Cookie Monster and Superstar Ballerina Misty Copeland perform the Cookie Ballet…

Okay…so Kevin Hart is out as Oscar Host because he might offend people and Ricky Gervais is trying to place himself in the running. But of course, the whole point of picking Ricky Gervais would be to get more people to tune in because he would be offending people. I don't think so and it all begs the question of just what the job requirements today are to host the Academy Awards. I'm not sure anyone is clear on this. I'm not sure there really are any.

Some of those involved in the selection probably aren't interested in anything else besides "Who'd get the most people to tune in?" America's interest in award shows has fizzled a lot in recent years, perhaps because there are way too friggin' many of them. But maybe it's also because your top movie stars are paid so, so much money (and it's not a secret) that a lot of people really view the show as a lot of undeserving, easy-to-resent, overpaid people celebrating the awesomeness of each other. Which, of course, it is.

To some extent, the Oscars these days are like watching Jeff Bezos play Deal or No Deal. Even winning the top prize isn't going to change his life one bit. We don't have a lot of rooting interest these days for actors, even for our favorites. If your career has been such that you're up for an Oscar, you're probably to the point where you're so rich and famous that it won't make a bit of difference. I mean, you might get $20 million for your next film instead of $15 million but why should anyone who can't afford health insurance care?

So maybe what the Oscars need is a host who can puncture all the pomposity and bring it back down closer to the real world. In that sense, maybe Ricky Gervais wouldn't be a bad choice, just as Kevin Hart wasn't a bad choice. But then the show won't so much be about Who will win? but about about Who will Ricky insult? Hell, if all we want is controversy and puncturing, forget about Ricky and bring in Gilbert Gottfried.

Somewhere amidst those who'll make the decision, there may be someone concerned with propriety and the dignity of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There are plenty of hosts out there who can fulfill that role. Why not have Meryl Streep host? She's a big star and it would save the time it takes a winner seated in the audience to get to the stage. She could just give herself most of the awards — and don't tell me she isn't likely to be up for one this time. With Streep, that doesn't matter.

Really, nothing matters on Oscars Night. Those who just want a host who will improve the ratings may be kidding themselves that there is a host who will improve the ratings. In a real sense, it's like trying to select a sportscaster who'll boost the tune-in for the World Series. If people care about who wins, they'll watch and if they don't, you could have the biggest or the rudest person doing play-by-play and he or she wouldn't make a gram of difference. I say get Gervais…or better still, Gottfried. Hell, get Trump and let him congratulate himself after every award because, you know, he would.

I'm not saying it will improve the ratings. I don't think any host would improve the ratings. They'll be the same if a megastar hosts or if you and I go in and do it. They should just pick the person who will make a shambles of the thing because at least those of us who do watch will enjoy watching the ship sink.

From afar, I've been following the new King Kong musical that recently opened on Broadway. The critics were mixed. A few friends of mine who've seen it thought it was great. Everyone — even reviewers who were underwhelmed — seems to think the Kong puppet and the leading lady (Christiani Pitts) are superb.

But it ain't doing Kong-sized biz at the box office. For the week ending 12/2, it was at 73.94% capacity. Nearby, Aladdin, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Frozen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, Mean Girls, Network, Pretty Woman, Springsteen, The Book of Mormon, The Cher Show, Lion King, To Kill a Mockingbird and Wicked were all at 95% or more. Many of those shows were selling-out, which would make you think that a lot of folks who couldn't get in to see Lion King, for instance, were looking for something else to see. Kong tickets are available for half-off at the TKTS booth.

A show made from a beloved story that features two outstanding performances (Ms. Pitts and the big marionette) should be doing a little better. Here's a news story about it…

And someone on YouTube posted a good video of the curtain call at the performance they attended and this also makes me want to see King Kong: The Musical. I dunno when my next New York trip will occur but I sure hope it's still running then. That's gotta be an expensive show to put on every night…

I wish I could look away from the still-unfolding story in the Les Moonves matter but it ain't easy. You look at this guy who was fabulously wealthy, wildly successful, happily (supposedly) wed, not bad-looking, often charming and versed in what some might call "people skills" and (again, supposedly) pretty damned smart. Then you try to reconcile that with what he did and all the damage he did to himself and everyone around him — his victims, especially — and it just doesn't reconcile.

It's like the Cosby matter but without the drugging part. Both men might as well have gone out and started robbing 7-Eleven stores for all the sense their crimes made. You wonder if anyone around them who knew about it — and clearly, some did and did nothing — at least said, "Les [or Bill], you know there are hookers for that kind of thing. Why don't you spend five minutes' income on one of them instead?" Never having tried either, I guess I don't see how paid sex could be any less satisfying than coerced sex.

Is it a frustration that all that power was not absolute power? That it was a thrill to feel that no one could say no to them, not even over that? I have encountered people who seemed obsessed about controlling everyone around them, whether they did it by threats, money, personal charm or some bizarre combo of two or more. I'm not expecting an answer to any of this and maybe that's because there isn't one.

I keep thinking back about a line that the playwright Alan Jay Lerner once said: "There are some people in this world who are absolutely brilliant at playing the clarinet and nothing else." Just because you are smart about one thing doesn't mean you aren't an idiot at something else. Maybe that's all there is to this. Maybe.

This very afternoon, our buddy Stu Shostak offers his annual Christmas Gift-Giving Guide on Stu's Show. You can hear it as an audio show online or watch it as a video program online or on your Roku-enabled viewing device or TV. I'll be Guest #2, explaining that the gift of true love this year is one or more volumes of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips.

The festivities commence at 4 PM Pacific Time. I'll be on around 4:45, give or take five minutes…and the other guests are worthy of your attention, as well. To find out how to listen or watch, go to the Stu's Show website where you will be presented with many options. If the show inspires you to order some Pogo books for a loved one, come back here and order by clicking on the Pogo link in my right margin. Even if that loved one is yourself. Hey, you deserve a gift, too.

It's Randy Rainbow time!

Janet Ybarra is back with a follow-up…

Thanks for running my comments today, and also for explaining your love of The Honeymooners in the context of forgiveness instead of just "Well, Jackie Gleason was hysterical and that's why I like it."

But since you were sensitive to Cosby's many victims, let me just leave you with this thought to ponder. If you had a daughter, would you want her getting involved with — let alone marrying — a guy who was conditioned to think it's ok to raise a fist to a woman in any sense because Kramden did and got laughs (and maybe this hypothetical guy doesn't grasp the themes of love and forgiveness)? Just asking.

Hmm. Well, if I had this hypothetical daughter, I wouldn't want her getting involved with a bus driver who's paid so little that they have to live in the crummy apartment that the Kramdens had. And no, I wouldn't want her living with a guy who would even joke about belting her but I might also think she knows this guy better than I do and maybe she really loves him.

I also wouldn't want her living like Ginger and Mary Ann did on Gilligan's Island or living like Lois Lane did on the Superman show or living like Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke or anyone on The Sopranos or hundreds of other fictional characters on fictional shows I could name.

In the real world, I am against anyone hitting anyone for any reason except possibly genuine self-defense or protecting someone who genuinely needs protecting. In fiction, it's a different matter, especially in a situation like The Honeymooners where Ralph never does it, Alice knows he'd never do it and they both love each other like crazy. It makes me a bit uncomfy since the joke doesn't play as a joke for some but maybe it's a nice indicator of progress that the concept of belting your wife no longer seems as funny as it once did.

Forgive me, dear friends, but I'm about to suggest you devote four hours of your life to listening to a podcast. Do it one chapter at a time but check out Bagman, a seven-chapter series produced by Rachel Maddow and her crew. It's the story of how Richard Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew got caught dead-to-rights at the most basic, primitive form of political crime: Taking bribes. And it's also the story of how he sought to escape conviction and punishment by rallying his base against the press, attacking the prosecutors and using the power of his office to obstruct justice.

Ms. Maddow does not dwell overlong on the parallels to current events but she does point you towards that comparison. And even if you ignore that or don't see the similarities, it's still a helluva story that was not fully reported at the time, largely because Mr. Nixon's own concurrent scandals were more important and more colorful. Not only does Maddow cover the Agnew story in full but she and her team have unearthed large quantities of hitherto unknown facts and details. It's really a superb reporting job, involving as it does current-day interviews with reps from both Agnew's team of lawyers and from the squad prosecuting him.

As I said, it runs four hours and I certainly found it worth at least that much of my life. You can listen to or download all seven parts from just about any major disseminator of podcasts (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.) but the easiest might be this page where MSNBC has put them all up. How long they'll be there, I don't know so listen to Part One and see if you get as hooked on the story as I did. If so, download them all so you can listen to them when you can. And don't miss the part where investigators uncovered how Agnew, who routinely scolded Americans about morality and the sanctity of Family, was found to have a couple of mistresses.

Cookie Monster Week — which is fast turning into me posting a Cookie Monster video every other day — continues with this one. I'm guessing one day someone at the Sesame Street offices turned to someone else at the Sesame Street offices and said, "You know, our target audience is three-to-five years of age. What do you think the average child of four is dying to see?" And that other person at the Sesame Street offices said, "Oh, probably a good parody of Les Miserables!"…

I've received quite a bit of mail on the topic of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" as discussed here. A number of folks referred to the song as being "banned," which I think is an incorrect term that muddies the issue. The song isn't being banned. Anyone can play it. A few radio stations have merely decided to not play it, which is absolutely their right even if their reason seems silly. If you and I ran a radio station, there would be hundreds of thousands of songs we would never play. I personally would never allow "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" by Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods.

But "Baby, It's Cold Outside" isn't being suppressed. In fact, I'll bet because of this inane controversy, ASCAP payments to Frank Loesser's estate for it will go up, not down. (By the way: Mr. Loesser is one of my all-time favorite creators of songs but if I ever assembled a CD of his 50 Greatest Hits, this tune would not be on it. Maybe on his 100 Greatest. He wrote a lot of great songs, most of them better than the one under discussion.)

Also, some people seem to have a problem with "Baby, It's Cold Outside" being passed off as a Christmas song. It isn't a Christmas song. It's a "cold weather outside" song. But this is an even more pointless debate than whether it's a song about rape.

Janet Ybarra sent me a link to a piece by Camilla Collar who feels that the song is really about "slut-shaming" — the social condemnation of a woman for having sex. Well, maybe if the lady in the song slept with the guy in the song and anyone else found out about it, yeah. Janet also writes…

I agree when you say we can consider time and intent, but also our cultural mores change over time and can sometimes draw lines on material once considered acceptable but now seen as racist or whatever…although I'm not necessarily saying that's what's happening.

I'd be curious as to what you think about The Honeymooners, which strikes some of us today (particularly those of us who have lived it) as portraying domestic violence. Now please realize I'm not saying we should keep people from the content but I certainly believe there is room for media criticism and analysis and asking the questions.

Also, would you ever have an interest ever again watching The Cosby Show, given what we now know of Bill Cosby? I don't.

Well, I watched The Cosby Show once back when its star was the most beloved TV dad ever and after that, I had no further interest in watching it. So in light of his new reputation, my interest in the show has gone from zero all the way down to zero. I did though once love his records and live performing and I Spy and even had a good opinion of the Fat Albert cartoon show…and I doubt I will ever get the pain of 50+ women far enough out of my head to again enjoy any of the Cosby stuff I liked. Sometimes, you can separate the art from the artist and sometimes, you just can't.

As for The Honeymooners: I loved that show. I still love that show…and I'm mainly referring to the classic thirty-nine half-hour episodes, which I think comprise one of the ten-or-so greatest TV shows ever done. The "Honeymooners" sketches and musicals that Mr. Gleason did before and after the thirty-nine were of varying quality — none of them as good but some of them rather entertaining.

I don't think any of it portrayed domestic violence except maybe when Ralph slammed his own thumb in a drawer. It portrayed a guy who occasionally threatened to send his wife "to the moon" via fist…and I think it's not insignificant that he didn't say "I'll beat the hell out of you." He made a cartoony threat because he was a cartoony guy on a cartoony show and his wife Alice never believed for one second he'd ever strike her or anyone. In fact, if it had ever come to fisticuffs between them, my money would have been on Alice. Ralph was no more likely to hit her than Rob Petrie was to smack Laura around or George Burns was to deck Gracie. As I recall, Ricky Ricardo actually did spank Lucy on at least one occasion.

Yeah, the threatened lunar launches are dated and a little uncomfy but I can't think of a sitcom where the husband loved his wife more than Ralph Kramden loved Alice. All of his crazy get-rich schemes were about trying to make a better life for that wonderful woman who'd paid him the supreme honor of marrying a fat loser like him. Maybe it's possible to view the threats as a reminder that couples do lose their tempers and say things they don't mean. "Forgiveness" was a big theme on that series. Ralph often needed forgiveness for his Big Ideas and his Bigger Mouth.

And you knew Ralph was a large-hearted soul because you saw how much he cared for her, and also because he had Norton. How could anyone who had Ed Norton as a best friend not be a good guy?

I think it's fine to criticize Ralph's fist-shaking and to wish it wasn't there. But sometimes, concern about such things remind me of a huge fight I had with ABC Standards and Practices back when I was doing the Richie Rich cartoon show. I have to rush off to an appointment right now but maybe I'll write about that later today or tomorrow. Thanks, Janet…and all of you who wrote.

Just in case anyone remembers Ross Perot at all, here's an 11-minute video that debunks the belief that if Perot hadn't run for president in 1992, George H.W. Bush would have won a second term and Bill Clinton would never have made it to the White House…or at least wouldn't have made it to the White House then. I'm not 100% certain.

It's true that exit polls showed pretty decisively that Perot did not take more votes from Bush than he took from Clinton…so in that sense, no, Perot did not cost Bush the election. But it is true that Bush's popularity was plunging during his last year in office…and maybe there's no way to measure this but I sure had the feeling Perot's speeches were contributing mightily to that plunge…

A number of readers of this blog have written to get my "take" on the controversy about the ol' Frank Loesser song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside." A couple of radio stations have decided to remove it from their playlists because they think it makes light of date rape. I think it kinda depends how you stage it. The same is true of the song "Take Back Your Mink" which Loesser wrote and included in the show, Guys and Dolls. You can find a lot of ugliness in songs if you want to interpret them that way.

But you have to consider the time and the intent…and this whole hoohah still ranks high on my "Who gives a damn?" list. So a couple of radio stations elect not to play it…or some theater decides not to stage The Vagina Monologues because someone there feels it might offend transsexuals. Being private businesses, radio stations and theaters have the right to play or not play — or produce or not produce — any song or play they choose for even the stupidest of reasons.

If they're uncomfortable with any work of art for any reason, fine. Let them choose something else. But let's not act like the government is banning something. Someone's (usually arguable) guess that it will upset someone might be cause for removing it from one venue. That's kind of the premise of most censorship movements…and I don't think self-censorship is a crime.

There are plenty of songs, books, movies, paintings (etc.) that get dated by changing tastes and morals and sensibilities. Drunks don't seem as funny to me as they once did. I don't think some depictions of minorities come across today the way they did once upon a time. The folks who don't want to play some song on their channel might be wrong that audiences won't be comfy with it but that's all they are…wrong. And a commercial endeavor has the right to be wrong.

The folks complaining about the non-playing of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" sound to me like the folks who get upset and scream there's a "War on Christmas!!!" when some store decides not to put a nativity scene in their front window this year. No one's stopping them from viewing a nativity scene a thousand other places and no one's stopping any of us from hearing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" a thousand other places.

Here — here's a link to hear the original 78 performed by Frank Loesser himself along with his wife Lynn. Lynn sure doesn't sound to me like she's being violated in it. If you feel she does…okay, maybe I'm wrong. But that's all I am: Wrong. And bloggers, perhaps more than anyone on this planet, have the right to be wrong. Some of us exercise that right to the fullest…

Day after tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday), our pal Stu Shostak does his annual Christmas Gift-Giving Guide on Stu's Show. It can be heard as an audio show online or watched as a video program online or on your Roku-enabled viewing device…like, say, a TV set. Why am I telling you this? Because I'll be his second guest on Wednesday, telling you all why the gift of love this year is one or more volumes of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips.

The show starts at 4 PM Pacific Time. I should be on around 4:45, give or take five minutes…and the other guests are worthy of your attention, as well. To find out how to listen or watch, go to the Stu's Show website where you will be presented with many options. I'll mention this again Wednesday morning.

Boy, she's amazing — Petula Clark, I mean. It's not polite to tell a lady's age but everyone in the house tonight knew she was 86 and while she doesn't sound exactly as good as she did in 1965 — how could she? — she sings way better than any of us in the audience were prepared to settle for. Not only that but she sang for about 100 minutes without an intermission or having her band play a number without her. She didn't even sit down and she doesn't look anywhere near 86 either.

And that's all the more remarkable when you consider that her professional singing career began when she was nine years old and her film debut was at age 12. None of this is humanly possible.

Tonight as part of a current tour, she performed before an audience that was just the right age to watch and listen as she topped the hit parade of the sixties with hit after hit. She sang most of 'em for us as well as tunes made famous by others plus some new offerings. There were also selections from Sunset Boulevard, Evita and the film version of Finian's Rainbow and by the time she got to "Downtown" (second from the end), every customer in the house had gotten exactly what they came for.

I had a great time. My friend Shelly had a great time. You'd have had a great time. I actually looked for you but you didn't seem to be there. Your loss.

This evening, my friend Shelly Goldstein and I are going to see the lady on the above album cover perform live. And if that lady doesn't sing the title song from that album, I'm going to make Shelly get up on stage and sing it…at least three times, plus a chorus or two of "I Know a Place."

So if anybody needs me tonight, I'll be in 1965. And before the show, I'm taking Shelly to dinner at a Howard Johnson's.