And The Political Oscar Goes To...

And The Political Oscar Goes To…

By: Rachel Marsden

Over the past week, both Hollywood and its Washington political counterpart – Fuglywood, DC – gathered to celebrate themselves by engaging in deep speechifying. The former with the annual Academy Awards, the latter with President Obama’s “State Of Myself” speech to Congress. It’s in the spirit of both of these events that I would like to present you, dear reader, with my list of political Oscar winners for the week:

Best Actor In An Ongoing Dramedy – President Barack Obama: The same person who rammed the trillion dollar Porkulus Magnus down our throats announced during his Congressional address that he wants to now perform a surgical line-item veto on the budget. And education will be free for everyone through college – because at least for now, the Chinese are keeping the American economy afloat through the purchase of treasury bonds, in between political dissident lashings and sips of dead tiger wine. He’s also going to fix health care – apparently without ever explaining to Americans what the very simple, real issue is: the costs of lobbying driving up insurance premiums so they can wine and dine politicians and buy them off on the company’s tab. Why didn’t Obama call on politicians to turn down health care related buyoffs? Further, he claims that he wants to somehow grow industry, while simultaneously taxing every burp of gaseous byproduct.

Best Makeup – Nancy Pelosi: Was she ambushed, before last night’s Obama speech, by the makeup team that made Brad Pitt look like a kid in “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button”?

Best Cryptic Reference – AR Rahman: Rahman won two Oscars for his music in “Slumdog Millionaire”. In his first acceptance speech, he referred to himself, out of nowhere, as a Tamil. In the second, he explained that he had a choice in life between love and hate – and chose love. Not sure if he meant that he chose to hug rather than slug someone in a bar – or whether he was perhaps referring to Tamil tiger terrorists who have arguably wreaked more destruction than any terrorist group in the name of Tamil nationalism. If so, I’d say Rahman made a wise choice, considering the Tamil Tigers are getting their behinds handed to them by the Sri Lankan government right now.

Lifetime Achievement Award – Sean Penn: No, this award really doesn’t go to Penn, but apparently he accepted it on behalf of the long vilified, late Senator Joe McCarthy when he thanked Hollywood for being rife with “commie, homo-loving sons of guns” during his acceptance speech for the movie, “Milk”.

Best Actor In A Sequel – Al Sharpton: Some of us thought that Barack Obama’s election would be the end of Sharpton. But a New York Post cartoon changed all that, giving him an excuse for another public fundraising campaign. The culprit? A cartoon showing police officers shooting the Tri-State area chimp that ripped a woman’s face off. The cartoon commented that now someone else will have to write the stimulus bill. The rational mind unencumbered by racism would interpret this as meaning that Congress (the entity that wrote the stimulus) is full of monkeys. But Sharpton wants us to think that Obama – the man who didn’t write the stimulus, but rather only SOLD it – is supposed to be the monkey. Because he’s black. Or at least that’s what I think he wants us to think. I really wish someone – anyone – in any of the zillion media interviews that Sharpton has done thus far, would ask him to explain his thinking to those of us who aren’t down with the latest racist jargon. Sharpton is also springboarding the incident into a full-court press on NY Post owner, Rupert Murdoch’s, media ownership rights – apparently ripping a page from the Islamic extremists’ playbook chapter, “Drawings I Don’t Like”. Sharpton is the political version of the “Saw” horror movie series: He goes away for awhile, but trots out the same tired act when it’s time to make money.

Best Actor In An Ongoing Foreign Drama – George Clooney: The United Nations released a memo this week stating: “After a decade of unprecedented growth, United Nations peacekeeping had essentially become a ‘victim of its own success’.” Apparently “success” is defined as “quagmire” by the UN. And George Clooney has been involved as a talking-head for Darfur’s quagmire for the past few years. I’m not sure why Clooney was on Larry King this week calling for action by Obama when Bush - the most generous African aid president in American history - lacked his support for humanitarian intervention in Iraq. Moreover, according to the UN’s Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, “Peacekeeping missions could succeed only if they had the support of the major United Nations bodies, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, as well as of the wider Secretariat and relevant host countries and people served by those missions on the ground”. Go ear-bend Sudan’s business partners, China and Russia, George. Then come on back.

Best Comedic Pratfall – Imran Khan: The former Pakistani cricket player turned politician/bozo-clown, who was once married to Jemima Khan, one of Princess Di’s best friends, successfully slipped past CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that America made a mistake in targeting the Taliban, because they weren’t the terrorists, only Al Qaeda was. Which is, I suppose, why the United Nations struck up the sufficiently verbose “Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1267 (1999) concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban and Associated Individuals and Entities”.