Opening the Envelope

We can’t help ourselves. There is something that compels many of us to rip apart the Oscars, the annual ritual of Hollywood congratulating itself, or bashing itself, take your pick. The gags that didn’t work, the dresses, the award-winners thanking not only their colleagues but their ancestors, their spouses, their offspring, and this year, even the family dog, some of them using the occasion to lecture us about what’s wrong with our culture.

But we’re all there. It’s one of those prized collective experiences that seem lacking these days. Like many, I attended a party featuring a competition for guessing the most Oscar category winners correctly. I got 20 out of 24. “You’re good,” someone said. But my group is tough. I was only a co-winner of our event, and there were others that were only one or two guesses off. But we do research ahead of time. We have to.

Playing the guessing game is one way to spice up an occasion that has become a little too predictable. The average football game or beauty pageant offers more surprises. The Oscars have turned into just another election, and the winners are often determined by who puts on the best campaign, not the best performances or artistic work. Patricia Arquette did a creditable job in “Boyhood,” but was her performance really better than Emma’s, or Keira’s, or Laura’s, or Meryl’s? And then, Ms. A used the occasion to lecture us about gender equality. It would not have upset me to see Michael Keaton win Best Actor, but he was up against a degenerative disease – almost no contest there, Eddie Redmayne’s moving interpretation of the Hawking story notwithstanding.

Reese Witherspooon used the occasion to lecture us, too. “It’s not about the dresses,” she said in a red carpet interview. Really? Annually, at one of the greatest concentrations of female beauty on this planet, are the designers going to let the occasion go by without showcasing their work?

Then there was the whole guilt trip about the lack of diversity. The jokes about “whitest” and the standing ovation for “Glory” were part of the penance. Personally, I don’t think an implied quota system is a good thing in an artistic awards competition, but that’s another discussion. There have been some pretty good years in this department; 2014 just wasn’t one of them (This being such a sensitive issue, did we really need Sean Penn’s crack about green cards at the end?).

But my thirst for surprises didn’t go entirely unquenched. Thank you, Lady Gaga!

Let’s step back a bit, though. Whether we like this annual Hollywood Kabuki or not, movies represent one of the artistic linchpins of human culture. We forget that this technology is less than a century and a half old, and films have been “talking” for way less than that. But no other art form, IMHO, has taught us as much about ourselves, which is, in the end, what art is for, and has reached as many people. I don’t quite know what my life would be like without the movies – and I’m sure I have lots of company.

Feet of Clay

As the old song goes, another one bites the dust. Brian Williams’ career as a major network TV news anchor may be numbered, due to his apparent fabrication of an experience covering combat in Iraq. For the time being, he is the butt of jokes.

Our news anchors seem to have a special place in this country. In the UK and elsewhere, these people are called “presenters,” because that’s what they do -- they present the news. Not good enough for us here! We expect them to be people of impeccable morals, unassailable integrity, and unquenchable heroism. We have the Cronkites and the Murrows to thank for that, I guess.

Mr. Williams will never find himself up there with Saints Edward and Walter. He did something really stupid, especially since it was unnecessary – he didn’t need to make anything up to burnish his image. He was doing just fine. Does this incident make him bad at his job? Or negate his successes?

We spend a lot of time putting people on pedestals, but it only takes a character flaw or two to pull them down again. I may be off base, but there’s a part of us that seems to enjoy this process. It’s as if our love of celebrities carries the hidden seed of envy, so that part of us smiles at seeing the mighty fall. People that we once loved and admired for their accomplishments: Bill Cosby. Joe Paterno. Lance Amstrong. Woody Allen. David Petraeus. Helen Thomas. Richard Nixon. The list has no end. The sad part is that almost every time, once the offense is committed, we don’t remember them for their accomplishments, just the offense. It can be a peccadillo or a heinous crime. It almost doesn’t matter.

Who knows, maybe this is why we need religion. Human beings can’t stand up to worship. Inevitably we seem to find something the matter with them. But we still crave the perfect and the pure, and if we don’t find it here, we make it up. Or, perhaps since we can conceive of it, it must be real, and out there. Too big a subject for tis humble post.

We may not be able to fully forgive everyone who sins. But are we able to accept a few dings in our heroes, or find any compassion at all for those who squander the investment in our opinion of them with more serious offenses? Can we ever say, there, but for the grace of God (or reasonable facsimile thereof), go we?

Speaking in Tongues

Words have power, but first you have to know what they mean. The worst arguments I have ever been in had to do with words – and nobody involved in these disputes ever wants to back down. Who wins in the long run? I think it’s always the Average Bear.

Today I had a discussion – fortunately a pleasant one – with a former colleague who was writing a newspaper story which partly concerned a horse being stuck in the mud. She wanted to know if she could say “mired in the mud.” It sounded right to her, though it’s technically redundant, because “mire” IS mud. I looked it up, though, and thankfully found that “mire” (which Jim Morrison didn’t want to wallow in) could also mean slush or dirt – which in turn meant to me that my friend could safely specify and get away it. She was on the right track – it didn’t sound right to say it the “correct” way. The Average Bear would ask, “Mired in what?”

I almost lost my own newspaper job a few years ago, when I changed a headline from something about “running a gantlet” to “running a gauntlet.” I said, “Nobody knows what a ‘gantlet’ is – the readers will think we spelled it wrong.” So I put the “u” in it. Well, technically speaking, the gantlet is what you run, and a gauntlet is a glove -- that’s the thing you throw down. But what did Clint Eastwood run in that movie? Would anyone have gone to see it if it was called “The Gantlet”? I think not.

Sometimes the sticklers win out, and for this we have to go back to horses. A reporter wrote a story about a real estate developer “chomping at the bit” to finish a project.  Our editor was upset. “It’s ‘CHAMPING at the bit!’” he said. Not what the Average Bear would say, but I’ll cut him a little slack – he was from Kentucky, where they know their horse flesh.

But sticklerism is a dangerous path. When I was in college long ago, there was a guy in my dorm named Harry, whose hobby was lying in wait for victims to misuse or mispronounce English words. He threw down the gauntlet (right this time), wanting us to take issue with him so that he could triumphantly shove a dictionary in our faces, opened to the appropriate page, to demonstrate that we were wrong. Not long ago, I went to look Harry up on Facebook, but couldn’t find him. Not surprising, because I don’t think he was allowed to live much past the age of 30.

My favorite example of the Average Bear’s power is “chaise lounge.” That’s what we call that thing out by the pool, originally called “chaise LONGUE,” French for “long chair,” which is what it is. But lounging is what it’s for, said the Bears, who always win -- because language is a living thing. As for the chaise, I’m going outside to rest my body in it – along with my case.