The Oscars May Have PC-ed Themselves Out of Ratings and a Host

Maybe you heard?

The Oscars haven’t been able to fill their stage with a host since they unceremoniously gave Kevin Hart an icy shoulder because of some gay jokes…the professional comedian made about…nobody. 

For months, America has been asking if Kevin Hart would reconsider. For those same months, Oscar has been praying if he would do the same. Yesterday, on a ‘Good Morning America’ exclusive, the acclaimed funny man was straight-faced about his feelings on the subject.

In short, Oscar can suck it.

Of course, he’s “over it.” All the negativity in the press. All the trolling his social media for other jokes. All the politically correct dolts who get offended at traffic lights because they acknowledge color.

It took two days for Hart to step down from the stage he never had an opportunity to command (and believe, he would have crushed it). The Academy wanted him to apologize (again, again, and again) for jokes he made that read as homophobic slurs. Never mind that he’s a comedian who uses some timely shock to create awe.

That shock came from some tweets for which he previously apologized because they were a little strong. He didn’t need to do it again, and to his credit, he didn’t. Oscar demanded he should and Kevin Hart told AMPAS to ‘kick rocks.’ No need to kowtow. No reason to have a repeat performance of humility.

So, what’s an Oscar to do? What else… have a show with no host! Because that’s going to work, right?

Variety reports for the first time in more than 30 years, the biggest night in film will be reduced to a bunch of famous people drawn from a hat to host various segments. Well, maybe not, but that may as well be happening.

The producers and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group behind the Oscars, are scrambling to line up top talent needed to carry the telecast, which is just six weeks from airing live — on Feb. 24 — from Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.

You see, the scramble is happening because they believed they had a widget event the beautiful people couldn’t do without. In the case of Kevin Hart (due apologies to Wesley Snipes), they bet on black and crapped out.

Hart previously told Ellen Degeneres on her show that the process of looking through his roughly 40,000 old tweets an attempt to “damage” him — “a malicious attack on my character. That’s an attack to end me.”

For that, there was no second and third round of contrition. From that, the haters have no remorse. And because of all that, we something that is going to be the bane of AMPAS’ existence and a ruin to any ratings.

So, what happened 30 years ago?

Producer Allan Carr and director Jeff Margolis mounted an 11-minute musical number to open the show in lieu of a host monologue. The opening gave us Rob Lowe’s version of “Proud Mary,” a duet with Snow White. Lowe is still trying to live it down.

Sounds like great television. Maybe next year, Oscar will “forget” about social media and just choose a host instead of letting the nation of ruffled underwear-ridden wusses choose for them.

The trainwreck… eh, The Oscars are Feb. 24, 2019.