Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

According to the Oscars, it’s neither. Rather, art is an excuse to comment on life.

Admit it, flipping on the TV Sunday, you were expecting a few liberal-minded zingers to fly through the air and bounce on the plush carpet at the feet of Hollywood’s celluloid royalty. Hell, you probably were hoping someone would say something controversial just to lighten up the nearly four hour long ceremony.

That somebody was (quite expectedly, really) documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

Moore, who won Best Documentary Feature for “Bowling for Columbine,” received a standing ovation as he made his way to the stage. But the clapping was quickly silenced as Moore launched into a stinging indictment of President Bush, saying “we live in fictitious times . . . where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president . . . (who is) sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”

He then said “anytime you’ve got the pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.” He followed this rambling bit of verbiage with a chorus of “shame on you, Bush” which was quickly drowned out by as much booing as there was clapping.

Of course Moore is not alone in his opinions, particularly in Hollywood. But he was by far the most incendiary Oscar attendee.

Other notoriously outspoken Hollywood A-listers managed to speak out against the war without making fools of themselves. Best Actor winner Adrien Brody, in one of the most poignant acceptance speeches of the evening, said making “The Pianist” showed him the dehumanization of people in times of war.

Barbara Streisand, famous for sticking her foot into the political circus, limited herself to praising the value of free speech in America. And Susan Sarandon managed somehow to keep her politically-minded mouth shut.

But most of the war references focused more on the troops fighting overseas and ultimately the need for peace.

Steve Martin, host of the show for the second time, dedicated the ceremony to “our young men and women overseas,” while Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell made veiled references to the fighting during his introduction of U2, sans profanity. And Bono made no mention of the war in Iraq during his performance.

In the end, the Oscars came off as a graceful distraction from CNN’s 24-hour war coverage and reminded us that even Hollywood can look beyond the glitz and glamour to reality.