Oscar rant

OK, so I have to weigh in about the Oscars. I was delighted at the winners -- they were long shots and indies and interesting, and I was impressed that Brokeback Mountain didn't sweep everything else under the carpet because when I saw it at Telluride I didn't think it was that great. Good but not great.

But I must say that it must be a drag to be a comic and have 50 million people Monday-morning quarterbacking your work, like I am about to do. I thought Jon Stewart was way too conservative. He went for the funny stuff on the gay humor, but then he pulled back politically. When he said Hollywood is often perceived as out of touch and delivered the punchline, which was, "Uh... I don't have a joke here," the comedy was first-rate but the irony of the joke was lost. I felt Clooney was right to come out blazing after that and proud of being part of Hollywood and people's drive to dream big, to see around some corners mainstream politics or people haven't wanted to look. I was proud of him (and I'm sure he scored more than a few points with the Hollywood royalty).

Then a couple of days after the Oscars I watched The Aristocrats (the film about the dirty joke, not Disney's cartoon The Aristocats) and Jon Stewart wimped out -- he wouldn't tell the joke! The nastiest joke and he was the only one (except for the increasingly bizarre Rita Rudner, who sat with her plush toys and talked her usual babytalk voice about why it wasn't funny) who wouldn't touch the thing with a ten-foot pole.