Ken Levine is an Emmy-award-winning teevee writer with a great blog. In his excellent post about this year’s Oscars, he gives some valuable and entirely logical (when you think about the business of entertainment for 12 seconds, that is) insight into why the writing for awards shows tends to be pretty lousy:

I’ve never written for the Oscars, but from what I know it’s a Kamikaze mission. Unless you’re a writer who has creative say in the direction of the show you’re just a punching bag.

Let’s say you’re writing a bit for two presenters. You have to have the material approved by the producers, the Academy, probably the network, the actors, their manager, agent, and in all likelihood – their hair stylist. And if it’s for two actors, one might like it and the other doesn’t. You change it to suit the one and now the other doesn’t like it. Then they both decide they want to change it. And their hairstylists get into it. Before you know it, what is left is a horrible, grotesque, painfully unfunny bit and you’re still considered the writer. Actors also sometimes bring on their own writers to “work” with you. And by writers, that could mean their Pilate teacher or life coach. You have three Emmys and now you need your material approved by a Yoga instructor.

And after that, the actor can’t read a teleprompter or remember a line and what results is a trainwreck. Congratulations. You’re still the writer-of-record.

Ah, showbiz!

Read the full post here. Then bookmark Ken’s blog.

Can the books come out and play?

Al Hirt.

Let’s take a few minutes and remember how great Gilda Radner was. In this instance, as Roseanne Rosannadanna. (Sorry for the preroll ad.)

Did you watch the State of the Union last night? If so, you might be interested in comparing and contrasting what President Obama said about the economy with what President Kennedy said 50 years ago.