Oscar grouching

Intellectually, of course, I know that the Oscar awards themselves are largely meaningless; these are the same folks who picked Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas, Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, Titanic over LA Confidential, and Lord of the Rings over Lost in Translation. And I enjoyed Crash well enough -- the decision wasn't the kind of travesty that the above awards were by any stretch of the imagination -- but I simply didn't think it was as good as Brokeback; the farther away I get from having seen Crash, the smaller it feels to me.

But, again, meaningless.

That said, here's an assortment of links that I've noted or run across in the last few days:

• This blog comment rather squarely nails the bizarre hysteria Brokeback Mountain evoked among rightwingers:
  

  ...note that it's not cowboys who are banding together to protest. You and I have both known cowboys, and though they can be reactionary, racist, and homophobic, usually they also tend to be libertarian. They might not see the movie, but its existence wouldn't bother them much, just like the existence of gay people doesn't bother them much, as long as they don't have to deal with them. The people who are getting uncomfortable are exurban, kinda wussy fundamentalists who fantasize about a masculinity they don't actually have. If you made a movie about exurban fundamentalists discovering they were gay, nobody would care because exurban fundamentalists are nobody's masculine icon.

  
  
• David Poland talks about how the Crash "upset" happened.
  
• Here's a post by screenwriter John Rogers from last month about how just plain dumb the rightwing complaints over the Oscars were this year.
  
• And, hey, wasn't it cool to see Busy Phillips -- Kim Kelly of Freaks and Geeks fame -- sitting with Michelle Williams and Heath in the front row?