Here's a dumb argument you're going to hear a lot of in the coming days:
Leave aside the idea that a film being nominated for best picture constitutes a "snub." Here's the only thing you have to say to rebut this incredibly dumb argument:
Yeah, but what about 12 Years a Slave?
So when Vox's Todd VanDerWerff writes the following:
The simple fact of the matter is that Selma was a film told from the perspective not of a white man, directed by a black woman, about events that are important to the history of black people in America, and that implicated white people in the horrors of the time and the ongoing horrors of racial relations in the country right now.
Feel free to say "Yeah, but what about 12 Years a Slave, a movie that was told from the perspective of not a white man, directed by a black man, about events that are important to the history of black people in America?" I'm not really convinced the whole "racial relations in the country right now" angle matters all that much; it's not like Crash was set during the Revolutionary War. If anything, Selma's timeliness (along with the browbeating of the pro-Selma scolds darkly insinuating that a failure to vote for it constitutes racism) will likely help it take home best pic.
While you're at it, you should ask him if he has any proof for the following sentence:
Sure, 12 Years a Slave won last year, but that was after a bruising campaign that saw it barely eke out a win over the finish line.
Calling it a bruising campaign is fine. But the simple fact of the matter is that he has literally no idea if 12 Years "barely eke[d] out a win" or if it won by 50 percentage points. No one does. The Academy doesn't release the vote totals. All he can do is guess and vaguely wave his hands at other awards-season victories, while ignoring the fact that oddsmakers considered it a stone-cold lock and 22 of 29 experts picked it to win. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that once nominations were announced and the Oscar campaigns/browbeating began in earnest that 12 Years a Slave broke away from the pack like Louis Zamperini in the home-stretch of the mile.
Then again, I also have no idea. Because no one has any idea if the massive favorite barely eked out a win or won massively.
So, anyway, every time you read a blistering Hot Taek about the racism of Hollywood (lol) with regard to Selma, just remember one little thing:
What about 12 Years a Slave?