Gays are Icky!

That's the central theme of this Ben Shapiro column over at Town Hall. He's boycotting the Oscars this year because, and I don't know if you'd heard about this, but one of the nominated films might just feature...boys kissing.

I know, gross, right? I mean, boys shouldn't kiss each other. They should kiss girls. Or, if they are hardcore abstaining Orthodox Jews like Ben, they should kiss their pillow softly each night as they go to bed, and dream that it's the supple, loose back flesh of Vice President Cheney.

Ben, as his Town Hall bio explains, is the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in America, hired at the tender age of 17. Ashamed though I am to admit it, Ben actually graduated (only in 2004!) from my alta mater, UCLA, where he was notable for being BOTH the only hardcore conservative AND the only virgin weighing under 250 pounds.

And he is so not down with liberals, Hollywood, gay people, liberal gays, people from Hollywood, or lattes, in any of their forms!

Every year since I was old enough to stay up late, I've watched the Academy Awards. This year, however, I have absolutely zero desire to watch the Oscars. In recent years, lack of quality from Hollywood has turned the Academy Awards into a special-interest-group get-together.

Everyone wants to be a movie expert. Everyone is familiar with the term "chemistry," and we all had to take a semseter of the stuff in high school, but people who know nothing about chemistry don't walk around all day making bold, declatarive statements about Boyle's Law. So why is it that people with only a passing familiarity with the art of cinema take it upon themselves to make value judgements with such casual ease.

I will now go off on a tangent: Tonight at the video store, a woman came in and got into an argument - an argument! - with Ari and I about Match Point. She and her mother felt the film was poorly written and conceived, long, boring and pointless, and they thought the "twist" ending was both obvious and unrealistic (an odd combo). Ari and I felt it was, you know, bitchin'. And, I mean, we kind of know what we're talking about...

Anyway, this woman went on and on, and most of her comments, quite honestly, didn't make a whole lot of sense. At one point, I swear to you, the following phrase was uttered:

"I mean, if I typed out all the dialogue...it would be a few pages. There was way more dialogue in Leaving Las Vegas."

I will leave it to you to decipher that charming little nugget of wisdom.

Anyway, that's what it's like listening to Benny talk about movies. The nonsensical ramblings of a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about.

If you're crazy, gay, have a disability or are a member of a minority race, you'll likely be nominated for an Oscar; if your film tackles a "deep social issue" (normally an issue dear to the hearts of Hollywood's liberal glitterati), you'll have an excellent shot at grabbing a gold statuette.

As Sadly, No! helpfully points out, several recent Best Picture winners don't tackle any social issues whatsoever, nor do they strongly feature minority actors or gay characters or the insane. Movies like, you know, Gladiator or Titanic or Lord of the Rings: Return of the King or Chicago. As you'll see, Ben has to reach all the way back to 1994 and 2000 (an eternity in Hollywood) just to make his point.

He goes on to rag on Philadelphia for a while, calling it a "weak" movie. Unfortunately, I'm inclined to agree. Essentially, he is correct...Philadelphia is kind of a maudlin, "message" picture that hasn't aged nearly as well as some other 1993 films. And Tom Hanks, though he gave a solid, convincing performance, was probably given the Oscar both in recognition for his bravery in playing a gay character, and as an odd tribute to the gay community and their suffering during the AIDS epidemic. Which is kind of lame, I agree.

But after his little Philadelphia riff (during which he complains that What's Eating Gilbert Grape was denied an award...), Shapiro's column gets significantly more hilariously insane.

The remaining 1990s were filled with weak movies and weak performances. On average, high-school audio-visual clubs make better movies than Hollywood put together in the late 1990s.

Yeah, seriously...I mean, fuck Dark City and Fight Club and Heat and The Insider and Three Kings and Get Shorty and Boogie Nights and Being John Malkovich and L.A. Confidential and Jackie Brown and Election and Rushmore. I totally made better like way better videos than that at Scout Camp!

Then, our illustrious decade: With great films scarce and politically mainstream Academy voters even scarcer, 2000 featured the victory of repulsive anti-suburbia and pro-homosexuality hit piece "American Beauty." Of course, it beat out a film lionizing an abortionist ("The Cider House Rules") and another attacking the tobacco industry ("The Insider").

Ben means American Beauty won the Oscar in March of 2000. It's actually a Fall 1999 movie, which would put it outside of "our illustrious decade." But no matter...I'll grant that American Beauty takes a cynical attitude towards the pleasant veneer of suburbia, but is it "pro-homosexual"? Aside from the very stereotypical mincing gay neighbor couple, the only gay character in the film is an evil repressed drill sargeant who winds up committing murder.

Did Ben even watch that movie? Doesn't he know it's rated R, and includes adult situations?

(Also, is it really so bad to attack the tobacco industry? I mean, I know I complain about how they are crudely drawn in anti-smoking ads, but they are, after all, a bunch of sick evil fucks. And The Insider is a great goddamn movie, man! Michael fucking Mann!)

Most disturbingly, the Academy handed Hilary Swank a Best Actress Oscar for playing a transgendered biological girl murdered by a bunch of hicks.

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Will Hilary get revenge for her Death-by-Hick? Will they be able to mold the folds of her labia into suitably male-looking genitalia, or will some kind of complicated skin graft be required? Will Felicity Huffman appear in a cameo role as Hilary's mentor, The TransAmerican Biological Woman? Find out the answers to these questions and more on

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And 2002 was the year of the African-American honorary Oscars, when Denzel Washington took home Best Actor for his decent if overrated performance in "Training Day" and Halle Berry took home Best Actress for her highly touted simulated orgasms in "Monster's Ball." In 2003, homosexual agenda films like "The Hours," "Frida" and "Far From Heaven" grabbed the largest share of nominations.

It is extremely hard for me to accept that anyone could strongly object to Far From Heaven. I mean, it's a very thoughtful, serious-minded film about the reality of how gays fit in to America's notions about itself, and it's just a beautifully-made, extremely well-acted movie. I doubt Ben has even seen it. I can't imagine what he objects to. The film depicts homosexuality, msure, but it's hardly pro-gay or gay-agenda. The gay tendencies of Dennis Quaid's character rip his family apart. Surely Ben doesn't think this is a sugar-coated or inaccurate depiction of the reality of gay men who marry women and have families. Does he simply deny that this phenomenon exists in America?

And do you notice how he leaves out the vast majority of heavily-nominated films from each year, only selectively choosing the ones that fit his choice of topic? Including the winners of the awards for Best Picture and Director? In fact, in discussing the 2003 Oscars, Shapiro touches on only one of the five nominees for Best Picture - The Hours. Because none of the other four - Gangs of New York, Fellowship of the Ring, Chicago and The Pianist - fit his stupid-ass thesis.

And then there's this year. "Brokeback Mountain," the stomach-churning story of two 1963 cowboys who get cozy while bunking down in Wyoming and then carry on their affair over the course of decades, is likely to grab Best Picture honors.

Wow...Stomach-churning. That's mean-spirited stuff. I wills ay this for Ben. He has his intolerance and homophobia right out there in the open for everyone to see. This is not some guy who fancies himself open-minded, but discriminates in subtle, half-seen ways. He's just gonna openly tell gay guys that the make him physically ill.

(Also, professional columnist he may be, but Ben still writes the sentence "two 1963 cowboys who...then carry on their affair over the course of decades." You mean, all the decades contained within 1963?)

The critics love it, mostly because critics love anything that pushes homosexuality as normal behavior.

Ben, I hate to be the one to have to break it down to you like this...but gayity is totally normal behavior. Not only does it occur daily in every single major and semi-major American city (including the town, and maybe even the street, where you live!), but it has been going on everywhere all around the world for thousands of years. As long as there have been dudes, there have been other dudes giving them reach-arounds. I don't know why the world is this way...It just freaking is. And film critics have nothing to do with it (nor do they have anything to do with the Oscars, smartie pants!)

Best Actor honors are likely to go to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his performance in "Capote" -- this would mark the first time that an actor in a gay role has actually deserved his Oscar.

But, wait, aside from Tom Hanks...who has ever won a Best Actor Oscar for playing gay? Oh yeah, none. (Although, to be fair, Roberto Benigni is pretty gay.)

Aside from pimping for GLAAD, the Oscars will provide a platform for other leftist talking points. "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's blatant attempt to bash the Bush administration through the mouth of Edward R. Murrow, and "Munich," Steven Spielberg's attempt to equate Arab terrorism with Israeli self-defense, will likely garner nominations.

Two sentences, and he manages to work in (1) anti-gay rhetoric about GLAAD, (2) general anti-liberal, anti-Hollywood, anti-intellectual sentiment, (3) wildly inaccurate accustaions about the Clooney film Good Night and Good Luck, which is a period piece and so of course never mentions George Bush and (4) a wildly inaccurate summation of Steven Spielberg's complex, nuanced film Munich, along with an improbably prediction that the film will somehow sweep the Oscars when Brokeback Mountain, Cinderella Man and Crash all seem, to me, equally if not more likely candidates for major honors.

And to top it off, Comedy Central partisan hack Jon Stewart (who is less and less funny each day) hosts this self-congratulatory leftist feting.

"Partisan hack" Jon Stewart? He's a fucking comedian, you bozo! Name one political comedian in history who hasn't had a goddamn viewpoint, asshole!