  Sean Penn accepts the Oscar for best actor for his work in "Milk" during the 81st Academy Awards Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
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LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood and politics did not just reunite at the 2009 Oscars, they flirted, held hands and went home happy together.
Sunday's 81st Oscars was the most politicized since Michael Moore raised hell over George W. Bush and Iraq.
The challenge is whether Hollywood's political agendas on controversial issues such as gay rights and slum poverty, as well as on the legacy of the Holocaust, changed doubting minds.
Gay rights surfaced when gay activist Dustin Lance Black won an Oscar for writing Milk and Sean Penn won best actor for playing gay politician Harvey Milk.
The Holocaust legacy is an issue with Kate Winslet's best actress win for playing a Nazi concentration camp guard in The Reader, although she was mostly a giddy schoolgirl backstage.
The triumph of Slumdog Millionaire raised multi-cultural and poverty issues and earned Canada kudos.
Penn on the podium
Calling U.S. President Barack Obama "an elegant man," Penn found himself trapped in a political conundrum. Obama has opposed gay marriage. Penn supports Obama but also called for "equal rights for everybody."
Anti-gay protesters picketed the Kodak Theatre as the stars arrived, over Milk and because Heath Ledger would soon win a posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight. Ledger remains a lightning rod of homophobic anger for Brokeback Mountain.
Penn said it was time for the anti-gay protesters "to turn in their hate card and find their better self." He called their stand "emotional cowardice."
On stage, Penn said: "I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support."
But a lot of those people voted for Obama.
Backstage, Penn said Obama's stand against gay marriage may be purely political and has to change. Yet he admitted he will cut the president slack because of economic emergencies. "But the day is going to come and it's going to come quickly (for a change on gay rights)."
The whinging over Winslet
The best actress winner has been dogged by protests over whether her character in The Reader is too sympathetic. She dismissed all complaints.
"I mean, I can't be responsible for the emotional response that an audience has to any film. I don't think any actor really can. Going into it, I was very aware that, if an audience did feel any level of sympathy for Hannah, and they felt morally compromised as a consequence, that would be an interesting emotion for them to then deal with. It certainly wasn't my intention to make people sympathize with an SS guard."
Winslet also ridiculed Britons ridiculing her for bursting into tears when winning awards.
"I really don't care. Quite honestly, it makes me very sad that my own country can't be pleased for the successes of their own kind in the way that America really seems to be able to be."
She called herself "just a little girl from Reading," her home town in England. Her mother, Sally Anne Winslet, recently won a food fair competition for her pickled onions and the Reading Evening Post ran a photo of mom holding her jar. "Well, Reading Evening Post," Winslet said of photos of her holding an Oscar, "there's your next Winslet picture!"
Slumdog serenade
"America is cool again -- certainly for the first time in my lifetime," British director Danny Boyle said backstage. The success of Slumdog Millionaire, soon to break the $100-million box-office mark, is one small indicator for America's health.
"I think this is a symptom of how it's beginning to embrace a more globalized feel of the world. I hope so, anyway."
Canada has already done so, Boyle enthused.
When Sun Media stood to ask a backstage question, Boyle laughed gleefully and said: "Before you ask a question, I've got to say: "Thank you to Toronto!' Because Toronto started us off, really. And the Toronto film festival gave us this people's prize, which is an extraordinary start, you know. And they also gave us $15,000 and we put the $15,000 in the fund for educating the kids (the two slum kids who co-starred in Slumdog). Now we have got plenty of money, but then we didn't have a lot of money at all. So it was very, very welcome, and I want people in Toronto to know it went to a really good place."
