Are Oscar voters too 'old, white, and male'?

A new study breaks down the demographics of Academy Awards voters, revealing that they are far more homogeneous than previously thought As Hollywood prepares to dish out the 2012 Oscars on Sunday night, a new report detailing the demographics of the 5,765 Academy voters is sending a jolt through the film industry. According to a study conducted by the Los Angeles Times, 86 percent of Oscar voters are over age 50, 94 percent are white, and 77 percent are male — demographics that do not exaclty mirror the typical moviegoing audience. Just how troubling is it that the overwhelming majority of Oscar voters are "old, white, and male?"

This is extremely worrisome: "The Oscar demographics seem to both reflect and perpetuate a much bigger issue," says Angie Han at Slash Film. When a voting population is so heavily comprised of a single demographic, "that demographic's general preferences can't help but be overrepresented." And in Oscar's case, that has major consequences. When certain movies score Academy Awards, that "in turn encourages Hollywood to keep making and promoting certain types of films… while overlooking others."
"Shocker: Oscar voters mostly old, white, male"

And the Academy's reforms aren't enough: These findings are "even worse than I ever imagined," says Katey Rich at Cinema Blend. To be fair, the Academy appears to be making an effort to diversify its membership by inviting the likes of Beyonce and Seth Rogen to cast ballots. But it's not enough. So on Sunday night, when you're "slamming your head against the table because Shame didn't get nominated and The Artist is winning everything," you'll know why. "If you're not a a white man over the age of 50, there's a good chance the Oscars don't represent your taste at all."
"Find out just how old, white, and male the Oscar voters are"

It's time for dramatic change: Last year, there were no major Oscar nominations for people of color, says Gregory Ellwood at HitFix. This year, there are just three. And because of the arcane system by which the Academy inducts new members, it could take decades to remedy the situation and make the body younger and more diverse — in other words, to have it reflect the actual moviegoing public. It's time to take a dramatic step to fix this. "Perhaps 7,000 or so phone calls will make it more of a priority the Monday after this year's big show."
"Surprise: The Academy is more white, more male, and even older than you probably thought"

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China Blocked Access to White House News Conference With Xi, Reporter Says

Zhao Yan, a Chinese journalist and dissident living in New York, said on Friday that he was prevented by Chinese officials from entering a room at the White House for a news conference on Tuesday with President Obama and the likely future leader of China, Xi Jinping.

In an interview with The Lede, Mr. Zhao said he had been granted access by the White House to cover the event for Boxun.com, a Chinese-language news site based in the United States. But once inside, he said, officials from China’s delegation identified him and asked that he be barred from the room where the two leaders were delivering prepared remarks.

Mr. Zhao said through an interpreter that he wanted to ask Mr. Xi whether he would do more to support human rights in China than his predecessors have.

The White House disputed his account, saying that the incident was the result of a miscommunication and that Mr. Zhao was simply not among the limited number of American and Chinese pool reporters approved for the small event. He had been granted entry into the White House only for the daily briefing, later that afternoon.

In 2005, Mr. Zhao, then a researcher for The New York Times in its Beijing bureau, was jailed in China as part of an investigation into the sources used for a Times article about the Chinese leadership. He was acquitted of the main charge of revealing state secrets, but spent three years in jail on unrelated charges and subsequently left China for the United States.

At the later press briefing with the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, he posed his question and it appeared as part of the transcript published on the White House site:

Q I’m a political journalist and political analyst from China. I have been here for two and a half years, and I have always seen the American government, the Obama government, place much more importance on the appreciation of the renminbi.

MR. CARNEY: On the appreciation of the renminbi?

Q Yes, place much more importance on the appreciation of the renminbi. Our readers are very concerned whether the U.S. government is much less interested in the human rights situation in China. And our readers are also interested to know whether the U.S. government will center on the human rights issue and policy between Middle East region and China. Can you talk to our readers about these two issues?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I would simply say that we have, in our relationship with the People’s Republic of China, a whole host of issues, as I was saying before. And we always raise human rights concerns at the highest levels when we have meetings with senior members of the Chinese leadership, and we will continue to do that. It is simply not the case that we emphasize one aspect of our relationship over the other. They are all important — both the areas where we agree, and the areas where we disagree. And we certainly express ourselves openly when we have concerns about human rights issues, as we do in this case.

President Obama is very aware of that issue, as is Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton and others.

Mr. Zhao provided an e-mail chain between himself and the White House press office that documented his application to cover the event and its approval. “All set, thanks!” read the last message, signed, “The White House Press Team.”

Mr. Zhao captured video on his iPhone in which a White House press officer can be heard telling him that he would only be allowed to cover the later press briefing. “There are very strict numbers for this,” the man can be heard saying.

The editor of Boxun, an independent news site run out of North Carolina, confirmed that Mr. Zhao had gone to the White House as its representative. He said that if Mr. Zhao was in fact stopped, it could have been because of his association with the site or his own history of dissident activities. “If the person there recognized him as he says, it’s likely he was blocked for himself,” the editor, who goes by the pseudonym Wei Shi, said in a telephone interview. “He has a face that is recognized.”

Mr. Zhao said on Friday that if he had been allowed into the room with Mr. Xi, and had not been formally allowed to ask a question, “I would have stood up anyway and asked.”

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Whitney Houston Critics Called Her ‘Too White' -- Black Republicans Can Relate

Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. Most articles about her death said something like, "Houston struggled with drug and alcohol problems for years ..."

But Houston also struggled with something else that black Republicans and black non-Democrats can understand: ridicule and ostracism for "selling out," or "acting white," or not being "black enough."

Ebony, the black monthly magazine, wrote about the then-27-year-old: "Black disc jockeys have chided her for 'not having soul' and being 'too white.' ... She was booed at the Soul Train Music Awards. ... It's enough to drive a good Christian girl to drink, drugs or at least to cursing. But not Whitney. Though it hurts her deeply, she handles it all with aplomb."

Did she?

After Houston's marriage to Bobby Brown, and after years of Houston's erratic behavior and rumors of drug abuse, I spoke to singer-actress Della Reese, a longtime Houston family friend. Reese and I were in the greenroom of a television studio, and we talked about Reese's career. I told her that my mother remembered having seen a young Reese at a Washington, D.C., nightclub called either "The Cave" or "The Cove."

She laughed and said, "The Cave."

We talked about then-current Whitney Houston/Bobby Brown headlines. "I have a theory about Whitney Houston," I said. "I've been called 'Uncle Tom,' and I know how that feels. I think Whitney was so hurt by being called a 'sellout' and 'acting white' — and crap like that — she wanted to change her image. What better way to do that than to marry a bad boy? And the drug abuse makes her a flawed person fighting to overcome her demons. Makes her relatable."

Reese, a close friend of Cissy Houston, Whitney's mom, said: "I know the family well. And there's a lot of truth in what you're saying." Reese gave me permission to discuss our exchange, as long as I made one thing clear. Reese said: "The human voice is very forgiving, and Whitney is working things out. And she will come back."

Black Republicans can relate to the name-calling.

A black St. Petersburg Times columnist wrote this about black Republicans: "Some creatures are just plain strange, making us do double takes because their compositions or habits or appearances defy our sense of logic and our way of viewing reality. Take the wildebeest, the warthog, the hyena, the brown pelican, the Shar-Pei. These animals, seemingly wrought by committee, make us laugh or shake our heads.

"Another such creature, of the human kind — and perhaps the strangest of all — is the black Republican. ... Black Republicans fail to understand that white Republicans will never accept them as equals. Although they will not acknowledge the truth, white Republicans, like most other whites, view black Republicans as strange creatures."

The 27-year-old Houston, in Ebony's 1991 interview, admitted being called "too white" hurt her: "'Picture this,' she says. ... 'You wake up every day with a magnifying glass over you. Someone always is looking for something — somebody, somewhere is speaking your name every five seconds of the day, whether it's positive or negative. ...

"'And don't say I don't have soul or what you consider to be 'blackness.' I know what my color is. I was raised in a black community with black people, so that has never been a thing with me. Yet I've gotten flak about being a pop success, but that doesn't mean that I'm white. ... Pop music has never been all-white.'"

Black Republican Michael Steele was a lot older than 27 when, during his 2002 Maryland campaign for lieutenant governor, he was derided as "Simple Sambo" and depicted as a black-faced minstrel. At a gubernatorial debate, Oreo cookies were distributed by the opposition. The Washington Times later wrote: "Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black."

You don't have to be black to demean a black Republican.

The tea party supported Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., a black man who denounced Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, and urged them to "get the hell out of the United States of America." Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., a white man, said that West is "not representative of the African-American community." About West, a former Army colonel who saw action in Iraq, Moran insultingly said: "(West) just seems clueless now that he has climbed aboard ship. He's climbed this ladder of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors' sweat, sacrifice, blood. You know they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he's climbed on board ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the ladder, he wants to push it off. You know — 'I'm up here, if you're not with me, too bad.'"

So, a white Democrat — whose party hasn't carried the "white vote" in nearly 50 years — tells West, a black Republican, that he is not "representative of the African-American community."

Bet Whitney could relate.

Larry Elder is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an "Elderado," visit www.LarryElder.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 LAURENCE A. ELDER

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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White Nationalists Share Spotlight With GOP at CPAC

If the Conservative Political Action Conference can be expected to accomplish anything more than angry bellowing, it is to reliably embarrass every decent and sane conservative in America. Sometimes the problem is a conspiratorial extremist co-sponsor, like the John Birch Society; sometimes the problem is a certifiable kook giving the keynote address, like Glenn Beck; and sometimes the problem is just vicious bullying of gay conservatives, who have been officially expelled from the conference.

But now the annual Washington showcase of the far right is plunging toward new depths of disgrace, by featuring "white nationalists" among its speakers.

To explain the perils of multiculturalism and (nonwhite) immigration, the CPAC organizers have invited several avowed white nationalists — who will spew their bigotry in the same conference hall that will host speeches by Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul (and has already been visited by Herman Cain, who complained about the damage being done to the nation by "stupid" people).

According to reports by People for the American Way and the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), the CPAC contingent this week will include Peter Brimelow, the notorious race-baiting activist who founded VDARE.com, an anti-immigration website that has long been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate site. Brimelow's website regularly publishes the work of white supremacist and anti-Semitic writers.

Joining Brimelow on at least one panel will be Robert Vandervoort, identified by CPAC as executive director of ProEnglish, a group advocating "English-only" policies — but Vandervoort is also the former organizer of the "Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance," another white nationalist hate group that is affiliated with the same racist authors who appear on Brimelow's website. Their panel is called "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity Is Weakening the American Identity."

Actually, Vandervoort was slated to appear on two panels at CPAC, including one titled "High Fences, Wide Gates: States vs. the Feds, the Rule of Law & American Identity," where he will be joined by Republican politician Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state. As IREHR recently reported, Vandervoort "was at the center of white nationalist activity during his time in Illinois." His "Chicagoland" outfit often held joint activities with the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the group that directly succeeded the White Citizens Councils of the anti-civil rights era in the South and Midwest. In their own nod to diversity, Vandervoort and Kobach's panel will also include two Latino Republican legislators from Florida, Rep. David Rivera and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

Questioned about the invitations extended to such unsavory figures as Brimelow and Vandervoort, a CPAC spokeswoman told Buzzfeed that the American Conservative Union, which operates CPAC with a coalition of other right-wing groups, accepts no responsibility for their presence. "CPAC is proud to have more than 150 sponsors and exhibitors this year," boasted Kristy Campbell, the CPAC flack, in an email. "This panel was not organized by the ACU, and specific questions on the event, content or speakers should be directed to the sponsoring organization. Cosponsors and affiliated events do not necessarily represent the opinions of the American Conservative Union."

But CPAC did decide to bar participation by the gay conservative groups such as the Log Cabin Republicans, and to remove the tainted John Birch Society as a co-sponsor. The gays bother them and the conspiracy nuts humiliate them, but evidently they feel no imperative to shun the white supremacists.

Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com. To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

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From the go, roller-coaster GOP White House race

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — From the start, it's been a roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.

GOP primary voters can catch their collective breath for the next two weeks after spending the past six lurching toward one candidate and then another in an exercise of political soul-searching that appears far from settled.

The next contests, in Arizona and Michigan, aren't until Feb. 28. The party with a reputation for order may have it sorted out after March 6, when 10 states get their say. But that would break sharply with this race's tendency toward uncertainty.

"It's just frenetic," says Sally Bradshaw, a Republican strategist and longtime aide to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "Everyone is changing their mind every week. It is so unpredictable."

To Bradshaw, "it's a sign of a party that does not yet know its path."

With nine contests down, Mitt Romney leads the delegate hunt, and has both the money and the organization to compete deep into the state-by-state nomination calendar. The last contest, in Utah, is set for June 26.

But his two main rivals have scored decisive victories, putting into doubt the strength of the former Massachusetts governor's front-running candidacy.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's sweep of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this past week is a reminder of Romney's failures to win over conservatives. That was the case, too, in South Carolina, where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished first. The near-victory by Texas Rep. Ron Paul in Maine on Saturday further exposed the GOP's deep divisions.

No one has proved able to assemble a broad coalition of establishment party leaders, social conservatives and tea party activists in a party that lacks a natural national leader such as a former president to influence the rank and file.

The four candidates have had the stage to themselves for only three weeks, survivors in a competition over many months that saw politicians get in and then get out or go through very public deliberations about running before ditching the notion.

Governors, senators and others tempted to run stayed on the sidelines despite much public pressure. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie went back and forth before declining to enter. Donald Trump passed. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin teased well into the fall.

By that point, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had come and gone from the race. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's star had risen and fallen, and so had Texas Gov. Rick Perry's after some poor debate performances. It wasn't long before sexual harassment allegations forced tea party favorite Herman Cain out of the contest.

The field finally was set in December, just a month before Iowa's Jan. 3 leadoff caucuses.

Gingrich, whose campaign had imploded last summer, surged by seizing the debate stage and portraying himself as a Ronald Reagan-like antagonist to President Barack Obama.

"How does a Columbia, Harvard law graduate ... look in the mirror and say he's afraid to stand on the same platform with a West Georgia College professor?" Gingrich told a cheering crowd near Des Moines as the year ended.

Romney played to win in Iowa and pounced on Gingrich. Romney and his allies running an independent political action committee pummeled Gingrich with about $3 million in attack TV ads. Paul's campaign ran ads accusing Gingrich of "serial hypocrisy." Gingrich's ties to Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage company, came under scrutiny, as did his fresh comments that Palestinians are an "invented people."

All that took a toll on Gingrich.

Santorum, who had toiled in obscurity for months, was the beneficiary. Evangelical voters rallied behind him.

By the night of the Iowa caucuses, Romney was declared the winner over Santorum by a mere eight votes. Gingrich finished fourth.

"Game on," Santorum declared, nonetheless triumphant.

By the next morning, Bachmann was out after finishing sixth. Perry headed straight to South Carolina, reversing course after hinting he would pull out of the race after finishing fifth in Iowa.

New Hampshire was next up and it wasn't really a contest. Romney cruised to victory and easily beat back one-state challenger Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

But Romney would face obstacles, most of them self-inflicted, that would signal problems down the road.

"I like being able to fire people," Romney said in Nashua, N.H., while promoting choice in insurance options. His rivals immediately attacked.

It was a reminder of Romney's vast wealth in tough economic times, and an example of a series of comments ready-made for critics. "Corporations are people," he said at one point. He also had wagered a $10,000 bet with Perry.

Gingrich looked for a revival, and found it by attacking Romney's tenure as the founder and CEO of a venture capital firm, Bain Capital. A $5 million check by a Las Vegas casino mogul to a pro-Gingrich super PAC put that criticism on TV ahead of the South Carolina primary.

In that first-in-the South voting state, Romney was cast as a job-killer but the move backfired. The GOP establishment accused Gingrich of waging war on free-market principles that are the bedrock of the GOP.

Huntsman declared Romney "the best equipped to defeat Barack Obama" as he quit the race. Romney toured with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and 2008 primary winner John McCain. A first-ever GOP sweep of the opening three contests seemed within Romney's reach.

Then, it didn't.

Romney stumbled over whether he would release his tax returns. Gingrich turned in solid debate performances, at one point turning the bombshell 11th-hour allegation from his second wife that he sought an open marriage before their divorce into a strident attack on the media.

In one bizarre Thursday before the primary, Iowa GOP officials announced Santorum had actually won the Iowa caucuses. Perry quit and endorsed Gingrich.

Gingrich easily won South Carolina.

The race turned to Florida, where Romney had built a firewall by pouring far more money and resources into the state than any of his rivals. Only Romney and his allied super PAC had the ability to compete in the state's 10 media markets. They combined to spend $17 million in advertising, nearly all of it attacking Gingrich.

Gingrich triumphantly arrived in Naples, Fla., to a crowd of 5,000 two days after the South Carolina vote. Then the attacks took hold.

Gingrich decried what he called "carpet-bombing" on TV. He spent much of the 10 days on the defensive as he struggled to answer Romney's newfound aggressiveness during the two Florida debates. Specifically, Romney labeled Gingrich an "influence peddler," and tied his Freddie Mac connection to the housing crisis that has hit hard in Florida.

In the end, Romney comfortably carried Florida over Gingrich.

Paul and Santorum finished far back, having abandoned the state for more promising territory.

Four days after Florida, Romney easily won the Nevada caucuses; his fellow Mormons accounted for 25 percent of voters.

But it wasn't long before trouble emerged anew.

Having retreated from Florida, Santorum was virtually alone as he campaigned ahead of the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and Missouri's nonbinding primary.

Last week, Santorum re-emerged as Romney's chief challenger by carrying all three states, forcing Romney to recalibrate his campaign in the face of conservative reluctance to support him.

Maine was the latest state to weigh in and Romney was narrowly declared the victor Saturday over Paul.

It was just the latest chapter in a race certain to continue to be volatile — and long.

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