Dirty little secrets of The Golden Globe Awards

In Hollywood, prestige is a dubious currency too often bestowed upon the least worthy in the name of publicity, marketing and just plain old sucking up.

Keep that in mind this weekend whenever any of the botoxed, bosom-heaving red-carpet pundettes pronounces with a straight face that the 68th annual Golden Globe Awards are among the most “prestigious” events of the awards season, second only to the Oscars.

And muster up a healthy dose of skepticism when some Dick Clark Productions lackey in tux and tie cites the Globes’ history as a surefire “precursor to the Oscars.”

That prestige claim for the Golden Globes is purely smoke and mirrors (and high TV ratings) and that precursor business is simply a numbers scam.

What the Golden Globes really add up to is a spectacle of celebrity excess, of cloying self-congratulations among the coolest kids on the cultural playground, of grasping and cynical politicking for awards and the enhanced box-office receipts that follow. It’s a wild Tinseltown booze and free-grub party, and we’re only invited to watch and admire from afar.

So as we sit Sunday (7 p.m. on NBC affiliates) with our noses pressed against TV screens watching movie royalty party hearty, here are a few chunks of coal to be tossed in among the sparkle and glitter of the evening.

It’s common knowledge among film journalists and movie industry marketers, though probably not among garden-variety fans, that Golden Globes can occasionally be bought for baubles and cheap flattery.

Currently, there are just over 80 voting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which determines Globe nominees and winners (as opposed to nearly 5,800 in the Oscar’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), and history tells us they can be easily swayed.

The most notorious incidence of that came in 1981 when Pia Zadora’s wealthy husband threw a lavish, all-expenses Las Vegas party for HFPA members. She was subsequently named New Star of the Year for her laughably stinko performance in a trifle titled “Butterfly.” Another embarrassment came in 2000, when Sharon Stone’s people gifted each HFPA member with a gold watch. The gifts were returned after whistles were blown, but Stone nevertheless received a Best Actress nomination for “The Muse.”