Okay, there’s no such thing as “rewrite,” but it sure looks like it’s going to be a loooong Oscar Night if the best Chris Rock can come up with is yet another (yawn) “Bush is Dumb” joke like the following he’s supposedly going to crack us up with:
“Bush is not stupid. All you people who say that are wrong. You can’t be an idiot and get to be president. You gotta give the guy a little credit. Anyone that’s smart enough to get that far has got to be just acting dumb.”
I know Chris may not have been following the news (inconvenient for the reified) but the New York Times reported long ago that experts think Bush has a higher IQ than Kerry. Who cares? Well, I guess Chris Rock. [Get that man for our Texas Hold 'Em game.--ed. You betcha!]
Note to Rock: Hire Tim Blair.
UPDATE: Some people have written me as an Acad member who I think is the best Oscar host. In recent years, Billy Crystal by a mile. Overall: Bob Hope. And I don’t even like Hope that much (except for his very funny early work like The Cat and the Canary). But for Oscar night I favor the cornball and the traditional.
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20 Comments
1. Lola:Err … thanks for the foretaste of the upcoming telecast. I think I’m going to be flipping to other channels that evening.
Feb 23, 2005 - 1:19 pm 2. PeterArgus:No Lola you can’t do that!
Don’t be surprised if the usual suspects in the media (Frank Rich comes to mind) argues that any drop in viewers is due to the
negative publicity surrounding Chris Rock thanks to right wing attack bloggers.
Therefore it is censorship plan and simple.
We are obligated to watch the Oscars because to do otherwise
would be to deprive Rock of his 1st amendment rights.
Feb 23, 2005 - 1:47 pm 3. Lola:Awww, shucks!!! Do I hafta listen to the long-winded stars thanking their pets for helping them get to where they were? And slipping in a jab at Bush . . .
Feb 23, 2005 - 1:54 pm 4. Terrye:Bush is dumb? Well at least he is not stupid enough to say that abortion is beautiful.
I won’t watch. I gave up the oscars at about the same time I gave up watching Miss America. But for very different reasons, obviously.
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:06 pm 5. Knucklehead:“We are obligated to watch the Oscars”
No we’re not. No force on earth can get me to watch the Oscars. I couldn’t tolerate the stupid show before I cared about politics. I wouldn’t watch it then and I won’t watch it now. Frank Rich can have all the hissey fits he wants. I have scruples. I have no idea what they look like or where I last put them if I ever did touch them, but I know that I maintain ownership of them and they function as a “get out of watching the Oscars free” card. And this is not cost free to me. There is a price. My Bride will watch them and I will be banished (due to my inability to quit pissing and moaning about how stupid they are) to another portion of the house until they mercifully end at oh-freakin-dark-thirty. I hate that stupid show. Besides, every time I break down and watch some tiny portion of that stupid show I am invariably disappointed with the look of the Bodacious Tattas – they just aren’t the same as they are in the movies. It’s far too disappointing.
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:09 pm 6. Dishman:So Chris Rock finally figured it out?
At TCS, Indeed, the most successful conservative presidents — Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush — have played up the notion of their own stupidity or at least not fought it very hard.
(h/t Vodka)
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:38 pm 7. Morgan:From the linked article:
Whew. I’m pretty sure we “rabid dogs” are not required to watch the Oscars.
Feb 23, 2005 - 3:03 pm 8. Barry Dauphin:I had been thinking that all the talk about Chris Rock possibly being replaced was started by the Oscar folks themselves hoping to get people to tune in to see if Rock says something “outrageous.” Anything for ratings. Well if this is the best Rock has to offer, it will be lame indeed. If he tries to play to the people sitting in front of him, he’ll lose the people at home. Moreover, he can’t even boast of having “Bodacious Tattas”.
Feb 23, 2005 - 3:27 pm 9. Terrye:They would do better with someone like Leno.
I know Rock is supposed to be hip, but this is the oscars for Chrisake.
Feb 23, 2005 - 4:24 pm 10. Capt Trevett at the Commons:I wasn’t planning to watch it anyways. In all fairness to Chris Rock, he seems to be the only one in Hollywood (aside from Roger) who doesn’t say Bush is dumb. And he was more than happy to slam Clinton when he was in the White House. That’s about as balanced as I can expect a comedian to be.
Feb 23, 2005 - 4:53 pm 11. Will:Anyone know how to get a copy of “The Cat and the Canary” (1939, Bob Hope)? It’s not out on dvd, and I can’t find it on vhs.
Feb 23, 2005 - 5:35 pm 12. richard mcenroe:I can’t remember the last time I watched any award show. Why start now? Is An Even Bigger Fix up for something?
Feb 23, 2005 - 6:42 pm 13. kynna:I can’t stand the Oscars anymore. I used to love watching it, but it’s really the most boring, pathetic night on TV. The uncomfortable shots of the stars, the stilted musical numbers.
You’re right though, Roger. Billy Crystal is really the best of the recent hosts. Followed by Steve Martin. I thought Martin was pretty classy a few years ago.
Nobody will ever beat Johnny Carson for hosting, though.
Feb 23, 2005 - 7:14 pm 14. Patrick Tyson:Once upon a time during a particularly annoying ceremony (aside from Linda Hunt) the group I was with spent way too much time arguing about who’d be the best host(s). My choice were co-hosts Robin Williams and Bette Midler. Never happened, but some years later the host that year, Johnny Carson, had on Robin Williams and Bette Midler as his final Tonight Show guests. No one named Billy Crystal. Not surprising as the last time we’d seen him he’d been in whiteface:
Come on, don’t talk back, mime is money, come on, move it.
Chris Rock could be even better than Billy Crystal—or not.
Feb 23, 2005 - 7:35 pm 15. richard mcenroe:Will… try sendit.com
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:31 pm 16. Kyda Sylvester:Tim Blair and Iowahawk are freakin’ hilarious. Better than anything you see on the tube. Chris Rock is seriously overrated. Used to love the Oscars. Used to love the movies. Don’t anymore. Whose fault is that.
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:33 pm 17. Morgan:Who should host the Oscars? One word:
DennisthePeasant
Feb 24, 2005 - 6:44 am 18. Joseph (formerly Samuel):I believe John Moore properly pointed ou that according to Bush’s SAT scores his IQ is probably about 135. Either way speech (not Bush’s strong point) is just one aspect of displaying intelligence. One thing is for sure, in sizing up people and projecting the behavior of others and how to influence such towards pre-meditaded directions, Bush is a sheer genious. People, especially his opposition, who don’t realize this are doomed to be blindsided by him politically, those opponents that do realize this can at least save themselves from being blindsided, but none have shown me they can beat him politically. The man on some level is not only smart but an absolute genius. I am truly amazed it is even still in question.
Feb 24, 2005 - 8:37 am 19. Curmudgeon:The person who generated most of the talk about IQ is Steve Sailer (www.isteve.com). I’ll leave it to others to judge his expertise, but the IQ comparison was based on an extrapolation from an armed services test. While the tests do correlate, the relationship is not perfect, and the test scores were not that far apart. Bush did better, but the result was probably within the margin of error. The interesting thing about the whole episode is that when Kerry was asked about it, he (after having maintained for some time that all his military records had been released)snorted derisively that the test results were private, and couldn’t have been seen. Total, seamless doublethink.
Feb 24, 2005 - 12:49 pm 20. Bob:“I don’t even like Hope that much….”
I’ve never understood why anyone liked him at all; he was a minimally-talented, not-very-funny parasite who amassed a huge fortune on the backs of GIs who thought HE was doing THEM a favor. I cheered on the day he died.
Feb 24, 2005 - 2:02 pm