In The News
There's so much in the Times today that it's given me a headache. Plans for the Greenwich house that I mentioned yesterday have been withdrawn - just like that! Bush aide Claude Allan appears to have screwed up in a weird way. Kalefa Sanneh has fun at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions ceremony at the Waldorf:
Still, there is something amusing about watching rock 'n' roll being celebrated during dinner at a fancy hotel. With all those tables and all that catered food and all those tuxedos, the ceremony almost seemed like a wedding. But there was one small but telling difference. A wedding has a dance floor.
Carl Zimmer tells us something that we already knew, but in a different way: pregnancy, as a tug of war between mother and fetus, hasn't adapted to the benefit of either. Maureen Stapleton, dead at 80, wasn't related to Jean Stapleton!
But the catchiest story is not in the Times. It's in The Guardian: Annie Proulx's Campari-flavored write-up of the Academy Awards pomposities that climaxed in Brokeback Mountain's not winning Best Picture. "For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays," writes Ms Proulx, raising unfortunate comparisons with Joan Didion, who would have been much, much deadlier.
Update: And to think that I forgot to mention Francis Fukuyama's strong renunciation of the Iraqi misadventure!
Comments
Well, I say 'well done' to Annie for venting her frustration and for not being hypocritical and praising "Crash." "Brokeback" should have won.
I had not read about the anti-gay signs/protestors and I am sure those assholes feel that "Brokeback" not winning is a sure sign they have the high moral ground.
It was time for Hollywood to send a message that it was not going to be intimidated by the right wing, that prejudice was not going to stop the Academy from awarding the 'Best Picture' to a fine movie. But they voted for the safe out and missed an opportunity to put another nail in the coffin of hatred.
Posted by: PPOQ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2006 01:02 PM
There have been 21 instances in which there were different winners for "Best Picture" and "Best Director." It happens more often that I would have thought.
Posted by: PPOQ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2006 01:29 PM
Proulx might well enough have labelled her rant Calling a Spade a Spade. Neither had I heard about the protests. I wonder what kind of media decision that was.
Fukuyama's analysis in "America at the Crossroads" sounds not only tightly argued and indeed an evolutionary step forward in the line of previous criticisms of the Iraq debacle; Fukuyama wields the additional and incomparable power of a deprogrammed camp member. Another admission of being "Blinded By the Right" -- can't be beat. I could only be more upset if I were one myself, so completely has the Bush camp discredited its own neocon agenda. It is thanks to him and his cronies that it will be seen that regime change is the only chance the government has at recovering the regard of the international community, not to mention that of the vaunted "people of America."
Posted by: Nom de plume![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2006 03:52 PM