A woman winning the Oscar for best directing is one of those cultural milestones that would pass better unremarked. Sadly, it didn't.
"The moment has come!" chirruped Barbra Streisand, emoting harder than any of the actresses who were nominated that night. "It's Kathryn Bigelow!"
Newspapers and magazines hurried to trumpet this historic landmark; I would have kept it quiet.
The best-director Oscar going female might have been a moment worth celebrating if it had happened in 1974. But this is 2010. These were the 82nd annual academy awards. How embarrassing.
It's hardly an indicator of social change. The rest of society has altered so radically since 1929 that it's no more than a random piece of pub-quiz trivia (for heaven's sake, elsewhere in America they have a female secretary of state and a mixed-race president), while Hollywood hasn't changed at all. Oscar or no Oscar, the crowd's main interest in Kathryn Bigelow was how marvellous she looks for 58.
The film industry's idea of a great feminist breakthrough is to applaud the tits of women over 40 as well as under it. All week, the press has gurgled about the great bodies of the Oscar-cougars: photo spreads of Pfeiffer, Bullock and Streep, above text that essentially says, both incredulously and smugly: "You'd still do 'em, wouldn't you?"
Even Michael Sheen, introducing the nomination of Helen Mirren for best actress, focused his speech entirely on how "hot" he finds her. He must have imagined that this demonstrated a revolutionary political correctness because she's old enough to be his mother. No: it's just the usual reductionist nonsense, broadened upwards.
The other "feminist celebration" of Bigelow seems to be that she beat her ex-husband James Cameron to the award. I say it's embarrassing that she ever married him in the first place. Look at their two films. The Hurt Locker versus Dances With Smurfs. How could that marriage ever have worked?
But that's fine. That's Hollywood. A sparkly veneer of dismissive lust and gossip is what we expect and enjoy. Their mistake was drawing attention to how deep it runs. Why remind the world that it took 82 years for 50% of the human race to throw up someone who could make the best film, or be credited for it? That's just highlighting a matter of social awkwardness, like announcing you've farted. Better to let it out as quietly as possible, and hope nobody notices.
When the chips are down
Sorry not to write a column last week. I was in Berlin; I planned to write from there if anything noteworthy happened, but it didn't. I saw the Brandenburg gate, ate bratwurst, played a poker tournament, got knocked out by Boris Becker, left the tournament, six masked gunmen went in and stole a million dollars, that was it. So I took the week off.
Yes. That's how bad a journalist I am. If it weren't for the sideline in poker, I don't think I'd eat.
It was only when I got home to find a hundred kindly enquiries on Twitter and a dozen interview requests from various departments of the BBC, that I thought: "Oh. That armed heist on the €3m celebrity poker tournament seems to have been reported as news."
Don't get me wrong, I had thought it was quite interesting. We haven't had an armed raid on a poker tournament for about five years now. It's six years since I saw those gunmen at the cash game in Holland. The game has become terribly respectable. Poker friends were ringing after the heist to say: "Isn't this retro? Been ages since I saw an Uzi."
Those still at the tournament sounded fine, saying how calm they'd felt. Unruffled bloggers filmed the raid on their digicams; some players recognised the robbers and arrests have already begun. All the prize winners got paid. Nobody got hurt. They were posting jokes online within half an hour. The tournament resumed less than two hours later.
One heroic Finnish player had been about to lose a huge pot when the gunmen came in. He declared that this did not constitute a serious interruption and insisted on paying his opponent anyway. The Finn ended up coming second in the tournament, winning €600,000 – that's karma.
Boris Becker missed the raid; he got knocked out just after I did. But he would have coped. I've loved Boris ever since I saw him at a poker tournament in Nassau, a vision of perfect physical fitness, with a doughnut in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That's my kind of sportsman.
None of this will make any difference to the success of the European Poker Tour. I will be at the final in Monte Carlo this April, and so will hundreds of others. You might think that's because poker players are more fatalistic – or greedier – than other people. You might think it's because guns are, historically, part of the Wild West poker picture. But I think it's because everyone can always cope with everything. Human nature is naturally stoic, unhysterical, with a sense of perspective on coincidence. Most people think: "Shit happens. If you're there: unlucky. But I'll carry on assuming I won't be."
A few weeks ago, I wrote about armed police on city streets and escalated ID-checking as a "response to terrorist threat", which I believe goes against most people's desire not to have their way of life compromised by fear of theoretical disaster. A reader sent me a quote from Benjamin Franklin which came back into my mind, proudly, as I watched players start signing up for the next leg of the European Poker Tour, in San Remo just a few weeks from now: "He who values security above liberty deserves neither."
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