Warning for the faint of heart, Penn uses some salty language — which, incidentally, I also completely support.

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Bush? Obama? Jillette finds that dissent can provoke very distinct reactions from his friends, depending on the target.

Glen E. Friedman — the super-talented chronicler of my cultural youth – comes up with, sorry to say, an argument in defense of friend Fairey that makes little sense. According to Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, Friedman’s point can be boiled down like this: The Obama picture sucked originally and was improved. And because Fairey donated every penny he made from the graphic to the Obama campaign, he saw no profit on the graphic and should not be liable.

I’m not a lawyer, so I am certain there are complex legal implications regarding the fair use of this type of picture. Nor do not I understand why the AP would waste its time trying to punish Fairey. The artist has now hired Anthony Falzone, the executive director of the Fair Use Project, a group, that according to Danielle Sacks at Fast Company, “encourages creators to modify copyright terms in order to “increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing.”

But how can anyone argue that Fairey did not profit? To begin with, through this iconographical work, his professional reputation, and thus his future financial rewards, have unquestionably skyrocketed. Without the Associated Press shot there is no icon. Yes, it wasn’t happenstance that he used this picture, but it worked. And unless Fairey took his own shot of Obama, someone was going to lose their work.

In addition, Fairey chose to help Obama get elected — which is a profit of political self-interest.

To put it another way, imagine if a George Bush supporter had taken Friedman’s work without permission and created a graphic for Republican political gain and then donated his earnings to the campaign? Would Friedman then contend that the person made no profit from the picture and it was OK to utilize it without permission?

Now, I will admit that — to me at least — Friedman’s work has far more artistic merit than a run-of-the-mill shot of the president. But, I’m also certain, that his work might seem ordinary to a Republican housewife in Atlanta. Friedman, I will guess, believes that the worth of art can be subjective, as well.

And here I thought era of Obama had made small-minded and selfish ideas like profit a thing of the past.

Yes, the Oscar nominations are here, and America simply can’t afford to stand idly by anymore. Not after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had the audacity to misleadingly claim that Brad Pitt had not only engaged in acting this past year, but that he was among the finest to practice the craft.

Absurdity of such scope is one of the reasons the Oscars continue to lose viewers and hemorrhage influence. Sometimes it seems the academy has a desire to disconnect from the average moviegoer. Last year’s Oscar telecast, accordingly, logged the show’s tiniest audience on record.

There are a number of problems at play. The most talented actors often star in movies that Americans don’t care very much about, while the movies we do care about all too often feature Leonardo DiCaprio. This toxic formula has set our expectations to tragic lows.

In the ’70s, audiences were treated to Oscar-worthy performances by DeNiro, Pacino, Nicholson and Hoffman — stars who were regularly involved in artistically meaningful films that could also draw crowds. These days, conversely, there is a movement afoot to convince us that the unsettling dullness of a Jake Gyllenhaal or a Mark Wahlberg is deserving of an Oscar rather than pubic scorn.

Read rest of the column here.

There was, of course, the obvious. Jane Fonda, whose anti-Americanism is legendary, was a complete non-starter. Nor was there to be any mention of the frosty anti-Zionist Lynn Redgrave* at the dinner table. (Though, it’s difficult to imagine any normal kid actually wanting to mention, or even knowing who the hell, Lynn Redgrave was to begin with.) Even lesser-known lights such as Costas-Gravas and Martin Sheen were also banned outright.

So, come to think of it, I should probably thank dad for insulating my young mind from a needlessly torturous encounter with “The China Syndrome” or “Missing.”

The problem is, this boycott began to expand at such a precipitous pace that by its height I was exclusively watching movies featuring Jim Nabors and Burt Reynolds. I’m relatively certain, there was no pre-teen Jewish kid in the entire country — perhaps the world — who knew more about Hal Needham flicks.

Today, I can’t find a single star worth boycotting. I’ve come to accept there will be some perfunctory plotline that will cast capitalism as the sapling of all evil; I accept that every month another pretty face will grace us with an angry political homily.

Still, I don’t feel the anger or righteousness to ban them from my life. I can’t get myself to shun a Coen brothers film simply because one of its stars has the ideological sophistication of a field mouse.

Not after what I’ve seen. If Marlon Brando has the stones to send Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar, I refuse to let a lightweight like Ed Harris get under my skin.

A case certainly be made for a boycott of Sean Penn.  But his freeform nonsense is so majestically shallow and poorly informed, that he is actually hurting whatever cause he thinks he’s helping. (Was I the only guy who found “Dead Man Walking” uplifting?).

Alec Baldwin? He’s too freaking funny to ignore.

Are there actors or directors that I am impelled to boycott because they have offered some odious opinion — or, more odious an opinion than your average empty vessel?  And I want to sacrifice something … so, no, Michael Moore and Janeane Garofalo don’t count.

*It was Vanessa Redgrave who was the anti-Zionist hoodlum, not Lynn.