OpinionJournal's daily Best of the Web blog has an interesting "dissection" of the audience response to the Academy Awards nonsense of poseur Michael Moore.
While Moore's tirade isn't worth dissection, the crowd's reaction is. The first section, about the 2000 election, received loud applause. The section on duct tape and orange alert received a mix of cheering and jeering and by the time he finished with his references to the Vatican and the Dixie Chicks, he was drowned in a chorus of boos.
During most of this the camera showed not Moore, but the audience. In a move that must have tied Gil Cates and ICM in negotiations for a week, the producers went out of their way to show America that the stars weren't clapping. Harrison Ford sat with his arms folded, Calista Flockhart angrily pursed her lips, and Adrian Brody looked on condescendingly. For the most part, those seated on the orchestra level sat on their hands.
So who was booing Michael Moore? The people in the balconies. At the Oscars, the orchestra level is reserved for the glitterati and the upper tiers for the riff-raff. So only "normal" people were booing Moore. Which begs the question, why didn't the stars boo him? Why simply sit there, the equivalent of voting "present" on a resolution in Congress? Clearly, the answer is that they wanted to cheer. Just not as much as they want that seventh house in Maui.
Posted by Alan at March 25, 2003 08:26 PM