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"  The epithet &amp;quot;any press is good press&amp;quot; is true across the board, even for the Academy Awards, which got a hella-needed ratings boost from the sophomoric, misogynistic hosting stylings of Seth MacFarlane in February. To our chagrin, MacFarlane has already been asked back to host the 86th annual Oscars ceremony next year, but as he&amp;#039;s got a lot on his plate right now, he&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;thinking it over.&amp;quot; The show&amp;#039;s (male) producers, also sticking with the show, asked MacFarlane back as a gambit to hike up the male viewers for the show, since it proved effective this year. From The Guardian: &amp;quot;MacFarlane&amp;#039;s stint saw a 20% boost for the lucrative 18-34 audience and a dramatic 34% hike in male viewers in the same age range. Men aged 18 to 49 were up 18% for a show that has traditionally been more popular with female viewers.&amp;quot; Yeah, that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s really been missing: a male-dominated perspective. Because we never see that. Ever. Anywhere in the world. Something that&amp;#039;s easy to gloss over about Oscars history: Even before MacFarlane, it&amp;#039;s always boasted a veritable clusterf*ck of cringe-worthy set pieces and one-liners. Take the critically-panned Rob Lowe and Snow White dance that opened the 1989 ceremony, for instance.) Pretty dresses and glitterati aside, it&amp;#039;s hardly the highbrow highlight it was during the very first ceremony in 1927.  More importantly, like all the potential female candidates being passed over for the new NBC late-night spots, Hollywood finds three or four safe (or super bloggy, like MacFarlane) candidates and sticks with &amp;#039;em instead of taking a risk on, say, Amy Poehler or, hell, even Sarah Silverman. (She&amp;#039;s like MacFarlane&amp;#039;s flip side: She uses offensive material as a satirical illumination of just how f*cked up it is, rather than just for the sake of shock value.) Of the 86 Oscar shows, while a number of women have tag-teamed the hosting gig, only two women \u2014 Ellen DeGeneres and Whoopi Goldberg have hosted it solo. Jesus, I&amp;#039;d even prefer the monster St. Marks bong James Franco smoked before he co-hosted with Anne Hathaway. Just give it a little bow tie and put it on the stage. I think what annoys me most about MacFarlane&amp;#039;s brand of humor is that it lends itself to three kinds of stereotypes: The angry comedy-nerds getting revenge on the girls who didn&amp;#039;t like them in high school (MacFarlane himself), the frat-bros who blithely quote the most sexist moments of Family Guy, and the humorless feminists who can&amp;#039;t take a joke. Sigh. Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Image via ABC "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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