A Beautiful Mind meets ugly tactics

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">los angeles: john nash says he is not an anti-semite. he says he is not a homosexual. nor, he says, did he try to conceal any of his deficiencies as a father or any humiliating episodes in an attempt to glamourise his life. to combat those rumors, nash, a nobel laureate whose triumph over schizophrenia is chronicled in the oscar-nominated film <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">a beautiful mind</span>, feels obliged to go on national television: he will appear on sunday’s edition of 60 minutes.some in the film industry say he is actually the victim of a whisper campaign whose aim is to scuttle the movie’s oscar hopes, a phenomenon they say has become increasingly common in the intense competition for academy awards. “this may not be the worst year in oscar history, but it’s pretty low,� said pete hammond, a film historian and consultant for american movie classics. “to accuse the subject of a film of being anti-semitic when you know that a lot of the people who will be voting on the oscars are jewish, well, that’s really down and dirty.� the whisper campaigns, which reach a peak during oscar balloting, are fueled, the film’s supporters say, by the internet, by a fascination with tabloid-type scandals and by the rise of private oscar strategists hired by the studios. but even in that context, the campaign against a beautiful mind has struck many in hollywood as particularly brutal. “it’s getting nastier,� hammond said. “it’s like a political campaign now. you get these so-called oscar consultants who go out there thinking, what kind of dirt can we dig up?� (nyt news service) </div> </div>