{"id":890,"date":"2010-03-08T10:24:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T15:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=890"},"modified":"2010-03-08T22:51:59","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T03:51:59","slug":"the-sanitized-oscars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=890","title":{"rendered":"The Sanitized Oscars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things I like about the Academy Awards is that it is live and watched by millions. Hollywood is very liberal and so it is not unusual for a big celerity to take a moment out of his or her acceptance speech to discuss a politic or social issue. The host is usually an edgy comedian who makes an off color jokes or two and someone gets offended. This didn\u2019t happen this year. This year the Academy Awards were boring.<\/p>\n<p>For starters, Steve Martin has never been a \u201cwild and crazy guy.\u201d He has never been edgy and he had nothing edgy to say last night. Alec Baldwin on the other hand isn\u2019t even a comedian but when he did guest appear on Saturday Night Live, he was at least edgy with his \u201cSchweddy Balls\u201d and jokes at his overly religious brother\u2019s expense. Of course we had none of that at the Academy Awards either.<\/p>\n<p>The rumor was that Sasha Baron Cohen was going to dress up as a Na\u2019vi from Avatar, but of course he is too unpredictable. You never know what or who he would try to plug his tail into. So instead they had Ben Stiller do it. Stiller is the safe bet because he will joke about plugging his tail into James Cameron but won\u2019t actually try to do it. Don\u2019t get me wrong, Ben Stiller was funny, but safe funny.<\/p>\n<p>Another missed opportunity for some politically relevant fun was when Tina Fey came out on stage as\u2026 herself. Seriously? No Sarah Palin? She didn\u2019t even read off her hand. Tina Fey should be in her Sarah Palin character 24\/7 until Palin is no longer news relevant.<\/p>\n<p>This year, no one gave any politically or socially relevant speeches at all. The most controversial part of this year\u2019s Oscars was a very cryptic acceptance speech by Best Supporting Actress Mo\u2019nique who thanked her lawyer and implied that there was some behind the scenes controversy related to her win. I wish I knew what that was about because it seemed like the most interested part of the evening.<\/p>\n<p>My issue with the Academy Awards this year isn\u2019t about films. It is indirectly about censorship. It is more directly about how the Academy has become afraid to take risks and afraid to offend. They have created a sanitized environment full of jokes that aren\u2019t funny and comedians who aren\u2019t allowed to be funny. Actors have been discouraged from using their fame and platform for the good of others and outspoken filmmakers like Michael Moore won\u2019t be nominated out of fear they may win and say something interesting. Save the dolphins!<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:0\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=890\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things I like about the Academy Awards is that it is live and watched by millions. Hollywood is very liberal and so it is not unusual for a big celerity to take a moment out of his or her acceptance speech to discuss a politic or social issue. The host is usually [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[523,44,522,742],"tags":[107,2269,1106,1105,1104],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}