The Oscars

Devotees of this humble “weblog” surely want to know what we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” thought of last night’s Academy Awards. After all, the Oscars is a special event: John Stewart even took a break from his regular schedule of producing 30-minute humorous infomercials for the Democratic Party in order to be there.

We presume that the curious looking Kathy Griffin also attended, thanks to some dilapidated cable network. And we’ll bet that she did her darndest to make fun of all the big stars on the red carpet. If you ask us, when you look as pretty as Ms. Griffin—and after all that time under the knife—you need to have some real chutzpah to rip on others. That, incidentally, is what we love about her. And it’s the only thing.

Now, we hate to disappoint our rabid fans, but we must inform you that we simply couldn’t make it through the ceremony. In fact, the show became so dreary that we contemplated switching the channel to Joe Dirt. And that, friends, is saying something: Joe Dirt is so painfully awful that it almost makes you feel sorry for David Spade. Almost.

So what, you may be asking yourself, was so horrid about this year’s Academy Awards? Well, we suppose we should admit that we hadn’t been to the movies much this year. As a result, unless The 40-Year-Old Virgin was up for anything, you can bet that we hadn’t seen the films nominated.

What normal person who doesn’t moonlight as a movie critic would see these pictures? As far as we could intuit, the Best Picture Oscar was a contest between a hagiographical picture for the gay rights movement, a hagiographical take on left-wing anti-McCarthyism, and two films pertaining to terrorism that offer the same tired “cycle of violence” shibboleths.

And, we suppose we should add, Capote. But as Truman himself might have said, that’s not a movie; that’s typing.

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” don’t want to play the role of Neanderthalic right-wing culture warriors and rant about “liberal Hollywood elites.” Where would that leave Michael Medved?

Instead, we think that the film industry doesn’t take things sufficiently far. If you really want to preach to Americans about gay rights, why not nominate a movie replete with hardcore homosexual pornography? Why are they so squeamishly choosing a lame softcore flick like Brokeback Mountain?

Moreover, if Hollywood wants to get on its soapbox about the War on Terrorism, why doesn’t it nominate one of Osama bin Laden’s videos? They’re far more sophisticated than the palaver produced by Michael Moore.