Discontented with the fact that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Chronicles of Narnia, and King Kong will make approximately eleventy billion dollars at the box office this season (*Update: The real total is $ 1 billion worldwide), Hollywood liberals (redundant, I know) are gearing up for a fight over-- gay cowboys? Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two cowboys who give in to their forbidden love for one another and must deal with the consequences. Yeah, I don't watch Lifetime movies when they're free. I'm certainly not paying 10 bucks for one. But because I am a Republican with a low tolerance for angsty cowboy melodrama, I am an intolerant homophobe, just like all my red state brothers and sisters. For this and other liberal fairy tales, tune in to this week's West Wing. (*Update: canned)

As reported November 6th on The Drudge Report:

“New York Daily News critic Jack Mathews predicts the gay cowboy movie, which takes place in Wyoming, may be ‘too much for red-state audiences, but it gives the liberal-leaning Academy a great chance to stick its thumb in conservatives' eyes.’”

Silly, rabbit. We don’t give a crap.

The Academy Awards have always been an opportunity for pseudo-sophisticates with too much money and too little education to pat themselves on the back and tell each other how wonderful they are. But I think the tide really turned in 1999, when Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture and its star Gwyneth Paltrow beat out Cate Blanchett for Best Actress. Since then, every year these awards become less and less about merit and more about politics and money. A Beautiful Mind won an Oscar for Best Picture. No really, it did. Master and Commander was up for one. Seriously, y’all! Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger manage at least one nomination between them per year. For what? Who knows? They’re shiny and pretty and as thin as the awards themselves!

If Hollywood is the in crowd of America’s high school, then the Oscars are their prom night and homecoming all wrapped into one. The prettiest, most popular kids always get the coolest table prizes. Occasionally someone will stumble onto a win based on actual talent, but mostly it’s all about picking the hottest dress and most “socially relevant” tripe to star in. The rest comes down to aggressive Oscar campaigns that would make the mafia blush. The best smack down was always between Dreamworks and Miramax, a.k.a Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein, who collectively spent the equivalent of the GNP of Southeast Asia each awards season to make sure their pet projects ended up on top. (For the record, Harvey won battle after battle for awhile there, but I think he’s currently unemployed, so the war goes to Steven). **Correction: Harvey Weinstein is not unemployed. His new production company just released its first film, the hideously miscast crap thriller Derailed, which is currently chugging along down the mediocrity line. So obviously, I was wrong.** Thirty-thousand dollar dresses and multi-million dollar publicity campaigns, and these are the people always begging the rest of us to donate money. Think about it.

There are many reasons to watch the Academy Awards. To see who’s sleeping with whom this hour, to see who’s wearing whom, and to play “Count the Ribbons of Social Awareness,” but the movies themselves are no longer one of them. In addition to industry politics, this is also due partially to the Academy’s stubborn refusal to nominate movies anyone has actually seen.

Take a look at seven of the highest grossing (ergo, most watched) films of the new century. The Passion of the Christ managed 3 nods, for cinematography, makeup, and sound. The three Harry Potter movies racked up a whopping 5 nods between them, for musical score, art direction, and visual effects. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for all its dozens of awards nominated for and won, ratcheted only a single nod in any acting category, for Ian McKellan, who subsequently lost.

Meanwhile, Oscar Darlings of the 21st century deemed worthy enough to warrant the top honors have included The Cider House Rules (abortion is good!), The Insider (smoking is bad!), The Hours (lesbianism-yay!), The Pianist (directed by forced ex-patriot, statutory rapist Roman Polanski), Million Dollar Baby (thumbs up for euthanasia!), and let us not forget Bowling for Columbine (Guns are eeevvviiilll!!), which has not only the honor of being the most fallacious film to ever win Best Documentary, but also allowed professional ass-clown Michael Moore to spew hate speech all over primetime television. It was so bad other liberals booed him.

So oooh, go ahead and nominate your gay cowboy movie. The only reason any of these movies make it all the way to the Oscars is in the hopes that they will piss off red-state conservatives. The Hours was a god-awfully bad movie. It was boring, the acting was bland, and the overall tone made you think, like Virginia Wolfe, that suicide just might be the only way out. But it let a lot of people without the slightest clue wax on about how hip they were about lesbianism, and more importantly, how vilely homophobic the flyover states were. That’s why these movies do sucktastic box office, you know. Not because of the acting, writing, or directing, but because the rest of us just don’t “get it.” I get it all right. Just like the popular kids rigged Carrie’s prom queen election to toss pig blood on her, Hollywood sets us up with these films they want and expect us to hate, just so they can point their fingers at how intolerant we are. Their emotional maturity was stunted at sixteen. Unfortunately, they must never have bothered to watch any of their movies all the way through. It never works out well for the popular kids.

"They're really good those boys and they did a great job. It's very brave of them."- Madonna, after seeing an advanced screening of Brokeback Mountain.
Sorry, but no, that is not bravery. Brave is risking your life to topple a murderous ideology while large groups of white liberals protest you, not getting paid large amounts of money to make out with another guy on camera. But Hollywood does not realize this, because Hollywood is under the delusion, like Madonna, that they are important. And like Madonna, they aren’t.

You know what would be really brave? Hiring actual gay actors to play gay cowboys, not straight ones whose girlfriends co-star (Dawson’s Creek’s Michelle Williams, mother of Ledger’s newborn baby). That’s just stupid. It’s not like there aren’t any homosexual actors available in Los Angeles. Hell, half of the industry prides itself on being (insert prefix here)-sexual. If Hollywood were oh so concerned with accurately portraying homosexuality onscreen, Ellen DeGeneres would have an actual film career. To be fair, Ellen isn’t a size zero with hair extensions and a boob job, so she probably wouldn’t land a leading role even if she were straight. If the producers REALLY wanted to be brave, they’d have made a version of Brokeback Mountain starring Nathan Lane and Alexis Arquette. (*Update: And I think Sean Hayes agrees with me.)

I mean, where’s the sweeping love story of Siegfried and Roy, of Merchant and Ivory, of Spongebob and Tinky Winky? (Just kidding, of course. Siegfried and Roy are TOTALLY straight).

The movie industry is obsessed with pretty. Irregardless of how horrific the conditions of the film might be, war, holocaust, grocery shopping, the stars look really pretty doing it. This is why “going ugly” virtually guarantees an actress an Oscar nomination. It’s “brave.” Ann Coulter wrote about how Hollywood has to create alternate realties in which Democrat candidates are actually attractive and competent. I say the only thing Hollywood likes more than casting beautiful liberal politicians is casting beautiful lipstick lesbians.

Actresses who have portrayed lesbians in television and film include:

Charlize Theron
Liv Tyler
Naomi Watts
Drew Barrymore
Angelina Jolie
Sharon Stone
Jennifer Lopez

Yup, those are some butch dykes right there. In fact, the only butch one in the bunch played a serial killer (Monster). When the soap opera One Life to Live portrayed a gay man as a killer, it was mocked in Entertainment Weekly. When Charlize Theron did it, she won an Oscar (Thus further proving that ugly wins every time). As for the portrayal of gay men in Hollywood, they typically fall into one of two categories: 1) comic relief (Sean Hayes, Will & Grace) or 2) AIDS patient (Tom Hanks, Philadelphia). This is the welcoming tolerance of Hollywood. Lesbians get to become lipstick fantasies for straight men (Wild Things, Bound), while gay men get to either be zany (The Birdcage) or teach us a very important lesson by dying (Rent).

Critics will say that the reason gays portrayed so stereotypically is all because of the red states. Yeah, and we’re the reason African-American, Hispanic, and Asian actors can’t catch a break either. We hate fat people, too. The same year liberals gave the first black (who happens to be half-white) woman a Best Actress Oscar, conservatives nominated the first black woman to be Secretary of State. Halle Berry was the voice of the people. Condoleezza Rice was a stooge for Bush. You do the math.

Asked about whether or not audience reaction was the main factor in openly gay actors losing work, openly gay actor Ian McKellan responded,

"Bullshit, I think that anyone who believes [that audiences would not accept gay actors] is just battling homophobia within themselves." He has pointed out that one of the first roles offered to him after the public revelation of his homosexuality was that of a notorious womanizer, former British cabinet minister John Profumo.” Link

Yes, tell me something. If it’s so acceptable to be gay in the blue states, why do Tom Cruise and Kevin Spacey sue the crap out of anyone who says that they are? I have come to dislike both of them immensely, but trust me; it has nothing to do with their sexuality. (Except maybe for Spacey’s continual assertion that he is straight, damn it, straight!!! That’s just annoying).

“Director Irwin Winkler, who recently made De-Lovely (2004), about Cole Porter's life as a gay composer, acknowledged that the fear of being ‘outed’ as a gay actor still permeates Hollywood. ‘Most of the actors that are gay,’ he said, ‘are not openly gay at all and there are some that we know that if we talked about them . . . would be pretty upset.’"
Link

Well, it could be worse. They could be outed as Republicans.