Bleeping Sally Field

Sally-Field-You-Like-Me-238x238What is it with Sally Field and award show speeches?

Her dorky “you like me, you really like me” gushing from the Academy Awards Show 22 years ago, still ranks as one of the all-time-most-memorable Oscar speeches.

And at Sunday night’s Emmys, she did it again.

OK, so she could have used a better script. And sure, she got flustered, lost her place, and babbled her lines. But somehow Sally Field still managed to deliver the best momologue I’ve heard at an awards show since, well, her Best Actress win back in 1987.

Bleep the delivery, thanks to the Bleeping Fox network, her censored sentiment–“if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no g–damn wars in the first place”–certainly got my attention. There are surely more articulate ways to speak out against the Bleeping war or praise the nonviolent instincts of women, but that’s beside the point.

Thanks to the Bleeping Bleeps at Fox, Gidget–whom a number of web surfers apparently thought rode her way into the sunset 20 years ago–cowabunga-ed her way into a gigantic wave of media attention.

Instead of being just another Hollywood headliner, seizing her 15 forgettable seconds on the soap box, the Flying Nun’s momologue actually inspired some dialogue and debate about war, God, freedom of speech and censorship.

Who knew that a silly Bleeping awards show could end up being so thought provoking?

I have no problem–obviously–with someone using their minute in the spotlight to voice their own personal views.

Most people blow it. Either they thank a bunch of people that work for them and forget to thank their nearest and dearest, or they thank the Almighty and forget to thank the director who made them look so much better than they actually were.

At least Sally Field tried to do something constructive with her few moments in the spotlight.

Not surprisingly, some people had a field day mocking the idea that putting a woman in charge might actually lead to more peaceful solutions, using examples like Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher as mothers who went to war.

I think that’s a load of Bleep.

Nothing makes you value human life more than giving birth to a 15-pound baby with a 21-inch-wide head–unless of course you do it without an epidural, in which case you’d happily start bombing Canada just to distract yourself.

In 1870, long before Hallmark even existed, Julia Ward Howe dreamed up Mother’s Day, intending it to be a Mother’s Day for Peace. After nursing the wounded during the American Civil War, she gave a Bleep of a momologue, declaring:

“Arise all women who have hearts, say firmly: Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. In the name of womanhood and of humanity; take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.”

Peace is as patriotic as mom’s apple pie. And so is talking about whatever the Bleep you want to on award shows or anywhere else.

So here’s to bleeping Sally Field. I, for one, really do like her.

Tell us what you think about Sally’s speech, or Leslie’s column for that matter, by emailing email.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 21, 2007.

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