I know I should probably be talking about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Chest’s incredibly record-shattering $132 million weekend, but I saw this press release about Dakota Fanning being offered membership into The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and had to comment on it before it was no longer news-worthy.

Clearly, this is a move by the A.M.P.A.S. to counteract criticisms that it’s an old-fogey club. If you check the roster of other invitees, you’ll see younger actors such as Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley and Joaquin Phoenix we extended membership. But it’s Fanning’s name that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Dakota Fanning is 12 YEARS OLD. She can’t vote in an acutual election, but she can throw in her two cents on next year’s Best Picture nominees. Granted, helping to figure out who 2007’s Best Sound Effects award should go to is less imperitive than choosing who should be the next person to sit in the Oval Office, but can a 12 year-old objectively judge this kind of stuff? Or, more likely, was Fanning’s name tossed into the mix as a shrewd publicity move to get the media outlets to notice their larger initiative of proving that the Oscars are young! The Oscars are hip!

Truthfully, the name on the membership invitation list that REALLY caught my eye was Werner Herzog. If you need ANY proof that the A.M.P.A.S. is out of touch – even with their own constituents – you need look no futher than Herzog’s name on the invitation list. Outside of perhaps Tony Kaye, I can think of no other director who is more PURPOSEFULLY outside of the mainstream than Herzog. Obviously, it’s either some kind of makeup gesture for excluding Grizzly Man from the Best Documentary category last year or – barring that – Herzog’s more public profile as of late probably woke someone up and they said "Hey, that guy makes movies arty people like! Let’s invite him."

It’s my hope that Herzog tells them to take a long walk off a short pier. But that’s just me.