Cass Avery: Hollywood and politics have been in bed for a long time

Go Michael Moore, the maker of Bowling for Columbine, who on Oscar night took his first statue and his umpteenth risk with the words "Shame on you , Mr Bush, shame on you".

The awards crowd was astir, the orchestra struck up, Titanic-like, with a chirpy ditty amid the booing, and Michael waved, smiled warmly and took his golden man off stage.

His 55-second speech included an accusation that Bush was a fictitious president who had brought his country to war for fictitious reasons. Go Michael Moore.

That speech was never going to go down easy, and Moore knew it. He would have walked to that podium with the same relish most of us walk into a chocolate shop.

Controversy is his fix. It's why he gets up in the morning. His documentary Bowling for Columbine, about gun culture in America, is an archetypal example of his whiney crusade against corrosive power, whether it's in car plants, tobacco companies or oval offices. He seems particularly keen on busting myths, especially the self-serving myths of the American system.

Among the many critics of Moore's speech on Oscar night was actor Cliff Robertson who said the next day, "I don't think the Oscars are a forum for political posturing".

Hang on. We're talking about Hollywood here. The idea that the film industry isn't about politics is exactly the sort of deceptive myth-making Moore loves to rip wide open. Hollywood and politics have been in bed together since Adam and Eve.

Well almost. Since the late 1890s. Soon after the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, movie-goers in New York were treated to the film Tearing Down the Spanish Flag, showing American troops seizing power from the Spanish in Havana. It was a fictitious demonstration of a political wish, it stirred the hearts of the hometown audience to great patriotism, and it was the beginning of relations between motion pictures and propaganda.

During World War II, Germany made 1300 films commissioned by the Nazis. Hollywood was in on the same game and made 300 World War II movies that were essentially propaganda films. They showed bold and brave American soldiers fighting a heinous enemy. Every note the government wanted hit was struck on cue. The public didn't question the greying of the line between their world view and the Hollywood scripts.

Post-Afghanistan, Bosnia and September 11 we have had some major examples of propaganda films: Spy Games, Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down and Collateral Damage. Even Minority Report, a science fiction film that proves Tom Cruise still won't be able to act in the future, was about the need to sacrifice civil liberties to enable the authorities to do their work - and meanwhile the US Government was legislating itself to greater powers. The Sum of All Fears, a movie soon to be released, is about the terrorist detonation of a nuclear device at an American sporting event. And there will be more.

The White House had a meeting with movers and shakers in Hollywood in November 2001 asking their co-operation in the message that needed to go out post-September 11.

Remember Laura from Little House on the Prairie? In real life she's Melissa Gilbert, the president of the American Screen Actors Guild, and according to E! Online she was at that meeting, with the chiefs at Paramount and Walt Disney among others. One attendee, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti, said the meeting was about "contributing Hollywood's creative imagination and their persuasive skills to help in this war effort".

That meeting was the covers coming off the bedfellows and although there was a bit of coughing in the cheap seats where media critics sit, in reality, what was anyone going to do about it?

And it's not just happening at the movies, it's television, too. I tuned into a new season of Sex and the City to be greeted by the transparently thin storyline of Carrie Bradshaw falling in love with New York all over again and partying with a group of squeaky clean sailors.

The "we love New York and aren't our servicemen lovely" message was louder than her wardrobe and it really ticked me off that yet another icon of free spiritedness had turned out to be on the payroll. Just the sort of thing Michael Moore would have waggled his microphone at.

So for someone to say the Oscars are no forum for politics is just another of those grand deceits on which Hollywood prides itself, and our only defence is to be smarter than they think we are.

They think we believe Punch hits Judy, but we know Punch doesn't hit Judy, the puppeteer does.