Academy awards

Sunday night is Oscar night, from the red carpet in the early evening to the white line in the small hours. The Oscars, like the most of the members of the Academy, have seen better days. Audience shares are down, and it no longer seems possible to find presenters who can read jokes from an autocue, or, in the case of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in 2017, read the Best Picture winner’s name correctly. This year, it wasn’t even possible to find a presenter. Kevin Hart would have been a great host — unlike most actors in Hollywood, he’s capable of ad libbing, and he can also move the muscles of his face. But Hart was culled on grounds of political correctness.

Anyone who has blinked in the last week may have missed the tenure of Kevin Hart as 2019 Academy Awards host. Mere hours after the diminutive comic was ruminating over the ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ on his Instagram, his waxen wings melted in the scorching heat of the Twittersphere and he crashed to earth. The source of the public’s ire? Some of Hart’s tweets from the earlier days of the website, surfaced by a BuzzFeed reporter. ‘Yo why does @DamienDW profile pic look like a gay bill board for AIDS..........Booom, I’m on fire tonight,’ one says.