"Cameron Diaz, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie Shoot Down Fox News' Jesse Watters At Oscars" (with video)

HuffPo with video (05:29):

Bill O'Reilly sent his notorious ambusher/producer Jesse Watters to the Oscars on Sunday, and Watters, rather predictably, was met with a hostile reception from some of the celebrities on the red carpet.

Angelina Jolie (an object of O'Reilly's concern), on being asked to opine about the state of the union, cooly shot Waters down, saying, "that's a longer discussion than the red carpet."

George Clooney had a fairly cordial discussion with Watters, but snapped at him when he asked if "Obama" was doing a good job.

"Yes, he is," he said. "He's the president of the United States. He's not Obama, he's the President of the United States."

The biggest rejection, though, happened offscreen, as Watters recounted to O'Reilly on Monday. When he approached Cameron Diaz, she saw his Fox News mic and said, "'Oh no, I don't do Fox News.'" Ouch!

(h/t TVNewser)

Howie P.S.: This concludes our coverage of the 2012 Oscars.

"Tomgram: Adam Hochschild, Antiwar Critics Forgotten on Oscar Night"

Adam Hochschild (TomDispatch.com):

...curiously, for all the spectacle of boy and horse, thundering cavalry charges, muddy trenches, and wartime love and loss, the makers of War Horse, Downton Abbey and -- I have no doubt -- the similar productions we’ll soon be watching largely skip over the greatest moral drama of those years of conflict, one that continues to echo in our own time of costly and needless wars. They do so by leaving out part of the cast of characters of that moment. The First World War was not just a battle between rival armies, but also a powerful, if one-sided, battle between those who assumed the war was a noble crusade and those who thought it absolute madness. MORE...

"Disparaging religions and killing senators."

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

Field:

This is torture. I am trying to watch the NBA All-Star game and the Mrs. is in another room watching the Oscars. I already learned that Ryan Seacrest got "ashes bombed" by Sacha Baron Cohen, and Viola Davis was letting her natural side come out on the Red Carpet. Help! There is absolutely nothing worse than a bunch of celebrities posing for the cameras and some giddy star struck entertainment reporter asking them who they are wearing. Seriously? "Who are you wearing"?

Anyway, I wonder if the New York Post has a Kabul bureau. For their sake I sure hope not. They are just not feeling the folks over at the Post in the Muslim world right now.

I understand the whole First Amendment thing, but at some point you would think that a major news organization such as the Post should take responsibility for their actions. First the Obama chimpanzee cartoon and now this. I swear wingnuts have no sense of decency. MORE...

Politics goes to the Oscars: "Barely tweak the power hard enough to stiffen its nipples.” (with video)

Tommy Christopher, MEDIAite with video from MSNBC (02:26):

As I watched last night’s Oscar Awards telecast, I was on the lookout for any politically-themed acceptance speeches, so I perked up a little bit when I heard Inception sound-mixing Oscar winner Gary Rizzo thank his “union” crew, thinking the reference might portend a deluge of support from the rest of the Oscaratti™. Alas, it never really materialized, but that didn’t stop MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow from giving Hollywood a not-so-well-deserved pat on the back Monday night.

As Maddow points out, there was one other show of solidarity, again from an Inception winner. However, neither cinematographer Wally Pfister nor Rizzo explicitly mentioned the protests in Wisconsin during their acceptance speeches (Pfister did so in a post-win interview). Fight the power? More like “Barely tweak the power hard enough to stiffen its nipples.”

When you think about it, what Pfister and Rizzo did should have been unremarkable (in any Oscar year), as winners routinely thank everyone from the caterers, to the key grips, even their effing publicists, for f***’s sake, but they almost never thank the unions to which about 99% of them belong. If every one of last night’s Oscar winners had thanked a union, no jury could have convicted them of politicization.

The fact that only two of them bothered to do so is a credit to the film on which they worked (a film, by the way, that was criminally overlooked in the Best Director category, and could eat two of The King’s Speech for breakfast), and a shame for all of the rest. MORE...

Howie P.S.: I'm no Roger Ebert (or Gene Siskel) but my recollection is that any little political gesture @ the Oscars stands out like a sore thumb and gets lots of press, precisely because so there is so little of it.

"Politics at the Oscars -- Union Support" (with video)

Chris Marderosian (The Note-ABC News), with video (00:32):

At the Academy Awards tonight, best cinematography winner Wally Pfister made a point during his acceptance speech of thanking his union crew on “Inception.”

Backstage he went further, expressing shock at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal, which would limit union’s collective bargaining powers. Opponents of the plan have been protesting at the state capitol for 21 days.

“I think that what is going on in Wisconsin is kind of madness right now,” Pfister says. “I have been a union member for 30 years and what the union has given to me is security for my family. They have given me health care in a country that doesn’t provide health care and I think unions are a very important part of the middle class in America all we are trying to do is get a decent wage and have medical care.