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Read other letters about this article
Dear Editor,
Strange that in his absolute trashing of
Stewart, Cintra doesn't offer any evidence of his purported self-castration. The fact that the stars didn't laugh only means that they are the thin-skinned narcissists Paglia thinks have somehow disappeared. (The only exceptions seemed to be the preternaturally suave George Clooney and Meryl Streep, whose candid shots revealed one of the great American actresses of all time genuinely _enjoying_ Stewart's humor at her expense.) Stewart lampooned Hollywood's liberal self-congratulation after the montage of socially conscientious film clips by saying "And none of those social issues ever troubled America again." He made fun of Hollywood's implicitly facist ethic by comparing Oscar to Saddam Hussein, and he made fun of American journalism as another reader has already reminded us. What did you expect, Cintra, that he would start rapping the seven words you can't say on television with Three 6 Mafia? Stewart's humor is good because it is surgical and operates within its context (hence the success of the _Daily Show_); he did precisely the same thing as Oscar host. That's what a satiricist does.
The real problem at this year's Oscars was that while the academy spent the 4 hours wringing their hands and lecturing the TV audience on the superiority of the big screen, in-the-dark, theatre experience; they ultimately collapsed back into their own insular, narcissistic world. For its clear the actors, the largest group in the Academy, obviously overwhelming voted for the intimate, talky, TV-sized message film with a cast of a dozen of their best friends, _Crash_ over the only really larger-than-life picture in the running, _Brokeback Mountain_. Hollywood winced at Stewart's ironic quips even as they were serving up for themselves the biggest takedown of all--a Best Picture made for TV.
