How Boring Was the Oscar Show Last Night?

My Snooze Meter started to snore during Jon Stewart’s opening. It gave a wake-up beep when a presenter slipped and nearly fell, but went back to snooze mode until Reese Witherspoon’s speech when it snored so loudly I only heard 75 of her thank-yous. It would be wrong to place the blame entirely on the Academy Award producers and Jon Stewart for giving us the dullest Oscar show in a decade. Part of the problem is that for the last year the GOP has been giving us a daily diet of White House produced melodramas full of pratfalls, international intrigue, spooks, terror, betrayal and sexual perversion. We are sated. What could be funnier or sadder than the President of the United States running away to Pakistan to flee his bad press at home and then making a speech calling Pakistan “a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world”? Pakistan is neither a force for freedom and moderation nor is it Arab. The Academy Awards art deco set was wonderful. How about next year having George Clooney stand in front of that set and reading a list of Oscar winners? That should take five minutes. Then he could be filmed standing there for the next three-and-a-half hours. Works for me.