When Sammy Davis Jr. was Handed the Wrong Envelope at the Oscars - "Wait till the NAACP hears about this!"

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By now, everyone knows about last night's epic gaffe at the Academy Awards. The most political Oscars ever - where hardly a moment went by without an anti-Trump joke, hymn to the "marginalized" or hushed reading from the Holy Koran - couldn't even get the most basic and important thing right - giving out the award for Best Picture.

After opening the envelope, Warren Beatty visibly hesitated over reading the card. In fact Beatty had been given the wrong envelope - a second and unopened version of the Best Actress Award winner. He knew something was up, but his presenting partner Faye Dunaway, who had tussled with Beatty before the performance on who would get to read the winner, practically grabbed the card out of his hand and blurted out La La Land. It took two minutes before the actual winner, Moonlight, was identified, and by that time three representatives of La La Land had made their "acceptance" speeches.

The flub was symbolic of how far the Oscars have sunk over the last few years. Very few people actually saw the Awards, and even fewer had seen more than one of the nominated films. This year's Best Picture was an independent film made over only a few days, about growing up black and gay. But even the notable social angle - Moonlight was the first "LBGTQ themed" film to win Best Picture - was overshadowed by the envelope gaffe and the incessant political virtue signaling of the previous hours.

Actually, last night wasn't the first envelope gaffe. But you have to go back pretty far to find another one. In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr. was handed the wrong envelope for the Best Musical Score Adaption. He read the card, and there was brief applause, but as the "winner" hadn't been one of the nominees for the award in question, it was quickly obvious that there had been a mistake. Davis saved the day with a quip - "Wait till the NAACP hears about this!"

"I ain't gonna make no mistake this time, baby," he said, putting on his reading glasses as a new envelope was handed to him.

It was a more innocent time.

That's Original: Oscars Open with Kimmel Calling Trump a Racist

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How edgy.

Update: Sorry, they removed the video. You can probably find a similar one on YouTube by searching for "Kimmel Oscars racist Trump" or some such. Obviously, however, all Oscar news now pales before the climatic La La Land/Moonlight gaffe. The most politicized Academy Awards in history couldn't even get the Best Picture Award right.

Here's Another Iranian Who Won't be Attending the Oscars

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Zeinab Sekaanvand

Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of "The Salesman" - nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign-language film category - won't be attending the Oscar ceremony. He decided not to come to the United States in order to protest President Donald Trump's executive order on travel. And along with the five other director nominees, he decried the growing "climate of fanaticism" in the United States. For this, he has won more international plaudits, adding to his fame and mystique as perhaps Iran's best known film director.

Here's another Iranian who won't be attending the Oscars:

Her name is Zeinab Sekaanvand and she is scheduled to be hanged.

A child bride, she was convicted of stabbing her husband to death.

She claimed he beat and abused her, that her complaints to the police were ignored, that her husband rejected her requests for divorce and that she was subsequently disowned by her conservative family.

After being arrested she was tortured by police officers. She confessed to the killing without benefit of a lawyer.

Later, she retracted her confession and claimed that her husband's brother had committed the crime, asking her to take the blame for it and promising to pardon her for it if she did - a practice permissible under Iranian law.

While on death row, Sekaanvand married a fellow prisoner and became pregnant. After her cellmate was taken away for execution, her baby was stillborn, apparently having died from shock.

Zeinab Sekaanvand's case has become somewhat of a cause celebre in the international human rights community. That might save her, although judging from recent history, it probably won't.

Iran now leads the world in executions per capita. One thousand people were executed last year. Since the 1979 Revolution tens of thousands have been executed, many thousands of them political opponents, religious minorities or people running afoul of sharia law penalties for adultery, homosexuality, blasphemy and so on.

It is estimated that 70 women have been stoned to death. They won't be attending the Oscars.

4,000 homosexuals have been killed, in many cases publicly hanged. They won't be attending the Oscars.

5,000 political prisoners - mainly leftists and communists - were executed in a five month period during 1988, a ferocious and massive purge which the government still denies ever existed. They won't be attending the Oscars.

200 Bahais have been killed. They won't be attending.

Many jews, scientists and government officials have been convicted of "espionage" and executed after dubious trials. They won't be attending either.

But I want to return to Asghar Farhadi. Here he is posing with the Oscar for best Foreign Film in 2012.

Farhadi is a sort of "hip" director. You can read long intellectual analyses of his work in cinema journals. Some of his films have been interpreted as veiled criticisms of Iranian government or society, but he also appears to have enough support within government circles to have furthered and protected his career and person.

He has become wealthy and famous, and he travels abroad regularly, hobnobbing with the likes of Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Other Iranian directors have been jailed or been banned from filmmaking due to alleged dissident activities.

But Asghar Farhadi has always kept his nose clean. As far as I know, he has never explicitly condemned his country's human rights record nor lobbied for those imprisoned or on death row.

The name Zeinab Sekaanvand has never publicly passed his well-coiffed lips.

When Sekaanvand is hanged, what suit will he be wearing?

When Paddy Chayefsky Called Out Vanessa Redgrave for Politicizing the Oscars, and was Roundly Cheered

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It was at the 1978 Academy Awards, and Chayefsky was merely a presenter. (He had won Best Screenplay the year before for Network.) But he took a few sentences to politely but pointedly call out Vanessa Redgrave for denouncing "Zionist Hoodlums" while accepting the Best Supporting Actress for Julia:

Before I get on to the Writing Award, there's a little matter I'd like to tidy up, at least if I expect to live with myself tomorrow morning. I would like to say - personal opinion, of course - that I'm sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards (loud cheers) for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda (cheers). I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple "thank you" would have sufficed (cheers and applause).

This was a different time, and while it's fair to say that Hollywood was quite "liberal" in those days, I'm not sure the ideology had quite the same monolithic or, perhaps we should even say, totalitarian hold on the community as it does in 2017.

In fact, I know it didn't. And here's why:

Redgrave received gasps and boos (as well as, to be fair, some cheers at the end). Chayefsky was loudly cheered.

The blunt Chayefsky (who would pass away only a few years later at the young age of 58) was absolutely right, of course. But it's notable that no one today would risk making the same sort of statement.

He or she would might be summarily lynched by aged-starlets and pajama-boy actors.

And speaking of courage, as much as I dislike Redgrave's politics and political persona, her 1978 speech, as inappropriate as it was, arguably did take a bit of courage, as it probably alienated a significant amount of the audience.

Contrast that with the faux "courage" of Meryl Streep a few days ago at the Golden Globes, whose lies and smears about Trump and Trump supporters were met with nothing but ernest tears and applause by almost all of the assembled sheeperati.

Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn glared at her. That was about it.

But Streep was right about one thing she implied. There's lot's of lock-step fascism in this country right now. You know very well which side embodies it. 

Those readers who are parishioners at St. John Cantius in Chicago may notice a certain resemblance (in face but especially voice) between Chayefsky and a certain highly regarded priest. That's a compliment to both of them.