February 23, 2009

Sean Penn in Oscar Upset

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Despite the terrible odds given by America’s favorite statistician Nate Silver, Sean Penn snagged the Oscar for Best Actor over favorite Mickey Rourke at the Academy Awards Sunday night in Los Angeles. It was an astonishing upset, on an equal level with 2005 2006’s Best Picture shocker Crash over Brokeback Mountain, and it’s hard not to take the award as a bit of a comeuppance for the gays. Hooray gays! Penn gave a classy, heartfelt speech, ending with a plea for equal rights for gays and lesbians, but the most important part about Penn’s win seems to be the acknowledgment of what was truly the greater performance. While Rourke’s comeback was admirable, it was Penn who buried himself inside his character, elevating Gus Van Sant’s Milk above a faithful retelling of a great documentary into something special. Penn’s speech called the Academy “commie, homo-loving sons of guns,” which is pretty funny, considering Brokeback‘s loss, but when you think about it, the Academy really does like straights who play gay: Tom Hanks, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlize Theron, Hillary Swank and William Hurt have all won Oscars for queer characters in the last 25 years. Hmm. One of these days, gays will win for playing straight! (Go ahead and insert Hugh Jackman joke here.)

In other Oscar news, Slumdog Millionaire dominated, as expected, with eight total awards including Best Picture, while The Curious Case of Benjamin Button won three of its thirteen nominations. The ceremony started off amusingly, with Jackman performing a cute song-and-dance number paying tribute to the nominees, but went downhill from there—using five previous actress and actor winners to present the current nominees was kind of creepy. One of us, one of us! In any event, one hopes that Slumdog‘s win might open some doors for Bollywood to gain a greater audience, but in reality, Slumdog has about as much to do with Bollywood as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had to do with Hong Kong cinema, so that might be a little far-fetched. Either way, I won the Oscar pool for the third year in a row (thanks, Sound Editing!), so I’m spending my ten bucks on a ticket to actually see one of the movies.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate