So . . . "Brokeback Mountain" swept the Critics Choice Awards, as expected. What are we to make of it?

That best picture victory tells us its support has now gone beyond just the cynical snobs who comprise the membership of the New York and L.A. film critics' groups, which previously voted it best pic. Those journos are real ink-stained wretches sometimes, and I mean wretches. They tend to be haughty straight male print journalists with perpetual bad attitudes and an irresistible itch to assassinate anyone who disagrees with them. Few dare, so they end up governing pop culture by gang rule. At least for a while, till reality catches up, but by then it's usually too late and mass amnesia rules the day. Sure, right now it's obvious that "Match Point" is a big ho-hum. Even a letdown. Everyone widely agrees. But just a few weeks ago, before the movie opened nationally and the public could see for themselves, every spineless member of the Snooty Film Crowd, who had all seen it at private industry screenings, gushed, "It's genius! Woody has never been better! Brilliant filmmaking! He's destined to sweep the Oscars!"

I don't know why that very nongay journo wolfpack has gotten behind "Brokeback" so fanatically. It's a fine film. I love it, too, but it's not the masterwork they claim it is. Perhaps they're rooting for it so fiercely because they finally have a nonthreatening gay movie they can like without feeling creepy. It doesn't force you to watch John Waters drag queens eating poodle dung. No naked studs acting like sissies and doing things with male body parts they never imagined, and don't want to. "Brokeback" is safe. It's got A List, cool, macho, straight actors in it. No graphic sex, not really. (Come on, that pup tent scene is tame stuff compared to what two smitten cowboys would really do out in the wild, wild west.) Ang Lee wraps the whole package with spellbinding cinematography and musical underscore so romantic that — forget going gay — you could fall for one of these cowboys' sheep.

At the Critics Choice Awards we could've learned that "Brokeback" was really just another "Match Point," another case of mass delusion. But it's not. It's for real. That means this year won't be one of those "Mulholland Drive" years when the print critics' groups all pick one best picture that fails to cross over into the real world. Members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association aren't like their misfit print cousins. Due to the nature of their jobs, TV broadcast critics must be more social, gregarious, polished, normal. They don't demand industry groupthink while they privately live alone in basements watching DVDs of bad foreign films giving them hope that the Bolshevik Revolution might rise again.

Now that the Broadcast Film Critics Association has solidly endorsed "Brokeback," it's safe to say that the Golden Globes will be next. The two groups have a similar journalistic demographic. Heck, members of both intermingle every day on the movie-junket circuit.

But this doesn't mean "Brokeback" will inevitably win the Oscar next. Remember, Academy Awards are nearly two months away. That's a lot of time for Hollywooders to introduce a terrifying new plot complication.

But "Brokeback" did just get some bad award news. As much as the Critics Choice voters loved that pic about gay cowboys, they didn't embrace the cowboys. Both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal lost. Ah, well, they can handle it. Being a cowboy is a hard, lonely life, they know that and they're used to it. And if the pain of the cruel straight world ever gets too much for them to bear, well, they can always head back to Brokeback Mountain with a pup tent.

Photo: "Brokeback's" lonely cowboys were real award outcasts at the BFCA kudofest.
(Focus Features)