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• Monday, March 6, 2006 08:08 AM

  which show was cintra watching?

  Bleep-outs are bummers. Thank you, Cintra Wilson, for singing that note. But did you leave after that? What did you eat for dinner? Raw meat and vinegar martinis? Did you grow up in one of those painfully smart families where everyone sits around the dinner table night after night fingering the serrated edges of their steak knives while desperately trying to one-up one another?

  Your review of the proceedings makes me feel like I've just spent a kalpa in Leonard Michaels' The Men's Club. It makes me crave a scalding shower. Cintra, why so mean? What's really going on with you that makes you such a hisser? America, snoring in its long sleep, may not want to know, but I sure do. I'll welcome you beside me later when I perform my prostrations.

  What's so bad about Hollywood wanting to demonstrate, self-consciously or otherwise, that it has a conscience? How much does it cost us to grant that? Oscar is always about celebrating the past and backslapping. It's a party, not a political convention. How about celebrating the fact that oscars were spread around this year, that we weren't subjected to the monotonous sweep of a year ago? I know that some of the good movie expert at Salon are weepy because Brokeback didn't win Best Picture, but the best film did. Richard Roeper's claim that "Crash" will be the movie most identified with this era is dead on. It breaks ground (and maybe some backs), and we're better off for it. It's bold for Hollywood to honor a film in which all the characters do their best and worst and a lot of in between. It's not a comfortable film to watch. It doesn't pander to our smug self-awareness. It doesn't celebrate our expansive tolerance, but it shows us as we really are, warty and angelic and oh too often sound asleep.

  And what's with the Jon Stewart bashing? He conducted himself with class, charm, and wit. Perhaps these qualities are so rare we just don't honor them as we should. It's amusing, somehow, to think of him at 52 as a "golden boy," but it's more approprate to see him as the erudite, understated comedian he in fact is. An oscar host with no slapstick and no mugging in his bag of tricks. How refreshing! Audience members weren't cackling in the aisles because they were actually thinking about what Stewart was saying. How's that for a breakthrough? Star faces furrowed with contemplation! That alone was worth the price of being anchored to my couch for four hours.

  While we're at it, let us praise George Clooney, a good guy who tries hard, Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, the superb, humble and generous Robert Altman, the goofy Ben Stiller, the evening's sweet homage to cosmetic surgery, Dolly Parton, and let us pray for the incomparable Lauren Bacall, who looked more lost than she has ever appeared in public.

  Cindra, the sharper our criticism, the more cracked is the mirror we stare at. Oscar night is about having a good time and recognizing good work. Hollywood did well. Now let's get back to more important things.

  —heatherslut Read heatherslut's other letters
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