Don't Blame Seth, Blame Hollywood

The criticism of Seth MacFarlane's Oscars gig just keeps on coming, with a familiar theme: He's a vile, sexist man, and the Academy should never have stooped so low. But at the Advocate, Victoria Brownworth wonders whether these critics were watching the same show she was. Take the "boobs" song, for instance. Anyone heard of satire? The song was making the point "that in Hollywood, women—even when playing victims of violent crime—are reduced to the sum of their body parts, not the sum of their movie parts." But no, "a man singing about 'boobs' just had to be bad and sexist and wrong."

Ditto for the joke about George Clooney and 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. MacFarlane wasn't dissing a kid, he was dissing "a Hollywood full of first wives dumped for younger models of their former selves by addressing its most eligible and oldest perennial bachelor." In his real life, MacFarlane is a crusader on gay rights and domestic violence, "one of the good guys." In his professional life, he's a comedian, and at the Oscars he did what any host worth his salt should do—"he ripped the status quo a new one." Click for the full column. (More Seth MacFarlane stories.)