This morning, the Huffington Post had an article by their Entertainment Editor Sara Boboltz about Betty White being accepted for membership into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that votes on the Oscars. From the headline and opening passage, I thought the article would be questioning the Academy's decision, deriding the action which is tenuous at best. Instead, Ms. Boboltz snarkily took them to task for taking so long to accept the beloved 95-year-old Betty White into its group after 72 years acting.
To be clear, I don't really care one way or the other if Betty White is in the Academy. Personally, I don't think she remotely deserves membership -- for reasons I'll explain -- but if they want to make her a member for any reason, it's their club. And it's a lovely tribute. So, fine, not a problem. What rubs me the wrong way is something else entirely. It's that not only was the author was so snippy about the Academy's supposed long delay and terrible oversight, but she's the "Entertainment Editor" and one would hope she would know better. After all, here's how she ended the piece, chiding the organization for this seemingly egregious omission. "Apparently," she wrote, "the Academy has also used the opportunity to correct the decadeslong oversight that was not inviting Betty White to join its exclusive club. Be better, guys." Worse, it was the silliness of her justification for why she believed Betty White long-deserved membership. (The correct answer, by the way, is -- "Betty White is a Hollywood icon, and it's just such a nice honor for them to have made.") What she wrote though to explain why this should have been done oh-so long ago and why the Academy has been oh-so thoughtless and male-based was -- "Aside from acting as a badge of honor for top figures in Hollywood, Academy members are given the esteemed privilege of choosing Oscar recipients. White has never been nominated for that award, but she has been nominated for four Golden Globes for her performance in “The Golden Girls” and 21 Emmy awards for various roles, five of which she won for her roles on shows including “The Golden Girls,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and others. She’s also got a Grammy. All of that, coupled with her standing as the legendary Betty White, makes her absence from the Academy membership a bit of a head-scratcher." It is only a head-scratcher if you don't know what you're talking about. Okay, here's the thing. Look at that list she re references. Pick out all the ones that are...well, y'know...MOVIES. Zero. None. Nada. The Emmys are TV. The Golden Globe awards were for TV. The Grammy is for audio recordings. There is absolutely nothing Ms. Boboltz pointed to that had anything to do with movies. And it's not terribly hard to figure out why that would be not just important, but 100% essential. After all, just check out the frigging name of the organization. It's the Academy of MOTION PICTURE Arts and Sciences. You can't miss it. I thought Sara Boboltz was going to ask "Why now"? Why was Betty White given Motion Picture Academy admission now, when she hasn't even been in a movie in seven years? Or that she was going to point out that in 72 years of acting, Betty White has only been in around eight movies. And never starred in one, all small roles. I would challenge Ms. Boboltz -- or you -- to simply name three movies that Betty White has ever even been in. Okay, she played the grandmother in The Proposal in 2009 with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, and was great fun in it. Before that, the last major film Betty White was in was Advise & Consent. It was made in 1962, that's over half a century ago! But pretty much the entirety of her career -- and yes, it's a legendary career -- is in TV. And the Motion Picture Academy is for motion pictures. Movies. Feature films. But again, if the Motion Picture Academy wants to honor Betty White and have her as a member -- more power to them. Hey, who wouldn't want to have Betty White at their party? She's had a great TV career, been in a handful of movies and appears to be pretty much beloved. So, very nice for the Movie Academy if that's what they wanted. They figured out a way to admit her, which is their absolutely right, so swell. It was a nice thing to do. But for the Entertainment Editor of the Huffington Post to take AMPAS to task in such a snide way, suggesting male bias and ageism for not having Betty White as a member -- that's utterly foolish. (She even brings in charges the Academy has faced of race bias.) That shows ignorance of what the organization actually is. It's really simple -- she's a TV actress. A wonderful TV actress. But AMPAS is for movies. One would hope that an Entertainment Editor would grasp this. There's one unintentionally funny thing in Sara Boboltz's article that makes her snarky gaffe all the more pointed. She had a perfect set-up for a wonderful joke, but got caught up in trying to slam the AMPAS and totally missed what was sitting there on a silver platter in front of her. (Or silver-haired platter.) It comes in a passage where she is trying SO hard to bring out the organization's bias and writes -- "In recent years, as Oscar winners have continued to look a bit too white and male for many tastes..." Arghhh! What a lost opportunity for a great quip to put everything in proper, whimsical perspective. But her blindness is making A Point (no matter how off-base) forced her to miss what was in front of her. Because what she could have written -- and I'll even go so far as to say what she should have written -- was -- "And now the Academy has decided to make themselves even more White. But in the best way possible."
0 Comments
It's been a while since we've had a "Comedy Against Trumpism" video from the Liberty TV consortium that began with The Netherlands, and other countries just glommed onto it. So, this time, we find if it should be America First -- Lithuania Second. Though as they point out, Lithuania isn't always good enough to come in second... Yes, even Lithuania has gotten into the act. And Trump wanted to take action so that the world wouldn't laugh at us. Boy, did that train leave the station long ago... Okay, I guess we might as well continue this thread to its logical conclusion. We started with a posting about a documentary on Frank Loesser. That brought about a video of a classic song that most people didn't know Frank Loesser wrote the lyrics for. And today? Today, we have the song that Mel Brooks wrote for his 1974 film Blazing Saddles that parodied the Loesser number. Plus, a bonus. The original song in question is "The Boys in the Backroom" which Marlene Dietrich sang in the movie Destry Rides Again, that had lyrics by Frank Loesser and music by Frederick Hollander. And Mel Brooks parodied it with his song, "I'm Tired," for which Madeline Kahn knocked down the room with her take-off on Marlene Dietrich. And here's the bonus. In 1986, Madeline Kahn recreated the number for Comic Relief. I have to believe that she watched and rewatched and then watched the movie again, because it's seriously impressive has spot-on she did the number a full dozen years later. The video quality is lousy. But that's the only thing that isn't a hoot. And it's especially a joy watching her do the song with a theater audience because it means this time, she gets the very-deserved laughs. Most analysts I'd seen and read have been saying that it would be disastrous for the TrumpCare bill if Republican senators went home over the 4th of July holiday to face constituents without having had a health vote. The longer the delay, they said, the more time there'd be to study the bill and have all its problems come to light...and have voters back home confront their senators.
Well - the vote is now officially pulled until after the 4th. The GOP could only afford to have two senators vote against the bill, and it had been facing trouble when four Republican senators early on had said they weren't planning to support the bill in its current state -- though three of those seemed to be flexible. However, then the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (headed by a Republican) released its report which stated, among other issues, that 22 million Americans would lose their health insurance under this TrumpCare bill. And another Republican senator said she would not support it -- bringing the number against now to seven, with two definites. (Dean Heller, who is seriously at-risk in his upcoming re-election campaign in Nevada, and moderate Susan Collins from Maine.) And four other Republican senators are on the fence, undecided. And so Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delayed the vote until after the holiday. Meaning senators will have to go home over the 4th of July to face constiuents without having had a health vote, and more time for problems with the bill to come to light. And the GOP not able to afford losing one more senator, while also changing the minds of five flexible votes that are already "No." And the four additional who have not yet voiced support. This is a fun article about a tradition in the Japanese railway system known as "shisa kanko." That's the process of conductors in their white gloves pointing-and-calling when doing tasks, even the most basic and simple ones. It's based on the concept of "associating one’s tasks with physical movements and vocalizations" in order to present making mistakes by “raising the consciousness levels of workers.” In some ways, though it might seem the silliest of all, it's the simplest tasks where shisa kanko is most valuable, since those are the jobs that are easiest to take for granted, get bored doing, and let slip. It's apparently very successful in Japan and has increased productivity and safety significantly. But it hasn't caught on elsewhere around the world because workers seem to think it's...well, really silly, and feel foolish doing it. Pointing and calling out their action, even the most ordinary ones. The article points out that there's one notable exception -- of all place, New York City’s MTA subway system,. There, "conductors have used a modified point-only system since 1996 after then Chief Transportation Officer Nathaniel Ford was fascinated by the point-and-call system during a business trip to Japan. In the MTA’s case, conductors point to a fixed black-and-white “zebra board” to confirm a stopped train is correctly located along the platform." And the thing is, the New York conductors adapted to it quite well, and in only two years, "incidents of incorrectly berthed subways fell 57 percent." You can read the full article by Allan Richarz here, along with some more videos and graphics. It's definitely odd -- but oddly fun. Yesterday, I wrote about how it was little-known that Frank Loesser wrote the lyrics to the classic song "The Boys in the Backroom," which is largely known for Marlene Dietrich's performance. You may known the song from Destry Rides Again," which starred James Stewart, but you most certainly know the parody of it in the Mel Brooks comedy, Blazing Saddles. That's when Madeline Kahn did her take-off of Dietrich and sang, "I'm Tired." (The song itself didn't exactly parody the original, but the whole scene did.) Since the song is fairly known, but most people haven't likely seen the original film sequence, I thought we'd correct that here. So, here it is, with music by Frederick Hollander and lyrics -- before he began writing his own music and heading to Broadway -- by Frank Loesser. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|