Stewart hardly had a chance

When did hosting the Academy Awards become such a thankless task?

Jon Stewart is the latest victim of the Oscar curse. He was too cynical, too New York, went one school of thought.

No, he was too deferential, too reined in, argued others.

The one thing most agreed on: It didn’t work.

You just can’t win. Not when the standard for success is some idealized hybrid of Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. The job has become a recipe for disaster.

The only difference this year is that the carpers didn’t even wait until the first commercial to start shredding Stewart’s performance. The bloggers were on him like paparazzi on Anna Nicole Smith before he even finished his opening monologue.

Which, by the way, was hilarious. Stewart hadn’t even finished saying hello before he slipped in a deft gender-bender gag about Felicity Huffman. Then he started setting them up and smacking them down: Angelina Jolie – bam! Steven Spielberg – timber! Hollywood’s liberal slant – whammo!

So why did it go over in the Kodak Theatre like someone shouting profanities in a tabernacle?

The Oscar crowd is a glittering assemblage of the most obscenely paid, monumentally self-important individuals in the universe. Mock them at your peril.

“He was no Bob Hope or Billy Crystal,” Tom O’Neil, columnist for the awards show Web site TheEnvelope.com, says of Stewart. “He never did the most important part of his job, which is to hug the audience.

“(The Oscar host) is the ringmaster of Hollywood’s annual family reunion. You have to have this sense of amazement about the proceedings. Stewart didn’t give us that,” O’Neil says.

“There wasn’t the connection between the host and the audience there might have been in other years, with people like Whoopi Goldberg or Billy Crystal or Steve Martin,” says Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Filmmaking.

“When the host is part of the Hollywood community, their comedy panders to knowledge of the industry. When that happens, people in the audience laugh, and those laughs make it seem like it is doing well to those watching on television.”

Hope and Carson are held up as paragons of Oscar hosting. But let’s face it. That was a different era.

In modern times – that is, since 1990 – it’s been Crystal (eight times), Goldberg (four times) and Martin (twice).

Crystal’s Oscar reputation rides on the elaborate song-and-dance routines with which he would open the telecast.

The first time you change the lyrics to a well-known song, slipping in references to the year’s nominated movies, it’s clever. But after that, it starts to feel like a campus comedy troupe’s spring revue.

Every once in a while, the academy will go for someone genuinely amusing, like David Letterman, Chris Rock or Stewart. Inevitably, these Hollywood outsiders will be judged harshly in the press the following day.

Letterman was mocked unmercifully for his “Uma, Oprah … Oprah, Uma” jibe in 1995. But I found that wordplay, like the rest of his observations that night, first-rate.

Last year, Rock was pilloried for riffing on the lack of real star power in today’s films. Were the comments insulting to Tobey Maguire and Jude Law? Yes, but they were also rather daring and absolutely true – qualities that are unforgivable in Hollywood.

Now it’s Stewart’s turn.

“It’s hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year’s Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by,” wrote Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales.

Frazier Moore, the TV writer for The Associated Press, ripped Stewart on numerous fronts, singling out his joke about Bjork, famous for her swan gown, being shot while trying on her Oscar dress by Vice President Cheney.

“Tiresome squared. Huh?” Moore huffed.

Really? I nearly did a spit take – in fact, I laughed often during the night, as when Stewart followed a pompous montage on cinema’s bravery in confronting societal problems with: “And none of those issues were ever a problem again.”

His taped segments mocking the nominees with campaign ads were inspired and reflected “The Daily Show” host’s wry political bent. But dry and smart obviously don’t cut it on Hollywood’s big night.

Did Stewart appear a little stiff and nervous? Well, yes. But that’s a pretty intimidating room. With clubby expectations.

“Stewart was helplessly miscast, to put it in Hollywood terms,” O’Neil says. “He presided with some dignity and class and coolness, but he will not be invited back.”

For which he should thank his lucky stars.