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Nikki Finke reports in the LA Weekly that host Chris Rock will tone it down a little for the Oscars on Sunday, but still intends to tick off Bush voters:
Ali LeRoi, a longtime Rock collaborator and part of the team of writers helping to craft the comic’s opening remarks as Oscar host, tells me: “The guy who says inflammatory stuff is going to say something inflammatory. He’s made a career of being outrageous so, yes, there’ll be presidential humor."[snip]
Anyone who knows Rock’s act has heard his razor-sharp “Bush lied to me” riff. “Bush lied to me, man. He said we got to move on Iraq because they’re the most dangerous regime on Earth. If they’re so dangerous, how come it only took two weeks to take over the whole fucking country? You couldn’t take over the Bronx in two weeks. You’d need a month to get the Grand Concourse.”
L.A. Weekly has learned Rock will be tamer come Oscar night, but he will still crank up the political satire. According to LeRoi as well as people who’ve heard Rock trying out material recently, one Dubya joke is about the president’s intelligence, or lack thereof, and goes something like this (SPOILER ALERT): “Bush is not stupid. All you people who say that are wrong. You can’t be an idiot and get to be president. You gotta give the guy a little credit. Anyone that’s smart enough to get that far has got to be just acting dumb.”
LeRoi also "hints at subjects that will be skewered. Michael Moore. The Passion of the Christ. 'We can take potshots at the studios all night. What can we say that will damage their bottom line?!'”