Rhetorically speaking, it’s bad form to begin a piece of writing by confessing one’s helplessness, but there’s nothing I can say about the coming Academy Awards that hasn’t been said so often you’re bored being bored by it. Hollywood bloggers began writing about this year’s Oscars while nursing their hangovers from last year’s, while pro-surveillance right-wing bloggers joined ranks with the pimpled masses to decry the injustice of The Dark Knight’s omission from the major categories. Slumdog Millionaire will win big because the hopeful Third World hero overcomes a system rigged against him in the same way Barack Obama overcame his race and broken home to become president of the United States — which means the days of No Country for Old Men despair are behind us. Also, winning a TV jackpot is about the last pipe dream left as the world economy crumbles.

Fun! Fun! After nine years of anonymous fanboy attacks at Slate whenever I dared to criticize a masterwork like The Mummy Returns (“I only wish harm to you and your family”), I figured I’d finally escaped the rabid nerd hordes. But they seem to have arrived here en masse — maybe thanks to a Web headline somewhere branding me the author of “the first negative review of The Dark Knight.” (There have been other negative reviews since.) Comments below the review here and elsewhere have struck similar chords:

(1) I am “an idiot trying to make a name for himself” and get “hits for his site.”
(2) I am a pretentious prick.
(3) I am a fag.
(4) It's not New York, it's Chicago, fool.
(5) My reason for criticizing The Dark Knight is that it is “too dark” when everyone knows that Batman is supposed to be dark.
(6) The idea that Heath Ledger went to a bad place to play the Joker shows a dim understanding of actors’ craft.
(7) May God have mercy on my soul.