Today in picking fights with awards shows:

I swear, I would really like to go a day without feeling like I have to address some idiot tweet from the President, but here we are. Promise, next one will be about Star Trek or video games or something. In the meantime, check this shit out:

Wait, is he giving them shit over ratings? Because...well, you know.

"What could possibly go wrong?"

-Caesar, early March, 44 BC

What a scamp. Hey, speaking of scamp, did you see his funny funny joke last week about how America should look into making him President for life? I guess in recognition of the super job he's doing. Look, I know that people on the right supposedly felt like we do now when Obama was in office, but they were upset about how he was a Muslim from Kenya who wanted to take their guns away. I feel like our beef is somehow more...I don't know, grounded in reality?

Like, they would have lost their goddamn minds if Obama ever, even jokingly, suggested that we should do away with term limits, much less declare him dear leader for life.

Where's his-oh, right because he's black...Also, shouldn't it read
'where're your papers'? I don't want to tell racists how to racist, but c'mon.

Fun fact: the 1st Oscars ceremony was 
the single most attended event in human

history until the 2016 inauguration.

So back to the Oscars which had the lowest viewership ever...which, it did. Sort of. The ratings for Sunday's broadcast were down almost twenty percent from last year's show making it the fourth year in a row where fewer people watched. Which is bad, but the first Academy Awards ceremony was in 1929 and it was more of a private dinner held at the Hollywood Hotel Roosevelt. While I don't have exact numbers, the ballroom probably seated somewhat fewer than 26.5 million, so I think it's kind of an unreasonable comparison.

And even if they did want to broadcast it, and owning a television in 1929 was kind of like having a holodeck in your home, so again, calling last night's show the least watched is a little disingenuous.

The Oscar's TV ratings did beat the 1791 premier
of The Magic Flute, so like, suck it Mozart.

Pictured: The incident I described.

(source: lazy internet research)

But whatever, suffice it to say the broadcast isn't as popular as it used to be, but it isn't because it's getting political. The Oscars have been political forever. Remember that time Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar for The Godfather because of how Native Americans were portrayed in film? No, me neither, I had to look it up, but the point is that it's nothing new. Yes this year's show got political, but it focused on positivity and inclusion and I thought that was pretty cool.

So why the ratings drop off? Maybe people don't watch because it's basically just celebrities telling each other how awesome they are. Maybe they don't watch because they're into streaming television shows. I don't know. What I do know is that way more people would have watched if they decided to forgo the awards entirely and just let famous people rip on Trump for three hours.

Maybe more people would have watched if streaking was still
a thing. Go on, click the link, David Niven zings him, it's great.