In the WashPost today, the perpetually annoying Tina Brown asserts the calm Oscars were more political than you might think: “Agents, managers and PR reps drummed into their stars’ heads the folly of staging any reckless Michael Moore moments. Alone with their ballots, Academy members defiantly cast their votes for war dissenters Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, but the two actor/renegades’ acceptance speeches got gold stars for perfect deportment.”

In the process of describing Hollywood’s horror at the success of Mel Gibson’s movie (she calls it a “scourge-and-snuff flick”), she finds the main fear of the phenomenon isn’t violence, but Republican dominance:

The Gibson phenomenon makes Hollywood denizens nervous because it brings home the scary power of what they fear most: Bush country.

It’s not the supposed anti-Semitism of the movie they’re worried about now….No, it’s Mad Mel’s vaunted alliance with the alien armies of the right that are determined to return their mortal foe George W. Bush to the White House this November.

Maybe that’s what all the good behavior at the Oscars was really about. Hollywood Democrats think that John Kerry’s candidacy is going really well and they don’t want to screw it up by being boorish or nasty and giving Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh a lot of new material for their next flattening Eventoid. In that sense, the boredom of the Oscars this year was a function not so much of repression or despair as of cautious political hope.