I See Your Boobs and Raise You...

Over the past week I've been inundated with all kinds of tweets and e-mails from various unhappy parties, all in response to the series of posts and columns I published about The Onion and Seth MacFarlane. I figured I'd get some hate mail regardless, but I did my best to take as nuanced an approach as possible to the whole controversy so that might have tempered the reaction at least slightly. Still, there was the expected outrage, with some accusing me of "mansplaining" and saying that I had no right to tell people, specifically women, what they can and can't be pissed about, and others hurling the tired "white male privilege" line at me. Not a big deal either way given that I generally don't spend too much time worrying whether I'm disliked or even just misunderstood.

But given the response to my relatively measured analysis of the Oscars -- an event which inexplicably turned into a flashpoint for indignation on par with four hours of televised, forced sodomy -- I can only imagine the kind of crap a quickie rant on the ridiculousness of the whole "We Saw Your Boobs" outcry would draw.

And that's why I'm trying to make sure as many people as possible see Banter overlord Ben Cohen's posts on the subject. Because he dispensed with all the flowery rhetoric and just called Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis's outrage over MacFarlane's jokes what they kind of are: silly and self-righteous. I don't think that just because you've taken off your clothes on film or because you regularly get plastic surgery you're somehow disqualified from calling out a crude joke about boobs (even though this particular joke was purposely crude and undeniably intended to be ironic). I don't think it makes you a hypocrite, necessarily. But Ben's right that Fonda's a pompous bore and Curtis's claim about taking it off over and over again only under internal protest reeks of convenient revisionist history.

Also, I just like to stir the pot and want to see Ben get hammered. Because I'm an asshole.

So read, and if you disagree, leave a nasty comment or send him an angry e-mail -- because he'll be reading it while sitting on a big pile of money in the bedroom of the mansion he had built from the ground up by young children and naked women. Fucking white guy.

The Daily Banter: Jane Fonda Bores Everyone To Death Over Boobs/3.1.13

The Daily Banter: Jamie Lee Curtis Weighs in on "Boob-gate"/3.4.13

The Crass and the Furious

Today's column for the Daily Banter -- actually it was posted last night but after traveling I was way too tired to write any more about it -- is once again all about our long national nightmare: The Oscars. And our ongoing insane furor over Seth MacFarlane and The Onion.

Here's the opening shot:

"After the Social Media and Politics panel that we participated in last night at East Tennessee State University, Bob Cesca, Feministing’s Vanessa Valenti and I — along with our gracious host, “Comedy Fred” Poag — sat down at a comfortable table in the bar of our hotel for a couple of drinks. The panel discussion had gone well, with each of us making the points I think we wanted to make about where social media is leading us and what effect it’s having on the way we communicate, think and vote. But once we’d retired to our dimly lit spot near the fireplace just off the lobby of the Carnegie hotel and I’d gotten a pint of Gaelic Ale in me, I turned to Vanessa and dropped the question I’d been interested in asking all night but didn’t want to bring up at the panel because the road it would’ve led down would no doubt take us far away from the basic topics we were asked to discuss. That question, again posed to the founder of Feministing, was, 'Okay, so, what do you think of controversy over the Onion tweet?'"

Read the Rest Here

By the way, I also wanted to point out two columns that manage to sum up my feelings about this ridiculous outrage over a couple of jokes and a scathing piece of satire almost perfectly. They put it so damn well that I'm jealous I didn't write them myself.

First, from start to finish, Scott Mendelson over at the Huffington Post nails the necessity of the kind of stuff The Onion does, even the stuff we don't like, and points out why the Quvenzhané Wallis comment, shocking as it was, matters:

"Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point. Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine-year-old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination. It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures. This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar. Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a 'cunt.' Because we do that all the time.

Oh, we're fancier about it and we use nicer language. But we call women 'cunts' all the time. We do it when we complain that Anne Hathaway just annoys us for no good reason, or that she earns our ire because she's just too damn energetic or just wants 'it' too badly. We do it when we obsess endlessly about Michelle Obama's new bangs or her bare arms. We do it when we ignore Angelina Jolie's humanitarian work and still see only 'that bitch' who stole Jennifer Aniston's man. We do it whenever we turn any slight disagreement between two females into a 'feud' and/or 'cat fight' or when Jessica Chastain has to publicly declare that she really isn't feuding with Jennifer Lawrence based purely on fabricated gossip. We do it when we obsess more about Jennifer Lawrence's success as a red carpet fashion princess than as a twice-Oscar nominated (and now Oscar-winning) actress. We do it when we express our alleged outrage at The Onion and then immediately click on a slideshow of the various dresses that the actresses wore in order to snark or pointlessly compare.

We do it when we lionize female stupidity and then decry that women made to be vain or stupid are considered role models. We do it when we treat every accomplishment of every would-be successful woman as merely a prelude to the ultimate accomplishment that is childbearing. The message is clear: Women of accomplishment deserve our scorn rather than our admiration, and the only thing that should really be admired about a woman are her looks, her fashion sense, and/or her ability to be a mom. Those decrying the fact that Wallis is a nine-year-old African-American child only open themselves up to the fact that it would apparently be okay to call her a cunt if she were a 21-year old white lady. Those saying that Wallis's feelings may have been hurt are A) missing that she was merely a vessel for satire and not a target of criticism and B) she likely never would have found out about it had the outrage machine not charged in full force putting it to the front pages of the online news all day long...

The Onion arguably took the fall for our national misogyny. Maybe they really are the satire we need, rather than the kind we think want. So belittle and criticize The Onion because it can take it. Because it may have just done a mitzvah. The Onion, by cutting through the niceties, has created what has the potential to be a teachable moment. For the fault lies not in The Onion, but in ourselves."

Then there's Drew Magary in GQ, who cuts through all the bullshit and just spells out the absurdity of the backlash to Seth MacFarlane's stint as host of the Oscars (a job I'm now convinced no one in their right mind would take anymore):

"I'm not a Seth MacFarlane fanboy. I've always been staunchly pro-"Simpsons" and anti-"Family Guy". I never watch any of MacFarlane's other shows, either. And I'd take a bullet to the dome before watching five minutes of "Ted". So I'm not in the tank here when I say that MacFarlane, all things considered, did a perfectly adequate job hosting the Oscars on Sunday night. He took a thankless task and the worst audience in show business and managed to, at the very least, slip in a few subversive wisecracks AND keep his energy level high for four straight, interminable hours. At this point, I don't really know what else you want from an Oscar host. If people aren't bitching about Billy Crystal being too mild, they're bitching about MacFarlane being too harsh on a group of people that DESERVE harshness.

This week, MacFarlane's jokes were subjected to the kind of microscopic analysis reserved for quantum particles. From Gawker to Slate to The Atlantic, there was string of PhD-length discourses about the underlying sexism, racism, homophobia, and whatever-elsephobia of MacFarlane's humor. The scrutiny was enough to obliterate comedy as we know it. Of course MacFarlane made tasteless jokes at the Oscars. That's what he does, and I think it's pretty clear that MacFarlane has no real malice when telling these kinds of jokes. But Jesus Christ, the way people reacted to his "We Saw Your Boobs" song, you would have thought he personally assaulted every actress in Hollywood. Give me a fucking break. We're never gonna shame tasteless comedians out of work, and we shouldn't! Tasteless humor is FUN, and it shouldn't be legislated by people who think certain people have the right to tell a certain joke and certain people don't. Piss off. Seth was fine. If you thought he was unfunny, fine. I get it. But you don't have to exhaust the dictionary explaining why. Quit ruining comedy for everyone."

Spot. Fucking. On.

Boo(b) Hoo

Seriously -- I give up.

"Seth MacFarlane has made millions off being an immature man-child. In fact, it was the success of his particular brand of gross-out offensive humor (served with a smile, of course) that got him the Oscar gig in the first place. So it came as little surprise, then, when base misogyny and racism dominated MacFarlane’s performance on Sunday. And while the musical opener 'We Saw Your Boobs' has been called immature (true) and sexist (also true) — it wasn’t just a harmless roundup of spicy movie scenes. Four of the films MacFarlane crooned about featured nudity during or immediately following violent depictions of rape and sexual assault, stripped of their context and played for laughs. Scarlett Johansson found herself on the list because of a real-life violation: Her nude photos were stolen from her phone and leaked online. Oh, your privacy was invaded and your breasts were splashed across the Internet against your will? That is hilarious!

-- Katie McDonough in a piece for Salon called "'We Saw Your Boobs' Celebrates Rape on Film"

I swear, at this point I think Salon is just trolling. No one can be this fucking stupid and still be able to write a series of complete sentences.

Hate Street

This is the joke The Onion was trying to make, the thing it was attempting to comment on.

Salon sums it up perfectly without even trying.

"(Anne) Hathaway is the subject of more vituperative, angry scrutiny than perhaps any actress working today. 'Shut up. Shut up, Anne Hathaway. I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m jealous, but I don’t feel jealousy. I watch her in outtakes, and I feel like she’s not a real person,' wrote a blogger for women’s-interest site Crushable. 'I don’t find her perfection charming. I find it annoying.'

'She always seems like she’s performing, and her favorite act is this overstated humility and graciousness,' said a blogger quoted by Brian Moylan in a piece for Hollywood.com...

'Deep down, we loathe celebrities,' says David Thomson, film critic and author, most recently, of 'The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies.'

'We envy them,' says Thomson. 'We think they don’t deserve it. We hate the influence they have over us. And there have to be sacrificial lambs.' ...

Perhaps there’s a double standard at work here. Bradley Cooper comes in for criticism, too, but it has little to do with the degree to which he is or is not a grown man. 'People are rougher on young female stars than they are on young male stars,' says veteran Hollywood reporter Howard Karren, who served as an editor at Premiere in the 1990s."

Salon: Anne Hathaway: Hollywood's Most Polarizing Star/2.26.13

An Unequal and Opposite Overreaction

For those who figured that there was no way the controversy over The Onion's crude tweet involving Quvenzhané Wallis was going to simply vanish now that the website's CEO, Steve Hannah, has offered what appears to be a pretty sincere apology, give yourself a prize. Former president of Bennett College and current political commentator Julianne Malveaux, a very smart woman by any measure, is circulating through social media right now what she imagines will turn into a petition but what's inarguably a list of demands aimed at The Onion and its management.

I want you to remember something as you read this: Quvenzhané Wallis wasn't physically assaulted. Because of the Onion tweet that very unwisely used her to make an admittedly brutal comment on our popular culture, one that never should've been attempted at the potential expense of a 9-year-old girl, she won't spend years in therapy, nor will anyone else. No one else was physically or psychically harmed by one offensive bad joke (and anyone who claims otherwise is full of crap). There was no larger group that was demeaned here: not children, not African-Americans, not women, not actors or actresses, and there's no need for anyone besides possibly Wallis herself to demand any kind of satisfaction.

And yet, Julianne Malveaux has bestowed upon herself the right and privilege to decide what penance The Onion, a website that traffics in comedy, must pay to the community at large for its supposed sins. (In my opinion, the sin of making a joke that horribly misfired.) Julianne Malveaux has decided that The Onion's apology isn't good enough and that more action needs to be taken against the site. In essence, she's appointed herself and is drafting others to be enforcers of political correctness who deserve to be assured that The Onion will never cross the line -- whatever line they happen to determine is proper for all of society -- ever again. She believes that she and those who agree with her take on this miasma can and should serve as the arbiters of humor for our entire culture.

That's not only breathtakingly arrogant, it borders on flat-out crazy.

Here's the e-mail in its entirety, including not only Malveaux's letter to Steve Hannah but her entreaty to her friends to pass this along to anyone and everyone.

"Friends an dColleagues,

Please feel free to use all and any parts of thi to deal with the Onion. If there are those of you who will turn this into a petition, please do. I will be reaching out to women's organizations tomorrow. I remain incensed and the 'apology is simply note enough. I am modest in my 'demands' and at this point I am not working with others, but by tomorrow I will be. Take this to the next level if you will.

Dr. J.

Dear Steve Hannah,

While your apology for the vile statement made by your staff regarding the wonderful and talented Quvenzhane’ Wallis is duly noted, it is an insufficient response to the heinous insult lobbed at a 9 year old girl. The communities of women, African American women in particular, and indeed the community of anyone with sensitivity, were utterly repelled by the ignorant genderized racism of your staffer. Thus, your apology is received, but not accepted. You must mitigate the damage that your comments caused, not only for Quvenzhane’, but also for the women who, reveling in her success, were damaged by the sucker punch we experienced when your writer found it acceptable to describe a 9 year old girl in a crude term for genitalia, a term at which most adult women would recoil.

Your apology might be more readily received if you and your team would:


1- Reveal the discipline that was imposed by the offensive writer, and that their identity was revealed so that their future offenses can be monitored,

2- Your company made amends to both Quenzhane’ and the community that supports her by;

a. Offering the organizations that monitor gender and racial discrimination through a financial contribution. My suggestion is that you direct at least $50,000 to The Black Women’s Roundtable, The National Organization for Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. Additionally, I would suggest that you offer $50,000 to the charity of Quvenzhane’s choice. If you choose to offer at least $200,000 to other organizations, you should reveal this information to the public.

b. Meeting with representatives of African American and women’s organizations in Washington DC on a date that is mutually agreeable, but no later than March 31, 2013 to discuss the thought process behind the insulting way a young black girl was described and the ways that future occurrences will be prevented.

c. Sharing information on the number of women and people of color on your staff, and share the ways that they impact editorial decisions.

3- Your company provides scholarship opportunities to African American women students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to indicate that you do not see young women in the disparaging ways, but as scholars and contributors. There are two HBCUs that are women’s institutions, Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. At least one scholarship for each of these institutions would be an effective way to offer recompense for your comments.

4- Your company provides speakers to the colleges that will have you to, at no fee to the colleges, explain the difference between satire and offense. To notify interested colleges, it is my suggestion that your company take out a full page advertisement in Diverse Issues in Higher Education to both reprint your apology and offer the opportunity for your staff to meet on colleges.

As an emerita president of an HBCU focused on women, I was repelled by your writer’s comments. Taking them down and then apologizing is the simple way out for this offense. I call upon you to take proactive action to redress this wrong.

I have no vested interest in any of the organizations I have mentioned here (except that I am President Emerita of Bennett College for Women). However, my constant association with young women and my association with young women make The Onion’s comments exceedingly offensive.

I am asking friends and colleagues to withdraw any support to The Onion until your apology is enhanced by action. I am also asking all women’s and African American organizations to join my insistence that your apology is insufficient. I expect that you will hear from them.

I do look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Julianne Malveaux"

There's nothing wrong with being offended by The Onion's comment. There's everything wrong with taking that offense and turning it into this insanity.

The Onion Makes Everyone Cry

You knew this was coming: Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a look at The Onion's very crude crack that included 9-year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis and the word "cunt."

Here's the opening shot:

"I had planned on waking up this morning and writing about last night’s Oscars: the good, the bad, the ugly, a thorough blasting of the decision to turn the damn things into the Tonys, an at least tepid defense of Seth MacFarlane as host, who I thought was actually too deferential to the crowd and wasn’t nearly as savage and caustic as he could and should have been, etc. etc. I was ready to just do a basic overview of the proceedings and had catalogued a couple of noteworthy moments, like Chris Tucker saying on the red carpet that it was a joy to work David O. Russell, a line that has never been uttered by any actor before in film history, Halle Berry choosing to pay tribute to the Hollywood classic Ghostbusters by dressing as Gozer the Gozerian, and the fact that in the technical awards it was a huge night for Edgar Winter’s hair.

But as the night wore on and I followed the real-time response to Oscar show on Twitter and Facebook, it became apparent that the social media guest of honor at the event was the same one who always gets invited to these things nowadays: bullshit indignation trolling."

Read the Rest Here

"Argo Fuck Yourself"

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a look at a really ridiculous trend in entertainment analysis and criticism, specifically when it comes to film.

Here's the opening shot:

"Quick: There’s a big-budget Hollywood movie that’s nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture this year, a drama about a real-life event from America’s history, that’s currently being raked over the coals by some very vocal critics for what they claim is its lack of factual accuracy. They say its creators’ decision to highlight certain questionable parts of the supposedly true story while leaving others safely out amounts to little more than potentially dangerous propaganda. They say the film does a disservice to audiences by essentially lying to them about what really happened. They disapprove — and they want to make sure the movie is denied the official endorsement of an Oscar. What film am I talking about?"

Read the Rest Here

Gold Crush

I haven't seen Beasts of the Southern Wild, though I hear it's excellent, nor have I seen Amour, though I hear it's excellent as well and I admire Michael Haneke as a director. What I will say following the Oscar nominations announcement made just a little while ago, though, is that while I'm not against making sure that smaller movies get a shot at the gold -- you've gotta be fucking kidding me, right?

This year's Best Director category manages to pull off a pretty impressive feat, glaringly snubbing not one, not two, but three extraordinarily talented directors who all saw their films nominated for Best Picture. It's heresy that Kathryn Bigelow didn't get a nod, likewise for Quentin Tarantino and, from what I hear, Ben Affleck.

I got yelled at a little last year because I criticized the Academy's fawning over The Artist, a movie that I considered to be more a foreign film than anything else, but I admit now that I was kind of an ass about that. Amour, however, really is a foreign film -- entirely in French and directed by an Austrian, which, while certainly not precluding it from putting Haneke in the running for Best Director, should at least be taken into consideration when people like Bigelow and Tarantino are other possible contenders.

Beasts of the Southern Wild, meanwhile, I'm sure is every bit as good as they say. It's still directed by a 30-year-old and considering the subject matter, its elevation over so many others by the Academy -- and here's where the knives will come out -- smacks of the usual white liberal condescension Hollywood is too lacking in self-awareness to actually pride itself on. I'm absolutely all about seeing the little film that could do, but when it's always a sure thing that Harvey Weinstein's promotional machine and backroom politicking will win the day for at least one film -- this year it's Silver Linings Playbook -- and it's all but a guarantee that Spielberg will pick up a nom for a beloved historical epic what you're left with is a lot of deserving people having to fight it out.

It's true that not everyone will get a seat, but Jesus -- leaving Bigelow and Tarantino without one makes me wonder if I should start taking the Oscars about as seriously as I take the Grammys.

(Incidentally, I couldn't care less about Les Miz, but if you count the snubbing of Tom Hooper, then it's four talented directors who got screwed.)

Gilding the Silly

A couple of quick thoughts on last night's Oscars:

1. Billy Crystal has fulfilled his destiny and finally become the full-on Borscht Belt hack he once parodied.

2. The Help was a God-awful piece of artificially sweetened revisionist hokum. That said, Octavia Spencer is a fine actor and she was as good as she could've been in the film, given the source material. But when she won the Oscar for Best-Supporting Actress and got a standing ovation before even opening her mouth, it looked like exactly what it was: white, liberal Hollywood heaping smug congratulation all over itself. It's not about whether the winner deserved the win, but only about the added honor of a standing ovation. Christopher Plummer got one for a lifetime excellent work. Octavia Spencer got one, seemingly, because she happens to be black.

3. About halfway through the show, I actually said something I didn't think anyone was capable of saying: "Brett Ratner would've done a better job."

4. When Christopher Guest and Company showed up, it provided at least a small spark of genuine humor. But on a night in which a group of movies were rewarded that almost no one saw -- and considering the state of the movie business in general these days -- I'm not sure Hollywood should've been making fun of its audience.

5. The only truly memorable moment of the evening happened before the show even started -- when Sacha Baron Cohen dumped an urn full of "Kim Jong Il's ashes" all over a very visibly pissed-off Ryan Seacrest.

6. There are only two reasons The Artist wasn't put in its proper category as a foreign film: No one spoke during it* and Harvey Weinstein said it wasn't. In the end, another love letter to movies won the day which again shows who Hollywood thinks is truly important and just how out-of-touch it is with everyone else.

7. I'm sorry, Oprah? Again?

*Updated: Given how many people have given me shit and accused me of not seeing the movie, yes, I know Valentin says two words.

Quote of the Day

"I want to report a rape. I feel as if my body -- or, at least my body of work -- has been violated by the movie, The Artist."

-- The first line of an ad in Variety taken out by Kim Novak in which the star of Vertigo complains that the recent, nearly silent film The Artist samples a line from Bernard Hermann's score for the Hitchcock classic

See, this is why Garbo made the wise choice to disappear from public life: She knew that eventually all aging starlets wind up looking like ridiculous, self-important caricatures who just need to shut the hell up for their own good, lest they end up sullying their legacies by melodramatically accusing movie producers of "rape."

Quote of the Day

"The sad truth of the matter — and we all know this — is that’s pretty much standard-issue pseudo-macho vulgarity, the kind of asinine locker-room talk you find in situations like the entertainment industry or finance, where soft little guys like Ratner make a lot of money by talking on the phone and never going outside."

-- Salon's Andrew O'Hehir nailing both Brett Ratner's "rehearsing's for fags" comment and the director's entire essence in one sentence

In case you haven't heard, Ratner pulled out of the Oscars, much in the same way his father should've pulled out 42 years ago -- so if nothing else we'll all be spared the hacky hell he would've wrought on the proceedings.

To O'Hehir's immense credit, he somehow managed to issue a call for Ratner to step aside without letting his column degenerate into ineffectual, cartoonish outrage. His point was simple and undeniable: Brett Ratner said something offensive and stupid; he has a history of saying shit like this; nobody's saying he should never work again but he damn sure shouldn't be representing the entire industry of filmmaking on its biggest night. And, as I said, his take on Ratner as a typical Hollywood pussy who thinks he's a lion -- the kind of big mouth who mistakenly believes that the multi-million-dollar deals he traffics in pack on genuine muscle mass and make him a tough-guy -- is thoroughly spot-on.

You know something, though? I was just about to post this and something hit me: While it's good that Ratner's out because he's, quite frankly, a terrible director and an all-around shitty human being, he really was and is the perfect guy to helm the Academy Awards. He's the dirty secret that the Academy never likes to admit about itself, namely that it's garbage -- that no matter how many times it dumps awards into the big, clammy hands of Harvey Weinstein and whatever tedious Oscar-bait period piece he produces then markets the hell out of, the true bread and butter of Hollywood is the unimaginative, hand-held-cam-shot drivel that gets 30% on Rotten Toamtoes but which puts the asses of 17 year olds in theater seats. Hollywood these days is far more Fast Five than Hard Eight, and I have no doubt that -- whether Tom Sherak chooses to publicly cop to it or not -- that's exactly what the Academy was thinking when it hired its most profitable genre's most notable auteur. Ratner is the Elia Kazan of crap -- thus making him the flawless choice to helm what's become the world's most glamorous charade. When you think about it, the Academy got exactly what it paid for in Brett Ratner. It shouldn't pretend that it's better than him, because it's not -- and maybe it should be forced to wallow in the sewer of its decision. The same way it continues to make us suffer through Brett Ratner's God-awful movies.

The Straight Dope

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but Brett Ratner has said something unbelievable crass and juvenile. That's not a shock -- that's Monday. And stop me if you've heard this before, but GLAAD is "demanding action" because somebody famous publicly uttered the word "fag." Put these two things together and you have yourself the beginnings of an honest-to-God Voltron of American pop culture stupid.

Apparently when asked whether he rehearses with his actors before shooting a scene, Ratner told the crowd at a screening of his shitty new movie Tower Heist, "Rehearsing is for fags." Keep in mind that two days before, Ratner had bragged about how he "banged" Olivia Munn back "before she was Asian." If you hadn't figured out years ago that Brett Ratner is the Tucker Max of Hollywood, only without the ability to tell a mildly engaging story, you're just not paying attention; the guy's lack of talent is matched only by the ironically massive size of his ego. He's a museum-quality artifact, a perfectly preserved specimen from that bygone era right around the mid-2000s when douchebags ruled the Earth.

Well, it almost goes without saying that the minute GLAAD got word of Ratner's comment -- which in keeping with tradition would offend anybody who lives in the civilized world and has an IQ higher than 12 -- it sprung into action, firing off an ominous tweet about how it would soon be looking for more than a simple apology from the director. Don't be surprised if the group demands that Ratner be fired as the producer of next year's Oscar telecast -- a job no one can figure out how he got in the first place.

If you're reading this and thinking to yourself, "Jesus, it really sounds like he's exhausted and is just phoning this thing in," give yourself a pat on the back -- you're 100% right. The indignation industry in this country has just finally wiped me out. It always works the same way: somebody says something unbelievably dumb that offends somebody else; somebody else gets incensed and bangs his fist on the table; media goes ape-shit with phony concern; original somebody issues a half-assed apology that's probably to some extent sincere; somebody else isn't satisfied and insists that original somebody be officially sanctioned in a way that costs him or her money or popularity or a general banishment to the cultural netherworld. The thoroughly contrived controversy dies down after a bit and everybody retreats into their holes, the original somebody having learned something important which he or she will then relate to any media outlet willing to chronicle his or her redemption and the somebody else readying himself to strike out again the next time a perceived grievance presents itself (it never takes long).

We're already well into step five of the process in this particular go-round: Ratner has apologized profusely and yet Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris says he needs to be cut loose from the Oscars as an object lesson because "you don't get a mulligan on homophobia." I hate to split hairs but Ratner wasn't being homophobic. That word implies fear. He was just being a fucking dick, which is exactly what he is. He says things like "rehearsals are for fags" because he's an overgrown frat-boy asshole, not because he's afraid of gay people.

Ratner should've been fired from the Academy Awards telecast about 30 seconds after the Oxy wore off and Tom Sherak realized who the hell he'd just offered the job to. Letting Brett Ratner produce the Oscars is like getting the Kardashians to produce the Emmys.

By the way, if you want to hold him accountable for making an admittedly offensive comment about homosexuals, keep him right where he is. Is there a more appropriate punishment for an alleged homophobe than being forced to spend an entire evening with Bruce Vilanch?

Or fire him -- whatever. I hear Paul W.S. Anderson's free that night.

Fuck I'm tired.

Quote of the Day

"Sure, The King’s Speech is good, but it’s the art cinema equivalent of a hamburger. It pushes zero boundaries, and doesn’t really demand much of its audience. It’s got no deeper insights. A year from now, it’ll be 'Oh, yeah, that movie. It was good. I liked it.' It’s just another period piece aimed squarely at your mom, the very definition of Oscar bait... It’s kind of offensive that a movie like The King’s Speech won in a year that saw movies like Black Swan and True Grit not only come out, but thrive, and have no chance of winning because Harvey Weinstein is a master of gaming the Oscar system."

-- From an article currently posted at Screencrave called "Why The King's Speech Proves the Oscars are Irrelevant"

I don't agree entirely with this guy's assessment, but I concur with -- as Charlie Sheen might say -- "violent passion" that The King's Speech is an almost self-parodically average film that in no way deserved to take home an Oscar for Best Picture, and abso-freaking-lutely shouldn't have seen Tom Hooper winning Best Director. But it's the kind of movie Harvey Weinstein cranks out in a factory somewhere by the truckload then consistently and almost magically spins into Oscar gold just because he can.

By beating films like The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit and Inception, Harvey's latest milquetoast period piece became this year's Shakespeare in Love. Anybody still overpowered by the effect that movie had on them? I didn't think so. Now, anybody remember Saving Private Ryan -- the film Shakespeare beat for Best Picture in 1998? Yeah, That says it all.

Headline of the Week (Early Contender)

The Huffington Post: Meredith Vieira Polishes Colin Firth's Oscar/2.28.11

Quote of the Day

"Another big loser was Kirk Douglas, who terrified the shit out of everyone and then wouldn’t leave. Child birth videos are more comfortable to watch than that was, and probably have better jokes."

-- Brendon at What Would Tyler Durden Do? on last night's painful, damn-near unwatchable Academy Awards show

Yeah, just about everything that came out of Charlie Sheen's mouth during that Today show interview this morning could qualify as a Quote of the Day, but this almost made me choke on my coffee.

Fight Snub

No, you didn't get the job because you directed Twilight.

The Huffington Post: Catherine Harwicke: The Fighter Producers' Sexism Stopped Me from Getting the Job as Director/2.8.11

Quote of the Day

"Let’s just say that Cameron isn’t known to be, shall we say, ‘self-deprecating,’"

-- Anonymous Oscar insider on the decision to cut a sketch in this Sunday's Academy Awards telecast in which Sacha Baron Cohen would've poked fun at James Cameron

Right. What Cameron is known to be is a, shall we say, "douchebag." It's gonna be so much fun to watch his cool-as-hell ex totally whip his arrogant ass.

A lot of people respect you, James. But make no mistake: Nobody likes you.

Basterds of Young

I'll tread lightly here.

I'm one of those people who believes that a film's cultural impact can occasionally be taken into account when deciding whether to give it an Oscar. I'm not necessarily saying that the Academy Awards should be a popularity contest -- just that if it's obvious ahead of time that a certain movie's going to have a lasting legacy, that's worth at least considering during the Oscar voting process. The most glaring recent case in point: In 1998, Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan, the latter movie being not only a far better film but one that had a much more hefty impact on American culture. More than a decade later, which movie still sticks in your head?

Granted, I get that if you were to go strictly by contribution to the national zeitgeist, Avatar would be the one and only choice to get the top honor this year -- but let's face it, it's not a very good movie. Groundbreaking and an awesome visual experience, yes, but not a great film by any means. The Hurt Locker is without question the best movie I've seen over the last year, and it would be good to see Kathryn Bigelow get an award -- if for no other reason than how it cool it would be to be able to say, "From the Oscar-winning director of Point Break" -- and it's the current very slim favorite. But lately there's been a quiet tide turning in favor of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil -- who's not only a really good guy but who happens to be the only person who predicted that Crash would shock everyone, most of all fans of quality moviemaking, by winning Best Picture -- has gone on record as saying that Basterds will pull off the upset this year. But does it deserve it?

If you ask Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, the answer seems to be "yes."

In a move that feels more than a little predictable, Foxman has posted a piece over at HuffPo which tries to make the case that Basterds should get the film world's top honor simply because, from the way it sounds anyway, it's a really good movie about the Holocaust. Now I'm not sure whether Foxman is specifically saying that the film should win Best Picture or simply an Oscar in general, but what he's pretty clear about is that, like Life is Beautiful and Schindler's List before it -- both far superior films, by the way -- Basterds is inherently "good" because it serves to remind audiences of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Obviously I would never belittle the Holocaust -- one of the single darkest periods in human history -- but as an argument this is kind of nonsense. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor himself, indirectly makes that point that Basterds serves a greater purpose because it brings the reality of Hitler's horrors to "a new audience," the younger generation.

But once again, does the movie deserve an Oscar simply for that reason?

There have been a lot of films made about murderous injustices that have been completely overlooked by the Academy, that is they weren't honored strictly because they told a story that needed to be told or made a point that needed to be made; just think of the number of movies dealing with slavery in America -- Amistad, Beloved, etc. -- that didn't win top Oscars. The reason they didn't, of course, is that they weren't terrific movies, and at its core -- all powerful messages and attempts at righting the wrongs of society through film aside -- that's what the Academy Awards are all about. Not every film that breaks new ground on land that's admittedly fertile deserves to be honored for it -- not even when that land calls to mind a tragedy that shouldn't be easily shrugged off. Hell, if we judge strictly on the moral of a story, who's to say that The Hurt Locker -- with its nightmarish look at war in the modern era -- isn't as powerful a film as Tarantino's World War II epic?

Inglourious Basterds is certainly a good movie, and with a surreal final act that includes -- spoiler alert -- the murder of Adolf Hitler, it's easy to see why the head of the Anti-Defamation League would get a visceral thrill out of the alternate history it concocts. But I'm just not sure it deserves an Oscar for Best Picture solely for its contribution to the pantheon of Holocaust films. (Best Original Screenplay for its sheer audacity might be a different story.)

Bottom line: A movie has to be much more than simply its message, no matter how passionately we might feel about that message.

Of course the real irony in all of this is that the guy who chews up the scenery as the deliciously menacing Nazi colonel -- Christoph Waltz -- is the one person from Inglourious Basterds guaranteed to walk away with an Oscar.

Fool's Gold (2009 Oscars Edition)

25 Completely Random Comments My Wife and I Made To Each Other During the 81st Annual Academy Awards (and Pre-Show) Last Night:

1. "I think that outfit will really serve Miley well during the joust competition."

2. "I did. In a sweatshop in Mumbai." (Said after Seacrest asked one of the kids from Slumdog Millionaire who made her dress)

3. "Well, that was gay."

4. "You suppose that big tent the stars have to go through is for delousing?"

5. (Uncontrollable Laughter) (Upon hearing Miley Cyrus say that she hopes to be back at the Kodak accepting an Oscar next year for Hannah Montana: The Movie)

6. Jayne: "Beyonce's such a lightweight. She's so desperate to be taken seriously." Chez: "(Groans) Where's Chris Brown when you need him?"

7. "Wow. Rogen went from smoking pot to obviously doing meth."

8. "In keeping with Hollywood's 'Earth-friendly' theme, Sarah Jessica Parker went really green by skipping the limo and just pulling Broderick in a cart to the show tonight."

9. "Well, that was really gay."

10. "Aniston's totally gonna jump offstage and cut Angelina."

11. "Taraji P. Henson. Yes we can."

12. "You know the janitor will be thrilled that Penelope Cruz's dress dusted the stage for him."

13. "Can I adopt you?" (Upon hearing Seacrest ask Freida Pinto what Angelina Jolie said to her when they met)

14. "LED-GER. LED-GER." (Said in unison after Heath Ledger's name was announced)

15. "Fuck Penn."

16. "I've seen the faces of the Final Five." (Upon seeing the five former Best Supporting Actress winners appear from behind their pictures onstage -- the first time that very silly technique was used during the night)

17. "GODZILLA!" (Said as the director of the Best Animated Short, Kunio Kato, and his all-Japanaese staff came onstage to accept their Oscar)

18. "Yeah, I'm going to hell." (Said about ten seconds later)

19. "Stiller, for the win."

20. "Latifah should break out into Ladies First during the death reel."

21. "Ladies and gentlemen, Ego-palooza." (Said as the former Best Actress winners vied for the most face time onstage)

22. "Jesus, when Inara's bad I'm gonna tell her that if she doesn't behave, Sophia Loren will crawl out from under a rock, snatch her, and take her away to the netherworld."

23. "Well, that was just gayer than gay."

24. "They need to move this along. At midnight, the cast of Slumdog's visas expire."

25. "Hey, at least Renee Zellweger wasn't there."

The Joker

Just a heads-up from Malcontent Central: I'll be drinking red wine and live Twittering tonight's Academy Awards coverage along with my lovely wife, via the status bar on my Facebook page.

Feel free to join in the fun (or the fun-making).

Whatever I have to say, it's gotta be better than the crap Joey Fat-One and Lisa Rinna will be spewing for that ridiculous TV Guide channel.

Hope to see you there.