By Ben Stein on 3.2.04 @ 12:06AM
The view from Hollywood Boulevard.
BEVERLY HILLS -- You really get a great idea of just how
sickening Hollywood can be at its worst at The Oscars. The
combination of decadence and immoral pretension would make Goering
blush.
My favorite this year was recognizing Gregory Peck as a
righteous fighter against racial injustice -- when he actually just
played one in front of a camera in Hollywood, where there
was no risk to him at all (although he was a great actor and a fine
man). There is a lot of confusion there. But the real stunner came
right afterwards when the Motion Picture Academy had a brief
memorial to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite film maker, maker
of the most vicious racist propaganda for Der Führer,
including Triumph of the Will, the ultimate Nazi apologia,
an ardent Nazi, and an unrepentant fan of Hitler until the end.
How can this recognition of Leni Riefenstahl be squared with the
Academy's supposed attachment to racial justice, à
la Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?
(1) Pure stupidity, which cannot be overestimated here at any
time.
(2) A wicked desire to épater les bourgeois --
who are thoroughly hated by the $20-million-a-picture artistes here
in Hollywood.
(3) A similar desire just to spit in the face of normal
sentiments of moral decency.
The confusion is compounded by the fact that many, if not most,
of the personalities on display at the Oscars are Jewish, at least
by birth if not by practice. How could the Academy have possibly
thought that they could memorialize Leni Riefenstahl in front of
such a group? Again, the need to épater les hands
that feed them is insatiable.
It is very much of a piece: the evening's bitter criticism of
Bush, who liberated an entire nation from a mass murderer, and then
an apologist for another mass murderer getting applauded by men and
women dripping with diamonds and pearls. A similar perverse longing
for evil touches both parts of the evening.
With enemies like this, Bush hardly needs friends -- and what a
crew to represent America to the world.
Ben Stein, author of Ben Stein's Diary each month
in The American Spectator, is a writer, actor, economist,
and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and
Malibu.
topics:
Hollywood, Law
