Oscars tonight

The Oscars are tonight. I doubt I will watch as I haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominated movies and am not interested in who wins, who loses, who sobs and wails. I have been avoiding awards shows for some time now partly because I have no interest in hearing some pretentious celebrity burble out his or her hectoring political diatribes against the President, conservatives, the war in Iraq, what have you.

Why do celebrities believe we really care what they have to say about the "big issues"? This is not to say that a celebrity can't have a political viewpoint. I have one. It's fine. They should get involved in issues that concern them, that they can be passionate about. And probably very fine work has been done by celebrities lending their names (and hopefully their money) to worthy causes.

It's hard to take seriously the political babbling of a movie star standing in front of a microphone in a gazillion dollar dress as she waves around some trophy she just won after starring in a movie for which she was paid beaucoup bucks. I always find it interesting that the political commentary in that instance is always from the left. No celebrity ever uses the grand stage of an awards show to screech about how there are just too many abortions or we better make darn sure Iran doesn't get nukes or that North Korea is run by a lunatic who might someday blast off a nuclear armed missile towards South Korea and we all better get on board with some way to stop that from happening.

There should be a rule. No political comments from presenters or winners. If a celebrity wants to bash the President or criticize the war in Iraq, then rent an auditorium (with your own money), send out invitations clearly expressing what you intend to talk about and then sit back and wait to see who shows up. Don't take advantage of the captive audience out here in TV land whose only choice when you start your political yakking is to turn the station over to ESPN for a few minutes (and risk missing the next presenter wearing some Godawful dress with demented makeup and a weedwacker hairdo). We really only want to see who's wearing what and who came with who and who cries, who talks too long, who thanks God or his long-lost mother or his gay ninth grade math teacher. We don't want to hear how you think Bush is the devil incarnate and the "insurgents" in Iraq are staging the modern day equivalent of the last stand at Masada. We want to be entertained for heaven's sake, not hear a lecture on the current geopolitical complexities of living in our fast moving global community by some moronic celebrity (as if). Believe it or not, we might actually know more about all of that than you do, Mr. Movie Star.