Beyond the style, and into the substance: One Barbie, or another, wins | MARK HUGHES COBB

You'd think folks would garner enough pride to not continue to let their home be a worldwide laughingstock.

How many times does Alabama appear - outside football, or, OK, barbecue contests ― where we're not being ridiculed? In too many cases, our elected officials — employees — stand and represent as the equivalent of Toothless/Shirtless Joe-Bob extolling how the Waffle House done blowed right over, to the amazement and amusement of Weather Channel ponchos.

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We're so used to being the butt of jokes, our britches are slap worn through.

We don't have to accept status quo — Cue "Fight the Power." Surely some bro-country Bubba has cut a twangy cover by now — but it's not simple to defeat those playing a long game of "scare the voters and make them cry," a tactic just as dumb as it sounds and with the virtue only of being utterly effective, as fear and anger beat just under our skin, thanks a lot, amygdala.

Emotional appeals beat the living daylights out of facts, roll 'em behind the bleachers and steal their school lunch money. Which is odd, because we fought this Revolutionary War thing to free us from the ludicrous notion rich inbred folk should tell us what to do because, uh, they've got the money and houses and weird little dogs, not to mention guards in funny hats, due to their parents — and their parents' parents' parents' parents ― possessing the dough, homes, mutts and chapeau.

Too many voters turn out not for harsh reality, but for the fantasy of a strong person ― parent, babysitter, Batman ― coming in to clean after our messes. We may think we're thinking, but mostly we're feeling, and what we're feeling is this one dude is looking straight at us — albeit without blinking for the most excruciating time ― while that other nerd's slapping charts, numbing discourse with silly old facts, trained on the grind, oiling the machinery of billions of vast to tiny iterations and interactions within a massive country that's among the most powerful forces ever created.

Dad used to say "Any job worth doing is worth doing right," asking impatient boys to slow down and focus, do one thing before moving on to the next task, widget or pattern. He'd have been online with Nick Saban's process, which follows something like that philosophy: Get this taken care of, and results will flow. Let tomorrow save tomorrow.

It's not a fun idea. It's tedious, tiring, and requires attention which pop-culture-raised kids can't SQUIRREL! ... summon easily, due to, oh, let's say videogames today, and blame music, movies and TV tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

It's not fun; it's just effective.

I watched this week's "Saturday Night Live" with mixed feelings, because ScarJo, but also:

Yay. Alabama.

Again.

Aside from the fact the so-called "response" was a litany of fear-mongering, the one-time future of the GOP ― I kept seeing "rising star" attached, but with no evidence why that might be, other than that she's young; maybe it's like the ambition behind painting "trolley" on the side of your bus — looked and sounded much like its program-free recent past, say of the last 40 to 50 years.

The last actual GOP concept, trickle-down economics, killed the middle class. Dead as old Marley, and not rising again until someone steps up and hammers home that when the American dream truly began, post World War II, it was in large part because the rich paid their share of taxes, shifting some of the burden off the rest of us.

In order to distract working folks from the fact we now need multiple jobs just to survive ― forget thrive — while multibillionaires decide which spaceship to zoom in today, the far-right releases its terrifying flying-monkey evangelicals, redhats and other nightmares, to sow confusion and discord.

Because, let's face it, dazzling with brilliance isn't on the table ― it's not even frozen in that ultra-sterile, overequipped kitchen — so baffling with BS it will be.

Performance counts, with emotions in play. For example, the gosling who should be a goose by now performed the heck out of "I'm Just Ken," the kind of demented goof the Oscars should be thrilled about (RobLowesinging"ProudMary"withSnowWhite, cough cough), though escaping critical condemnation by self-awareness — Watch how we wink at how we're winking at you! — all glitz and dancers, Slash (If it'd been some actor under the topper and wig, who would know?) and waves enough of DayGlo pink to paint a decade of Pepto-Bismol commercial animations.

But it didn't win the Oscar. The appropriate winner was another song from "Barbie," Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?," second-saddest-ever movie song about a doll, after "When She Loved Me."

The category purports to honor the best song, not performer. Eilish's whispery/breathy vocal affectations are well past their sell-by date, but she's got a few decades left — a two-time Oscar winner at 22 ― to uncover the rest of her range.

Randy Newman's plaintive voice moves me, but like the distinctive croons of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Willie Nelson and the like, can be an acquired taste. So "Toy Story 2" smartly gave his "When She Loved Me" to chanteuse Sarah McLachlan — who, forgive the weak allusion, sings with the charms of the angel — to wring every last tear from. Perhaps because Newman, from the extended family of Hollywood-scoring Newmans, seems oddly cursed, that heartbreaker didn't win, though his song for "Toy Story 3," "We Belong Together," which I couldn't pick out of a lineup, did.

It's not always the best that wins. Too much plays into picks: Personality, inbred inclinations, prejudices ― some people can't take sardonic Newman types — emotions.

An Oscar statue weighs 8.5 pounds, and nothing, aside from what new projects the prestige might lead toward.

Other choices pack more heft. Here's hoping we become and remain clever enough to look beyond the style, and into the substance.

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Substance should stand tall with style | MARK HUGHES COBB