforementioned Mr Trump. The Pres might reasonably have expected to come in for all manner of stick during the acceptance speeches, but instead the evening will solely be remembered for a 79-year-old actor and 76-year-old actress getting rather confused by the piece of paper they'd been asked to read out.

I'd imagine that Mr Trump found it hilarious, and also that he can probably relate very strongly to public figures in their twilight years being lambasted for acting on bad information. If 2017 was meant to be the year of 'the Trump Oscars', then their grinning incompetence and shrill over-reaction was certainly a fitting tribute.

What Wrongenvelopegate did, of course, was make an incredibly poor ceremony line-up suddenly become interesting. This year's contenders were a veritable Christmas dinner of prize turkeys.

In no particular order of merit, the efforts up for Best Picture included. . .

La La Land, a wildly-overrated musical boasting two good songs, that functions first and foremost as a fluffy hymn to the city in which most of the assembled Hollywood royalty live.

Moonlight, a perfectly acceptable, well-acted, straightforward rites of passage melodrama that covers themes of race, sexuality, masculinity and addiction and so was always going to leave absolutely festooned with awards.

Arrival, a preposterously portentous wedge of sci-fi cheese with a wan, drippy central performance from Amy Adams.

Nocturnal Animals, a preposterously mannered wedge of neo-noir cheese with a wan, drippy central performance from Amy Adams.

Manchester By The Sea, an unbearably glum and morose small-town drama in which Casey Affleck gets drunk and fights a lot, and so was always going to leave with the Best Actor gong.

Hidden Figures, a fascinating story given a ham-fisted TV movie treatment, but which touches on themes of race, feminism, patriarchy and suppressed history, and so was always going to do well.

Hacksaw Ridge, an authentically grisly war epic directed by Mel Gibson, and therefore has the Good Book crowbarred into proceedings at every available opportunity.

I haven't seen Fences or Lion, so that just leaves Hell Or High Water, a terrifically crunchy and riveting crime thriller, which doesn't touch on any major themes at all and so didn't have a cat in Hell (Or High Water)'s chance of winning anything.

With such a dull, worthy, box-ticking selection from which to choose, the Academy should perhaps be thankful for the bewildered haplessness of Warren and Faye, who at least made things end on a hilarious all-time low.

And through it all, President Trump carries on regardless. So consistent and ceaseless is his lunacy that it's become something of a cliché to even bother trying to debunk it, so instead we turn to the ever-shrinking cabal of geeks and imbeciles who continue to support him.

Paul Joseph Watson is a twentysomething video blogger who goes by the funky Twitter handle of @prisonplanet and who, for some godforsaken reason, has garnered himself half a million followers and squillions of YouTube hits by being a spectacularly ill-informed right-wing poltroon, with all the riches that brings.

After The Trump's recent bizarre proclamations on the immigrant crime problem in Sweden, and their subsequent debunking by people who actually live and govern in Sweden and might actually know what they're talking about, young Master Watson decided to put his ill-gotten money where his mouth is. He said he would prove that Mr Trump was right by paying for flights and accommodation for one left-wing apologist journalist to spend a few days in Malmo, the city he viewed as Sweden's capital of migrant malfeasance, and see the carnage first-hand.

If we must give Mr Prisonplanet any credit at all, it's that he did indeed stump up US$2,000 so that this week, one journalist (who was named Tim) could get a taste of Malmo's urban Hell and, presumably, be mugged and left dazed in a rubbish dumpster within hours of arrival.

The punchline, of course, is that leftie Tim had a fine old time in Malmo on right-wing money, met welcoming people of all creeds and colours, and got out not just unscathed, but with a genuine taste for a thriving 21st century multi-cultural metropolis.

What this proves is that Donald Trump acolytes should not be ostracised, they should be celebrated – because if you get their backs up enough, they may just pay for you to go on holiday