Measure Twice, Cut Once

My brother is a sheet metal worker and has often used the saying, "Measure twice, but once." It is good advice for avoiding stupid ass mistakes. Speaking of stupid ass mistakes, I am very disappointed to hear about Whoopi Goldberg's omission from the Oscar montage of former hosts. Whoopi was incredibly gracious on the View, where the hosts brought up the issue.

Whoopi didn't rant and rave, she instead was quiet, teary eyed, and clearly saddened by what had happened. The View hosts went on to list all of Whoopi's firsts and near firsts - first black woman to host the show, second black woman to win an oscar, first oscar winner to host the show, etc. So how doesn't something this stupid happen? My answer is oversight.

It is hard to imagine that the Academy purposefully left out Whoopi. Wait, no its not. People can be very mean and intelligent, articulate women often bear the brunt of society's prejudices. So lets just say for the sake of argument that she was accidentally left out of the montage. Wait, this is the same industry where people make careers out of being congruency specialists, making sure everything on a movie set is identical from scene to scene. So how is it that a black woman that has hosted the academy awards multiple times in left out? It isn't. It was by design.

I do believe that things in Hollywood are often done like things in real life, by underlings. You get the lowest paid person to do the most work, then you have the boss sign off on it. It is a tried and true way of doing business in these United States, just look at our Supreme Court opinions. So I am quite certain that some underling at the Academy threw the montage together, but some boss decide Whoopi didn't need to be in there. S/he was either too lazy to go back and put Whoopi in thinking that no one would notice or that Whoopi didn't deserve to be in and no one would care. In either case, the boss was wrong.

Shame on the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. You made a bad choice and you have not even bothered to put anything on your own website to rectify it. You measured twice, cut once, and still made a stupid ass mistake.