Academy Awards Daydream

Since I’m going to be watching the Oscars from Lancaster, PA, I was daydreaming the other day about the Amish Academy Awards, where host Julian Borntrager would refuse to appear on television, the red carpet would be brown canvas, and the only film nominated every year would be “Witness” (although officially none of the members of the Academy would ever have seen it).

But seriously (okay, not seriously), as I begin to feel that tug in my brain that wants to look forward to the ceremony but knows that I’m pretty much going to resent the whole thing, I consider...

Michael Moore tried to get Fahrenheit 911 into the best film category (and of course failed and is now nominated for nothing at all). But what if he’d succeeded, and we were headed towards a truly postmodern Academy which would recognize all things captured as moving images as cinema (and seriously, with satellites and surveillance cameras, I think we can include pretty much anything we can think of), all people responsible for them as directors, and anything funded by the U.S. as legit in the main catergories? This could get exciting.

Performance by an actor in a leading role: My favorite nominee is Viktor Yuschenko, but I would say there could be some hot competition for this one.

A shoe-in for best actress in a (very) supporting/ive role: Condoleeza Rice in the 9/11 hearings.

Silvia nominates Berlusconi for best actor in a (very) supporting/ive role, although Tony Blair and Chirac are also getting some votes.

Achievement in make-up: Berlusconi, for fantastic, socially responsible plastic surgery

Achievement in editing: Hello, obviously GW.

Achievement in music: Was it Dick Cheney who sang “As the Eagle Soars?” There’s gotta be a better nominee for this one.
Okay, obviously I got going in a political vein and didn’t ever get out of it. Any nominees, guys? Stay tuned…

That is so hilarious.

Some things that made me laugh in the news this week:

My sides are splitting:

BRUSSELS - President Bush said on Tuesday the idea that he was preparing to bomb Iran was "ridiculous" but he failed to satisfy European calls to offer Tehran incentives to curtail its nuclear program.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders.

"Having said that, all options are on the table," he added, drawing laughter at a clear reference to military action.

This was also funny in the news this week. I like the violent imagery:

"They (AARP) are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next, told the Times. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." If you can't win an argument on the merits, then dirty up your opposition.

But this is the funniest thing I've seen all week:

The Pope writes that both abortion and the mass murder of six million Jews came about as a result of people usurping the "law of God" beneath the guise of democracy.

It was a legally elected parliament which allowed for the election of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s..." he writes.

"We have to question the legal regulations that have been decided in the parliaments of present day democracies. The most direct association which comes to mind is the abortion laws...

"Parliaments which create and promulgate such laws must be aware that they are transgressing their powers and remain in open conflict with the law of God and the law of nature."

I have no words.

Con dolcezza???

Ummmm, did someone switch the bodies of all members of the news media while I was sleeping restlessly last night? I was brimming with excitement about reading international reactions to Condoleeza Rice’s crazily inflammatory statements in Paris (I’d heard excerpts on NPR, and it sounded like she was threatening action in Iran (I remember an ominous “they know what they need to do.”) using exactly the language which led to preemptive action in Iraq); I just knew they were going to be in fine form, rabidly indignant, cool, haughty, suspicious. Why shouldn’t they be? Who trusts us?

And yet what, to my wondering eyes, should appear, but a virtual love-fest, with Ms. Rice at the center of a whole lot of good feeling. Everyone apparently loves Condi. ??? "After a long estrangement, Europe felt loved again," wrote a slightly ironic reporter. I mean, we find constant talk of Condi's charm, and suggestions like the one in the Guardian that "Washington's charm offensive has been broadly welcomed by European diplomats, particularly since the Iraq elections on January 30. " The same article reports that "Several French commentators have said they see clear signals that the Bush administration, for long happy to ignore the views of all who did not agree with it, was now determined to place improved transatlantic relations at the heart of the US president's second term. " Um, yea, right.

I know I'm exaggerating a little about the love-fest. An article in the Times at least characterizes the reviews as somewhat mixed, and reports on a few French journals that were still suspicious of her, inured to her charms. And the Guardian suggested that in the end her charm couldn't disguise the hardline politics she was espousing. But the best article on her Iran comments I found through Truthout, and I think I am primarily surprised by the fact that more was not made of remarks that give me an eerie sense of deja vous.

Thank goodness. Otherwise, Virtually Canada was seriously considering moving itself to an ever more virtual space, a pretend computer on a more ethereal internet, where such terribly permissive global attitudes could be eliminated with a simple neurological keystroke on the keyboard of panic-stricken, fevered imagination.

In a State in the Union

The Union's in a State, all right, but not the one GW suggested we're in, that is, a state of self-congratulatory democratic cohesion, a state that is spreading like warm peanut butter all over the globe (jam, anyone? oh, right, we're in one), especially in territories we happen to occupy. I am not even marveling at the analyses of the speech, many of which ran in the vein of "wow, he practiced a lot!" I like the article posted on Truthout article on "The State of George Bush," full of interesting analyses but starting especially with a discussion of his theatrics:

"Bush went beyond that this evening. He produced grand and effective political theater. In the middle of the address, he transformed the war in Iraq - which even after the historic election there arguably remains his largest liability - into a single, powerfully poignant moment. Exploiting the tradition of inviting symbolically significant guests to sit with the First Lady, Bush introduced the mother of a US Marine killed in Fallujah and an Iraqi human rights advocate whose father had been assassinated by Saddam Hussein and who had voted in Sunday's election. With the House chamber awash with emotion, the two women hugged. Bush was near tears. Members of Congress - perhaps including those legislators who had dyed their index fingers purple for the event - were crying. In a nutshell, here was Bush's story of sacrifice, liberty and freedom. Sentiment - sincere sentiment - was in full synch with spin. The not-too-hidden partisan message: Match that, you naysayers. This was a triumph of political communication. And it was a reminder that despite the apparent difficulties Bush faces in his top-priority effort to partially privatize Social Security, he should hardly be counted out. This man does what it takes."

According to the author, the Republicans were lauding the effectiveness of the speech before Bush even made it. Making his success here, as in other moments, suspiciously predetermined. Was it really live television? Has the Pentagon now perfected an eloquent Bush-bot?