I am reading PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION cover to cover, the way it is meant to be read. And I love it! But I couldn't resist peeking at the index under "Hope, Bob," to see if old Bob ever got cut some slack later in the book (after that crack about his "tinny jokes.") Nope! They quote this bit of Oscar banter to show what a poor, hopeless old square Bob was: "I don't know what the writers have been smoking this year... BONNIE AND CLYDE is about happy killers..." Fair enough! Bob's own words, or those of his army of writers. But I couldn't help but notice that in TOMORROW'S New York Times - yes, the exciting future to which we all look forward, not the fusty old past that upsets us so much - this year's Oscar host, Jon Stewart, a very funny man who is universally accepted as a hipster of some note, yes, presumed to be the opposite of Bob Hope, MAKES ALMOST THE EXACT SAME JOKE, in spirit, saying of this year's nominees, "They're not all about psychopathic killers; only about 80 percent of them." I'm just saying. Why am I harping on this? I absolutely love PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION. But can't I love Bob, too? Look, politically, I'm millions of miles away from Bob. But as I've noted before, Flannery O'Connor probably made him look like a classic liberal. And my "fave" revolutionary Godard found it in his heart to love that old reactionary John Wayne, so doesn't that make everything okay? I'm going to try to find a picture of Bob looking sad, which will make a nice illustration for this "post." Well, I don't know. Does he look kind of bemused here? It's the best I could do. I'm very lazy.
