The Oscars deconstruct the great American cowboy -- and destroy their own great industry

By Aussiegirl

Well, I admit it -- I wasn't going to watch, but a certain kind of morbid curiosity made me tune in to the Oscars last night. I kept one eye on it on the little telly I keep in the corner to keep track of "breaking news" -- usually the latest beauty gone missing of course, but that's a subject for another post.

My impressions were that Stewart skewered the pretensions of Hollywood and the audience was probably not too receptive to that. The entire affair seemed to suffer a kind of terminal tedium that is indicative of a moribund culture -- the whole sense was one of a dead society going through the motions without even a clue that they are already dead and irrelevant.

Where were the glamorous stars we would tune in to see in the old days? Those beautiful and handsome faces that seemed almost like old friends. The impossibly masculine and handsome men -- the breathtakingly beautiful and highly individual women? Gone with the winds of time, my friends, and in their place are clueless imposters, who having despoiled and ruined the great legacy they were handed, try to lamely applaud themselves for having destroyed the very thing that they inherited.

Having defamed Western Civilization with their trivial and decadent movies, they now have stooped to besmirching the great legacy and history of their own formerly great industry. The revolution always eats its own -- and the Hollywood crowd last night, having devoured and regurgitated the great past they were bequeathed, are left with nothing but stale leftovers and tasteless imitations.

What really offended me was the "gay cowboy" montage. It's not enough that "Brokeback Mountain" has now permanently tainted the image of the western cowboy -- who can hear that word now without thinking "gay" and seeing two lovesick cowpokes (sheep-pokes?) cuddling by the campfire? But Hollywood had to take it a step further and befoul its own legacy by besmirching the great Hollywood movies and stars of yesteryear -- the cowboy -- the quintessential American hero, beloved not only here but across the globe and long the symbol of America. America never had a better ambassador to the world than the stalwart Hollywood cowboy -- brave, courteous, honest, decent and above all -- manly.

Now Hollywood tells us it was all a lie -- and snickers at its own great history and whispers -- if you look carefully, all those movies were "homoerotic". Don't you feel stupid now, they seem to say? John Wayne was not a great American hero, he was probably a closeted gay guy who secretly lusted after his buddies (and maybe even his horse), and hid his secret under a mantle of hyper-masculinity. Ah yes, we've heard it all before.

The "deconstruction" of the cowboy -- the greatest American hero. Sad -- and corrosively subtle. The message is -- it was all a fraud -- even the stuff Hollywood of yesteryear told you. There are no real men -- there are no real heroes.

And Hollywood is the worst ambassador we have today -- and a large reason why America is hated across the world.

Memo to Jon Stewart: Keep Your 'Daily' Job

Crash" was not only the film chosen Best Picture at the 78th Academy Awards last night; it was also the sound made by the show itself as, metaphorically speaking, it drove into a wall.

It's hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year's Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by.