If, while visiting the usual online newspapers and blogs, you clicked this gay-based Golden Globes story in Variety ("It's red meat for the culture warriors.") and then happened, by chance, to click on this sobering summary of movie and DVD trends in 2005 ("Plummeting 2005 box office sparks Hollywood crisis"), would one be justified with a click here and even over here to touch base with the American mainstream? If Variety is going to start using what it thinks is "culture wars" language, at what point does someone write the end of the year round-up (that's cowboy lingo) that explores the moral, cultural and, yes, religious angles of the whole brokeback stone table showdown? Of course, King Kong may drive this out of the headlines. But I think not, especially if blue zip-code writers such as Ken Tucker of New York Magazine are going to write reviews that wave red flags in front of easily provoked leaders out in flyover country. Check this out the twist in his "Brokeback Mountain" hymn:

When, a half-hour into the film, Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist and Ledger's Ennis Del Mar, both drunk, cold, and lonely on a remote Wyoming campsite, fold around each other and commence an act of sex that manages to be both rough and tender, romantically intimate and lustily intense, Brokeback Mountain achieves its own early climax: You either buy into this tale of men in love or you join the ranks of those who've been snickering during the movie's prerelease trailers, and who can be divided into the insecure, the idiots, or the insecure idiots.

Well, on to the Oscar races. Let's see how many of the insecure idiots out in middle America tune in this year and how that affects both the ratings and the advertising revenue.

Wait a minute: I thought Hollywood was all about making money and that, if someone wanted to send a message, they were supposed to call Western Union?

Meanwhile, the newspaper of record on all things Tinsel has raised the stakes as high as they can possibly go. Forget about a showdown between the gay cowboys and the Lion King of Kings. For some folks in Hollywood, says the Los Angeles Times, it is past time for the ultimate symbolic showdown (cue the theme from "Braveheart"):

"Brokeback Mountain's" future in the heartland will offer a classic test of whether what the movie business considers its best work will be embraced by audiences whose values may be more conservative than Hollywood's. In some ways, "Brokeback" could prove a counterpoint to the phenomenal success of last year's "The Passion of the Christ," a film disparaged by Hollywood power brokers and many film critics that still emerged as a blockbuster.

The controversial cowboy movie, which is rated R in part for its sexuality, also is hitting theaters at a time when filmmakers and studio executives are worried they are losing touch with audiences, as reflected by a yearlong box-office slump.

Really? Hollywood insiders are still shook up about "The Passion"? You think so?