Post Oscar Wrap-up

So tonight I got validation for that smug sense of superiority I feel, knowing that I’m at least smarter than the plurality of members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the rest of the group-thinking lovers of Slumcrapfest Millionaire. (Did you see what I did there? Slumcrapfest! Genius!)

Surprisingly, though, there are limits to my arrogance. See, I’m not suggesting that I know better than the Academy generally. I'd guess that 98% of the time they do a better job than I could possibly do on my own -- watching those obscure documentaries, weighing sound editing quality, and writing that hilarious banter before the award is given. It's just I trust collective decisions to be right more often than individual ones. My belief in the superiority of collective decisions comes from America's history and traditions, and the cultural, economic, and military dominance we’ve accrued over the years while the nations that employ more authoritarian decision making methods retard their potential, making it easier for us to invade them and secure their natural resources while pretending we're there to protect our security from a hypothetical possibility that they could give weapons they don't have to a terrorist group they don't associate with. But one of the great strengths we Americans have is the ability to recognize that the collective decision making process falters from time to time. And to help gain some perspective, to help demonstrate how terrible the collective deliberations can be, I've compiled a list of some of the worst collective decisions ever made:

1. The July 1932 Reichstag election
2. When the Crowd Freed Barrabus Instead of the Other Guy
3. Bush v. Gore
4. Awarding Slumdog Millionaire Eight Oscars, Including Best Picture
5. This one's a tie between The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and The Iraq War Resolution
7. The First O.J. Verdict
8. The High School Varsity Baseball Coaching Staff That Benched This Guy Midway Through the 1998 Season Even Though He's Obviously Clutch-City
9. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
10. The Alien and Sedition Act

I mean, if this list didn't do it for you, if you still think that Slumresteasyyour$11haspaidforyoutoseegoodtriumphoverevilandhappilyeverafterbecausebeautifulwomengoforstreetratseveryday Dog was clearly the best of 2008, perhaps it might help to think of films from the past that were clearly better than SDM, movies that didn't win eight Oscars. Once you see just a partial sampling, you'll realize how shitty 2008 must have been for movies and/or the people judging them to award such an average one eight Academy Awards. (The number of Oscars these films won is in parenthesis.)

The Godfather (3)
The Godfather II (6)
The Shawshank Redemption (0)
Pulp Fiction (1)
Forrest Gump (6)
Schindler’s List (7)
There Will Be Blood (2)
Goodfellas (1)
My Cousin Vinny (1)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (0?)
Cast Away (0)
The Karate Kid (0)
Kickboxer (0)
Faceoff (0)
Any one of those movies from the 80s where people switched brains and had some else’s body, you know, like the ones with Kirk Cameron and Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage (0?)
The 10 second video I accidentally made with my exgirlfirend's camera after she asked me to take a picture and I say, “It’s not blinking…wait, I think I’m videotaping this.” And she says, “What? Just hit the button again.” Even though it's hard to make out what we say because the wind is muffling the words. (0)