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Not that I hate Oscar so much, because actually I don’t—I simply don’t pay that much attention. And it’s not an attitudinal or put-on thing—at least not mainly—since not once in my life have I ever watched the whole damn telecast straight through. Besides which, we just gave away our minimally operable 30-year-old Motorola—sometimes the antenna worked, on some of the channels anyway—so it’s not even the NCAA Final Four for me this year.
But already you’ve probably scanned our online selection of Reader Oscar picks, to which I’ve contributed my own harebrained assortment of shipwreck candidates. A society of choosers is what we are, with everyone obliged to make at least a dozen or so whether he/she’s inclined to or not—Hillary or Barack? Jif or Skippy? Toyota or Suzuki? M&M’s or Mary Janes?—as part of the whole freedom package, what our “Western values” are all about, the kinds of things Al Qaeda and the Taliban allegedly want to kill us for.
