BIG NEWS! Jodie Foster Comes Out as a Hot Mess

I really didn't want to do it.

I was reading the comments from my fellow savants on Facebook about Jodie Foster's acceptance speech during the Golden Globe Awards. "I'm disappointed in her," said activist-scholar David da Silva Cornell.

Word had it that Foster came off as resentful at being pressured to tell everybody about her private life, including her sexual orientation. But not once did she acknowledge those brave souls who risked everything by coming out decades ago, thus allowing her to (kind of) come out once more without anyone younger than 80 blinking an eye. Even though it is 2013, she could not bring herself to say "Gay" or "Lesbian."

Consensus on FB was with David, while much of the popular media was slobbering all over her, how moving her speech was, blah blah blah.

My curiosity got the best of me, so I finally broke down and saw the entire self-absorbed, ego-driven jeremiad. I watched in horror and fascination as a stunningly gorgeous train wreck in a designer dress revealed herself as pathetically shallow, right before my eyes.

Then I put it into context. She was speaking to a crowd where the pathetically shallow were conspicuously present. Her date was Mel Gibson, the poster child of Hollywood Hot Messes. Her audience was mostly agents, directors and fellow actors whose job demands that they be just as self-absorbed and ego-driven if they want to reach her status (some of whom were misty-eyed during the ramble, as if they could relate). No wonder the pandering sycophants at the Scientology Celebrity Centre reel in so many movie stars.

Now I know why she is such close buddies with Gibson: train-wreck solidarity. Perhaps because of the special bond she shares with her homophobic but equally solipsistic BFF, she couldn't just say, "I'M A LESBIAN!" or even better, "I love you, Mel, but please stop spreading your self-righteous, pseudo-Christian faggot-bashing bullshit."

Well, she could have said these things. Her speech would have been vastly improved if she had taken all that simmering rage and frustration and aimed it at appropriate targets, like her date. Instead, she slammed Honey Boo-Boo Child, the young Southern-fried media darling from Georgia. That was a singularly tacky, cheap shot, considering how Ms. Foster herself had been pimped out by her mom when barely out of diapers, three years earlier in age than Honey Boo-Boo's debut as a 6-year-old on Toddlers and Tiaras.

Jody Foster's disjointed words and misplaced anger displayed the contours of her private bubble for the world to see: a gracefully aging actress from a bygone era, out of touch with the community to which she belongs but has never fully embraced.

Let's be real: there was no room in her 7-minute pity-party for the LGBT community. Her speech was a restaurant with a single table for one, and the only thing on the menu that night was whine.