Ricky Gervais, in his note-perfect opening monologue, warned Hollywood not to: get political in their speeches, moralize when the room was filled with “perverts” who wouldn’t even laugh at his Jeffrey Epstein joke — Tom Hanks, why so visibly offended? — nor have a disproportionate response to winning a Golden Globe, to moralize.

“You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything,” he said. “You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”

Those of us watching at home cheered. But most of Hollywood couldn’t help itself.

Patricia Arquette, upon winning for “The Act,” got political right away, ranting about the president’s tweeting, the Iran crisis, the brush fires in Australia and the pressing need for everyone to vote in 2020.

As if the nation hasn’t been obsessed with the 2020 election since 2016.

Quentin Tarantino, accepting best screenplay for “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” said the thing about winning for writing was “You kind of don’t have anyone to thank. I did it.”

We know. That’s the point. Must he be so crassly egotistical?

Speaking of: Tom Hanks rambled on like a Nobel Prize winner when accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award. You could see eyes glaze over when he referenced his 1977 acting camp, then explained what a “gate” was and how that was a thing that existed when movies were, in his heyday, still shot on film.

A cringeworthy “OK, Boomer,” moment if there was one.

Ignoring Gervais’ very good advice, Hanks went on to thank his fellow actors in the room for “all of the struggle you guys go through.”

This was a room put off by Gervais’s earlier joke that their biggest hardship was no longer having access to Epstein’s private plane.

In his tone-deaf closing, Hanks said that he had “checked the ‘gate,’ and the ‘gate’ is good” — a metaphor for the state of Hollywood.

Really? Harvey Weinstein went on trial Monday. If we’ve learned anything since 2017, the “gate” is far from good.

Capping the hypocrisy was Michelle Williams, who launched into a highly-rehearsed acceptance speech not about her work in “Fosse/Verdon” but the choices she’s made in her life, specifically “to choose when to have my children and with whom.”

Days before the Globes, Williams was featured in a People magazine exclusive revealing that she happened to be pregnant by her “Fosse/Verdon” director — a piece that sanded over the inconvenient detail that her director happened to be married at the time as, it seems, was she.

Williams tried to spin that into a speech about women and reproductive rights, lecturing the rest of us women that “when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest.”

Only Brad Pitt hit the right tone accepting his award: “Holy moly!” He could not have sounded any more Midwestern. He thanked, without sentiment or overkill, actors like Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins for the template they set. He thanked his family back “in the Ozarks.” He joked that he wanted to take his mom but he’s automatically dating any woman he stands next to, and “that would be awkward.”

Give him the Oscar for having some perspective.

Curiously, Gervais was hardly anywhere to be seen after his monologue. For all of NBC’s hype about hiring such an unguided missile, one who had been previously banned from ever hosting again, he was neutered.

Gervais, historically, would extemporaneously pierce any actor’s self-regard onstage and would offer the best, truest, can’t-believe-he-just-said-that intros. A legendary example went something like this: “Ladies and gentleman, the only person Ben Affleck hasn’t been unfaithful to: Matt Damon!”

Not so this time around. As the show dragged on, Gervais’ absence was sorely felt. If this was a brokered deal to get ratings while sparing egos in the room, it failed. You can’t go halfway with someone like him.

Gervais himself seemed frustrated. His lone joke about Hollywood’s boogeyman — calling “Bird Box” a movie about people pretending not to see anything, “sort of like working for Harvey Weinstein” — elicited groans.

That Hollywood can’t laugh at accused rapists and pedophiles only underscores how much we need a Ricky Gervais.