OK, listen. This is not hard: Al Gore did not win an Oscar. The producer of a documentary about Al Gore won an Oscar.
Al Gore is not a freshly-minted Academy Award winner.
He is not the man who just won an Oscar for best documentary for his film An Inconvenient Truth (which isn't his film, in the same way that The Conqueror isn't Jenghiz Kahn's film).
It's easy to find lots of opinion columns that make the same careless, stupid, fact-free, reality-optional mistake.
In fact, that latter link is instructive: Here are a couple of paragraphs:
Gore has re-invented himself. No he did not invent the Internet and no he did not run a particularly stellar presidential campaign in 2000 even managing to lose his home state of Tennessee.But he has an Oscar in hand, has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize and has managed to be a successful businessman and entrepreneur in his years out of office.
Right after mentioning one of the many, many lies written and promulgated about Gore that cost him the election, the writer goes right ahead and repeats another lie that everyone knows, that Gore won an Oscar.
Look, you junk-fed idiots: The truth is not hard, and it's not optional. If you're going to talk aloud where people can hear you, get it right. If you don't, well, what we get is eight years of George W. "Georgie Wombats" Bush.
Posted by Greg at March 2, 2007 5:50 PM
Hey!
Lay off the wombats!
Nothing wrong with wombats.
I understand what you are saying, but actually the film, "An Inconvenient Truth" won the Oscar, which was recieved on its behalf by its director, Davis Guggenheim.
You're correct; it is the director (and optionally a producer or second director, although not in this case) who receives the Oscar for a documentary. I made an error and assumed that the rules for Best Picture were consistently applied to all awards that were received by a film instead of by an individual. Should have done my research! Stupid idiot!
Micheal is right. Me and the wombats are ready to take you on unless you retract that libelous statement.
Q.v. this post about Georgie Wombats' dad, George "Humpin' Wombats" Bush.
Another point in favor of wombats: "wombats" spelled inside out is "Mow Stab", a rogue feat from the latest Complete Scoundrel that lets you sneak attack a whole room full of creatures at least one size category smaller than you at the same time.