Hollywood Blew It With Tribute to Woody Allen

By Twitter standards, one of the biggest, or at least loudest, stories out of this year's Golden Globes was the tribute to Woody Allen. That's largely thanks to the zinger of a tweet from Mia Farrow's son Ronan: "Missed the Woody Allen tribute—did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall? " That set off a predictable firestorm between Allen's defenders and detractors, and Michelle Dean at Flavorwire thinks Hollywood bears the brunt of the blame for the mess because of its tone-deaf tribute.

Diane Keaton accepted on Allen's behalf and spoke glowingly of him as an artist, a friend, and a champion of women, all without even a hint of acknowledging the elephant in the room. "There was something so pandering and dishonest about the way she was talking that only a moral idiot could have missed," writes Dean. Allen makes brilliant movies, she adds, full of moral complexity. "I simply wish that people were able to talk about Woody Allen with the thoughtfulness about the ambiguities and bright lines of these situations that his movies demand." If Hollywood is incapable of that, it should skip the tributes. Click for the full column. (More Woody Allen stories.)