“The Bagger” (i.e., N.Y. Times Oscar columnist David Carr) has a pretty good rundown about who’s got the edge (and why, and what might overtake them) in the various Oscar categories. But he’s wrong when he says that Brokeback Mountain “has no mono- poly on social relevance. If anything, Crash has a more contemp- orary lilt on a more chronic, widespread issue.” What…roadside racism? That doesn’t hold a candle to what Brokeback is funda- mentally about, which, as I tried explaining in mid-December, “is the terrible price of letting a good thing go… the tragedy of a person feeling love or passion for something (a relationship, a career ambition, a creative dream) and not doing anything about it.” Such spiritual cowardice is everywhere across America, in every small town and family and festering in at least half of the nation’s office cubicles…and it’s one of the biggest reasons for the drinking and the Vicodin-taking and the arguments between lovers and marrieds from Bangor to Capistrano. There is nothing sadder or more debilitating than to be a citizen of Del Mar Nation. I lived there when I was in my 20s, and I know.