Despite what Slant's own Oscar prognosticators have told you, the profoundly relevant The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, a recounting of the final hours of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, seems—at least on the surface—like a no-brainer to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. In the film, titular witness Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles ardently tells a group of churchgoers that even though the dreamer was killed, the dream continues to live on. That dream coursed through the veins of every voter who pulled a lever or pressed a button for Barack Obama last November. Many heralded the impact his election might have on race relations in this country, while others cynically dismissed all the talk about a post-racial age of hope and change.

Comedians, meanwhile, lamented the replacement of one of the easiest targets in modern history with a man of considerable intelligence, exceptional oratory skills, and, perhaps trickiest of all, a mixed-race background. For eight years George W. Bush was likened to a chimp—the implication being, of course, that he's stupid. (It's the type of lampoon, by the way, that insults the intelligence of our fellow primates while trivializing just how dangerous a "stupid" man like Bush can be.) It's another thing altogether, however, to liken a black man to a chimp, as many believe New York Post satirist Sean Delonas did when he published a cartoon on Wednesday of two police officers shooting a chimpanzee—evoking the killing of a former actor-chimp in Connecticut earlier in the week—accompanied by the caption, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Continue Reading »