So the smoke has cleared from the Oscar nominations ... and everyone keeps blowing more smoke.

Google “Oscars” and “snubbed” and you get 259,000 results, including 708 under Google News. People love this shit. They're not just writing their outrage, they're tweeting their outrage, fans and stars, while pubs like Hollywood Reporter fan the flames. No. 2 on HR's list was Danny Boyle. “Though 127 Hours was nominated for best picture,” it wrote, “the director was not.” Yes. Same for five other directors. The categories are lopsided. So is singling out Boyle considered a snub of Lisa Cholodenko (“The Kids are Alright”), Debra Granik (“Winter's Bone”) and Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”), whose pictures were all nominated? Should I fan those flames? HOLLYWOOD REPORTER SNUBS FEMALE, ANIMATED DIRECTORS ON “SNUBBED” LIST! 

Worse, almost no one does the hard work of pointing out who's just taking up space on the Academy's list. If you're saying somebody should be snubbed in, you have to tell us who should be snubbed out.

This was actually the subject of my first blog post, ever, way back on February 14, 2008:

if you’re going to say Joe Wright and Sean Penn both deserve director nods, tell us who didn’t deserve them. Julian Schnabel? Jason Reitman? Tony Gilroy? Yes, Angelina Jolie was great. So choose her over whom? Ellen Page? Cate Blanchett? And really? Christian Bale and/or Ryan Gosling over Tommy Lee Jones or Viggo Mortensen or Johnny Depp or George Clooney or Daniel Day-Lewis? If you’re adding, you gotta subtract. If you’re going to bitch about the Academy, you’ve gotta play within their parameters.

Things have only gotten worse. Everyone's got an opinion now, and the technology to broadcast it, but they think their opinion doesn't cost. It always costs. As a better writer once said: There's nothing free in this world but the grace of God.

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