Black like Oscar, smeared like Ashcroft, valentines from England, &c.

March 26, 2002 8:45 a.m.

he racialization of American life is a fact, and no amount of griping — certainly by a lousy web columnist — will change that. Every nook and cranny of our national existence has been tainted by race; no area — that I can think of, at the moment — is safe. A few years ago, I wrote about a concert series of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra that was titled “Classically Black.” This included concerts that had anything whatever to do with black people. For example, if the Beethoven Ninth was on the program, and the mezzo-soprano in the vocal quartet happened to be black, that concert went into “Classically Black.” It was that crude — I’m not talking about evenings of William Grant Still here.

This year’s Oscars, of course, were heavily racialized, as I predicted they would be, and as anyone could have done. Great pressure had mounted to crown Halle Berry and Denzel Washington (although Will Smith, another Best Actor nominee, was curiously forgotten — except to the extent that there was concern that he and Washington would “cancel each other out”). It’s hard enough to live a life as a single human being; it’s staggeringly hard to bear the burden of Race.

Sunday evening was hard, to be sure, for the other nominees — the non-black nominees — as well. I predicted that there would be booing if either Berry or Washington lost. Booing in the hall. Since they both duly won, we will never know. Imagine, though, the guilt that a white winner would have had to bear: My victory has deprived Berry or Washington — no, all American blacks — of their rightful moment. (Again, would go the implication.)

Halle Berry’s identification of herself with her race — or rather, with her father’s race (her mother is white) — was complete. When she had gone on too long, and someone — or some mechanism — was obviously trying to get her to wrap up, she cried, “No, 74 years!” — meaning that she was the first black woman to win Best Actress in Oscar history. She clearly linked herself to racial pioneers in the past. Yet one of the things that the racial pioneers had in common was immense dignity: Their dignity, in fact, was crucial to their success. They were not emotionalist wrecks.

This may shock Halle Berry, but I — speaking for myself — do not view her as a black woman, as a racial emblem. I view her as someone lucky enough to be one of the most bodaciously beautiful babes on earth. If she thinks she’s disadvantaged . . . I will show her a little disadvantage.

In a documentary-montage devoted to Sidney Poitier — who received an honorary award — only black actors, directors, etc., spoke. One of them — I think it was Halle Berry, actually — said at the end, “Sidney Poitier is not just an African-American treasure, he is an American treasure.”

Well, if that’s true, why have only black Americans in the film?

To cry against the extreme racialization of our national life is futile — one might as well cry against the sunrise (or taxes, or death). And to want to utter such a cry is not to deny the importance of race in the American saga. But, gosh, it does rather spoil things, and it does get rather tiresome.

Needless to say, Oscar hostess Whoopi Goldberg did an Ashcroft joke or two. Wrapping a cloth around an Oscar statuette, she said (something like), “John Ashcroft insisted we do this.”

The idea is fixed, you see, that the attorney general ordered the draping of a half-nude statue in the Great Hall of the Justice Department. The media have spread it around — and not just ABC, which started the story, but David Letterman and so on. Everyone believes it. It is ingrained — already — in our culture and in our national consciousness.

But it just isn’t so. An advance woman in the Justice Department bought a standard “pipe-and-drape” blue backdrop for press conferences and the like. Such a backdrop is said to make for “better visuals,” as they say in the TV business. The advance woman thought it would wiser to buy the thing rather than rent it every time.

And the word got out — in a typically twisted and nasty way — that Ashcroft, intolerable and intolerant Christian prude that he is, ordered the covering up of a breast, which offended him. As I wrote in a piece for the last NR — “Ashcroft with Horns” — this story, though untrue, is unkillable. It will live forever. It has entered the bloodstream. Ashcroft will forever be the boob who draped the boob — even though the charge is completely bogus.

The Oscar people boast of having a billion viewers (which is preposterous, of course) — and now all of them have imbibed the Myth of Ashcroft. Too bad.

Being merely attorney general of the United States is nothing compared with being able to host the Oscars, and disseminate cherished left-liberal myths.

Back to race for a moment: How miserable it must be not to know — to be unsure — whether you got something on the merits or because of race. Or did not get something on the merits or because of race. It may not be what the old Swedish sociologist had in mind, but this is the American dilemma, now.

As usual, the most pro-American moment in the Oscars came from a foreigner, as is probably appropriate. Julian Fellowes, the Englishman winning for his (marvelous) Gosford Park screenplay, said, “I want to thank the Academy and all of you for your tradition of kindness to foreigners like myself. [He must not know that the word “foreigner” has become verboten in PC America. He should have said, “an international person like myself.”] I think you must be the most generous nation on earth. Thank you very much, and God bless America.”

This wonderful statement reminded me of another award-ceremony moment — one that was perhaps the most astounding I can remember. It occurred at the Tonys a couple of years ago, and it came courtesy of the British actor Roy Dotrice, who won for A Moon for the Misbegotten. Dotrice got up there and said — so help me; I have just looked it up — “I was in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it was there that I had my first contact with Americans. I found that they had a unique ability: the ability not to envy, but to applaud other people’s successes. And it was then that I fell in love with Americans and America, and that love affair has gone on through the years. I would like to think that it is epitomized by this gift from you tonight, which I would like to think of as a token of mutual affection. I hope you will allow me to share whatever talent I have with you in the years to come in this country — this wonderful country. God bless America.”

Naturally, I almost fell off my chair when I heard this, and I immediately editorialized about it. I can only say — again — No, God bless you, Roy Dotrice.

One of my great failings in life is that I have never perceived the greatness — the wit, the intelligence, the brilliance — of Woody Allen. I have tried to like him; I have just never been able to see what all the fuss is about.

So I’m pleased to report that I thought his few minutes at the Oscars were delightful: funny, canny, pitch-perfect. I enjoyed his little monologue more than I ever have any of his movies.

Oh, this gives me an opportunity (and I know you know how I’m prone to jumping around) to air one of my favorite weird facts: that André Previn is Woody Allen’s father-in-law.

One shouldn’t joke about tragedy, but . . .

During the Oscars, we heard a lot about 9/11 — victims, grieving — but very little about the war. In fact, almost nothing.

Which was bizarre, given that this nation is engaged in a worldwide war, meant to protect us from terrorism, and from weapons of mass destruction, such as those that Saddam Hussein is busy developing.

You noticed that, at the end of the evening, Whoopi Goldberg paid tribute to the firemen and policemen who fell on Sept. 11. It is perfectly politically correct to honor these men.

But did you notice? Not a word about the soldiers who are fighting and dying for us overseas — fighting and dying to protect our behinds, so that we don’t have to.

One gets the sense that it would not have been politically correct for the hostess of the Academy Awards ceremony to hail and thank those men.

I hope I am wrong. But I doubt it.

In The New York Times Magazine yesterday, Frank Bruni had an interesting piece on the actresses Kathleen Turner and Alicia Silverstone. (We are in a Frank Bruni Moment, by the way: Not only does he have a successful book on the George W. Bush campaign out, he had two pieces in the Times yesterday: this one on the blond chicks, and a review of David Brock’s new book — which is a “whole ’nother” Impromptus, by the way.)

What are Turner and Silverstone doing? (By the way, isn’t “Silverstone” a peculiar name?) (By the way: Forgive all the “by the way”s.) They are starring in a theatrical version of The Graduate. Turner, as Mrs. Robinson, is showing herself in the altogether (where was she when I was interested in her?); Silverstone is not, I gather.

Why do I mention this article? For one reason, only. Bruni describes these women — now turned to the stage — as “onetime screen sensations.” That is accurate. And then I read that Alicia Silverstone is 25 years old.

Sort of sad. Silverstone, as you may have read, is a mega-vegan — and no matter how screwed up she may be (and no matter how pristine her innards may be), she’s still cute as all get-out. I’m very sorry that she allowed all those who knocked her for not remaining twelve-year-old thin to turn her into a body nut.

Joan Collins is old-fashioned in many ways, and one of those ways is that she continues to call herself an “actress” — not an “actor,” but an “actress.” All the cool actresses, of course, insist on referring to themselves as “actors.” (Whoopi Goldberg is one such performer; Julia Roberts is another. “Actress” has become insulting to them, which is perverse.)

Did you know that Collins can write (and, yes, I’m talkin’ Joan here, not Judy)? You can read her from time to time in The (London) Spectator, and she offers a wonderful combination of tartness, insider knowledge, and esprit. If you doubt me — and, if so, how dare you — go to the Spectator website and do a little searching.

A bit of mail. A reader writes, apropos of yesterday’s Impromptus, “It almost sounds as if shakedown artist Jesse Jackson and his ‘rent-a-riot’ crowd were at the U.N. summit chanting, ‘No money, no peace!’ Poverty and Israel are convenient covers for the determination of fanatics to wage war on those who do not think like them. No amount of money will fix that.”

Then this, from another reader: “I have a recurring thought every time I hear somebody, usually on the left, say that we need to drop missile defense because we haven’t achieved it yet. They’ll go on and on about how difficult it will be to stop an incoming missile, and they’ll imply that the military has falsified test results and so on. I think, ‘Okay, by that logic, we might as well stop trying to find a cure for AIDS. We haven’t found one yet, so obviously we never will — it’s an impossible situation.’ That’s probably really uncharitable of me, and maybe a little bit ‘homophobic,’ but I guess my mind goes straight to something the Left may understand.”

Finally, a word from California governor Gray Davis. He blasted his new Republican opponent, Bill Simon Jr., as “pro-life, pro-gun, pro-voucher, pro-a crazy deregulation scheme, and pro-privatization.”

Are you as amazed as I am? That a “pro-choice” person referred to an anti-abortion (or “anti-choice”) person as “pro-life”? A breakthrough, perhaps.