We agree with Kevin about two things!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2024

Though possibly not a third: We agree with Kevin Drum about quite a few things.

For example, we agree with him about the utter foolishness of the annual "Who got snubbed by the Oscars?" folderol.

We haven't seen Barbie, and he did, so we have no personal opinion about the film. That said, here's the start of Kyle Buchanan's report in the New York Times about this week's "snub" of Greta Gerwig, who didn't get a nomination for Best Director this year:

Why Was Greta Gerwig Snubbed for a Best Director Nomination?

In her own world, Barbie can accomplish just about anything. But in the real world, “Barbie” was dealt a significant setback Tuesday morning: Though Greta Gerwig’s colorful comedy skewering the patriarchy was the biggest blockbuster of last year and set a record for the highest-grossing movie ever directed by a woman, Gerwig failed to receive an Oscar nomination for best director.

The snub had many in Hollywood scratching their heads, since the 40-year-old filmmaker had earned best director nominations from the Golden Globes and Directors Guild of America for “Barbie” and had picked up an Oscar nod for her solo debut, “Lady Bird,” just six years ago.

The promulgation of the "snub snub snub snub" Storyline just seems to grow every year. Buchanan employs the sacred term all through his rather short piece, and in other Oscar reports. 

That said:

As Kevin notes in his post, ten films can get nominated for Best Picture, but there are only five nominations for Best Director. At least five of the Best Picture directors can't get nominated in a typical year. That's how the math works out!

Concerning Gerwig, also this, as Buchanan notes:

Six years ago, Gerwig did receive a nomination for Best Director. If the academy was willing to do that then, why would anyone rush to assume that they're just "snubbing" her now?

You'd think that the childishness of this mandated annual foofaw would be fairly apparent. And this is coming from the very top of our upper-end elite press corps, from a guild whose members qualify within our culture as "highly educated" thought leaders.

We also agree with Kevin about the usefulness, or lack of same, involved in some endless debates. In the current battle of the bands, Kevin is sticking with his preferred generalization and, on balance, we're going to stick with ours:

We have become a nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem. 

The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers.

Leaving aside the original source of those formulation, we'll stick with the first at this time. Though of course, as we said yesterday, Kevin could always turn out to be right in his general assessment.

Here's the title of Kevin's new post on this topic:

Just how bad are things, really?

Regarding that, we have no real idea! For example, we don't know how poorly things will turn out if Donald J. Trump returns to the White House. We can't even say we're sure that things would turn out poorly at all.

That said, we note again:

Every blue pundit on the face of the earth has been sounding the alarm about the possible loss of our democracy if Trump gets elected again. That strikes us as possibly overstated, like so many other claims, but it also seems possible that there could be a large problem lurking there. 

Also this:

When that same Donald Trump recently said that we as a nation can't solve any problems, it seemed to us that very few people would have recoiled from that claim. We've offered a few examples of problems we can neither address nor solve, but here's one we haven't mentioned:

We can't even solve the apparent problem involved in the so-called "gun show loophole!" Thanks to that loophole, a felon or a victim of mental illness who can't buy a gun at a certain gun store can walk directly across the street and buy one at a gun show over there.

Gun store no, gun show yes! Every Dem on the face of the earth has noted the sheer absurdity of our nation's inability to address that problem. That doesn't mean that the world is about to come to an end, but it never would have occurred to us that Donald J. Trump's statement—the statement our blue tribe rushed to mistranscribe and distort—would seem to be inaccurate to red tribe voters or to their blue counterparts.

In short, it amazes us that that statement by Trump would strike anyone as odd. Nor do we see a way out of this mess, as long as we maintain our current system of "news management"—a system built upon the total segregation of viewpoint for purposes of tribal pleasure, corporate profit, entertainment, reassurance and fun.

Can you run a large modern nation that way? It seems to us that you can't, and the inability to address any problem—let alone the ability to solve some problem!—feeds upon that brine. Indeed, it's the creation of those segregated Americas which feeds the whole sprawling machine.

Personally, I think our own blue team has long been a part of this problem. We've long admired Kevin's work, but we'll still cast ourselves as a Cassandra at this point in time.

We began to work with low-income kids in the fall of 1969. We don't know if we've ever seen an intelligent discussion of what goes on in the lives of such kids—and if we have, that conversation never went anywhere much.

It's our impression that things have improved in that realm, but good God—the unhappiness and the waste! Nobody actually cares about this, but we're quite good at pretending.

As a nation, we aren't even capable of solving the problem of how to hold a discussion. It's all about braindead amusement now, including that mandated annual foolishness about all the thrilling snubs.

Gun store no, gun show yes! Along the way, everyone has cited that as an example of our nation's inability to get anything done.

We aren't "a pitiful helpless giant," President Nixon once famously said. Maybe it all depends on what the meaning of "helpless giant" is!

Will the current situation get worse? We can't give you the answer to that—and Kevin's preferred bumper sticker / generalization may turn out to seem basically right!

Final point, and pass it on:

If you aren't said to be among the five best, that doesn't mean you've been snubbed!