By D. W. O’Dell

 Okay, what’s with the lack of love for Jon Stewart? While there have been some glowing reviews of his performance at the Oscars, many major critics have declared his performance as emcee was not funny enough, not edgy enough, and way too timid. Were they watching the same Oscar telecast I was? Stewart made fun of Scientology, Westerns, and even film montages at Oscar shows. He wasn’t lobbing grenades left and right, but he was hardly Oscar’s toady.

I thought Chris Rock was fairly criticized last year for his swipe at Jude Law, whom he seemed to characterize as a B-movie actor. Jude Law is a talented, Oscar-nominated actor who has not been associated with flops. Ben Affleck he ain’t. The joke made no sense, and while Sean Penn’s criticism of the comment later in the program revealed his own lack of a sense of humor, the point is that Rock was just trying to stir up trouble at the expense of humor, not because of it.

There’s a dual audience the Oscar emcee has to address: the one in the theater and the one at home. One of Jon Stewart’s qualities on The Daily Show is that he can be polite to guests - and smile, and make them feel welcomed - while letting the audience know that inside he is laughing at them. Many of his jokes may have fallen flat with the audience in the Kodak Theater, but they were amusing to those of us in our living rooms who don’t make a living in Hollywood (notably his scathing comment after a montage of clips from films that addressed social problems: “And none of those issues was ever a problem again.”).

Some of Stewart’s other bits, like the homoerotic montage from old Westerns, similarly worked to deflate Hollywood’s socio-political pomposity, even if John Wayne’s estate was probably upset at the sight of The Duke telling a cow poke he wanted him spread eagled on a wagon wheel. The opening skit featuring every recent Oscar host was also funny, and showed that “disgraced” hosts Steve Martin and Dave Letterman are really good sports. And Stewart’s ability to ad lib was evident after the award for Best Song went to a rap group, whom Stewart pointed out now had more Oscars than Martin Scorsese.

The best thing during the Oscar telecast was the fake “negative ads” for the categories of Best Actress and Best Sound Editing, which revealed just how silly negative political ads are when put in another context. Whether “real” British Dames approve of Judi Dench is no more relevant to the Best Actress race than what former swiftboat captains thought of John Kerry during the Presidential race. It’s funny, and it makes a point.

As for the winners, pretty much everything went as expected except for Crash pulling off the upset for Best Picture. There is now extravagant speculation that Crash won because the Academy refused to give an Oscar to a film about gay cowboys, despite the fact that Brokeback Mountain was nominated for seven Oscars and won three. I always love it when, for example, the winner for Best Documentary assumes that the victory is based on the rightness of the political view of the film’s subject, and not the quality of filmmaking; it’s like if Leni Riefenstahl won an Oscar and she thanked the Academy for supporting Nazis. Crash’s win is probably more about the fact that it is about Los Angeles. It could also be that it just was a better film (yeah, right, sorry about that).

If they want to make changes in the show’s format, they should start by not giving the winner for Best Sound Editing the same amount of screen time as the winner for Best Actor. Really, shouldn’t these awards be handed out at the Technical Awards Ceremony before the real Oscar show? And I have always wondered if the people nominated for animated and live-action short subjects wouldn’t be happier if the winner received their Oscar at the Technical Awards Ceremony in exchange for the Academy producing a prime time special on PBS that allowed people to actually SEE all the short film nominees…

I hope Jon Stewart is asked to come back and host the show again next year. Yes, ratings were down 10%, but that was expected with no big blockbusters among the nominated films. Stewart did an admirable job of walking the line between respect and mockery and produced some of the most memorable Oscar show moments in quite a while. Jon Stewart deserves a return invitation.

Unless of course they can get Billy Crystal.