A 1.19.05 item in the New York Post‘s “Page Six” column read, “Don’t assume that Golden Globes winners will walk off with Oscars next month. The idea that the Globes are still “a major influencer of the Oscar nominations or final outcome is an embarrassment,” declares movie writer David Poland, “much the same as so many Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11.” Hollywood columnist Jeffrey Wells agrees, noting that the Globes, which are given out by the laughably dilettantish Hollywood Foreign Press Association, “really don’t count anymore. They’re a distraction at best, and are at the beginning of a stage in their evolution in which they’re going to be seen as a bigger and broader object of mockery as the years wear on.” Wells denounces “the dopey idea that 80-something international correspondents, many of a somewhat dubious or shaky reputation, are any kind of harbingers of the sentiments of nearly 6,000 Academy voters.”