No it didn't, Arthur, or at least it shouldn't have.

The victory for “Crash” suggested Oscar voters were more comfortable with a tale that exploited the seamy underbelly of racial conflict in contemporary Los Angeles than with a heartbreaking tale of love between two married men.

Says Arthur Spiegelman on Reuters this morning. Phooey, say I. The Academy Awards are awards for film making, not for social commentary making. I haven't seen “Brokeback” and it may be an excellent piece of work but I did see “Crash” and it is. If the Academy voters say it was the best film I'm perfectly willing to accept their verdict on that grounds.
I've done some film judging in my time and I know it's not easy to separate a film's technical virtuosity from it's emotional appeal. One leads to the other. Nor have the Academy voters in recent years, it seems to me, done a very good job at that. But let's not encourage that sort of behavior. It's an award for making a movie, not taking a stand.
So phooey, Arthur. And Kenneth, you too.

Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan saw “Brokeback's” failure as a sign that Hollywood was not yet ready to grant the topic of homosexual love mainstream respectability.

Humbug, say I.

(And I don't know what happened to the font here, probably something that got cut and pasted, go figure. I'm too lazy to fix it so there it stands.