I love the impassioned myopia of Sasha Stone‘s Awards Daily contemplations. I know her as a friend but I see her from time to time as Swami Shrinivista Stone, ohm-ing and burning incense and dressed in flowing gold robes as she susses out the vaguely aromatic currents and tremors yaddah yaddah.

I mean, hundreds of us are up here in Park City, trudging off to new films in the cold, responding as fully as possible to at least one magnificent knockout (Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight) and three unquestionable goodies (David Lowery‘s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Zal Batmanglij‘s The East, Morgan Neville‘s Twenty Feet From Stardom) and there’s Swami Stone down in Los Angeles, proclaiming with muted irony and amusement that Argo director Ben Affleck is the Mitt Romney of the Oscar race.

That’s entertainment!

Zero Dark Thirty is easily the finest and most immaculately crafted film of the year and Silver Linings Playbook is also a brilliant piece and my hands-down emotional favorite, but I too am rallying behind the Great Towering Thundering Affleck if it means the defeat of Lincoln and Steven Spielberg.

“The film that most [have seemed] to settle on as the least offensive of the bunch appears to be Ben Affleck’s Argo,” Stone writes, “which would have no problem taking the frontrunner’s spot right now if Affleck had gotten a director’s nomination. His entire fan base has lifted him up as a martyr for the cause, the only man who could BEAT LINCOLN!

“Once Zero Dark Thirty appeared to be zapped, first by controversy and next by the lack of a director’s nomination (I would argue that the lack of the SAG ensemble nod hurt it the most), Argo would have to be it. Suddenly it was the Mitt Romney — not the best candidate to take on Lincoln but the only one that CAN win.

“For some reason, those opinions has cooled to the other alternate choice, Silver Linings Playbook, and are now full-throttle Argo.

“Meanwhile, if you run the numbers you will find two things. The first, Lincoln still has it by a mile. The second, maybe the numbers are meaningless.”