Why Do I Have to Be the One Who Defends the Academy?

People have been complainig all week about how boring the Oscars telecast was.
Yet one of the few entertaining bits in it, Jerry Seinfeld's irreverent lead-up to the documentary feature award, has gotten complaints from both documentary makers and theater owners.
The academy just can't win. I say it shouldn't bother to try.
The Oscar telecast has two conflicting agendas that simply cannot be reconciled. One, the actual awards are supposed to recognize outstanding achievement blah blah blah, and while the superficial majority of watchers may not find that very compelling in the cinematography or editing or - indeed, as Seinfeld joked - documentary categories, these are vital areas of film art, and quite frankly deserve as much awards attention as any overexposed actor does.
But the show is also the academy's major moneymaking enterprise. And as much as I deride the politicking and egomania and middlebrow self-importance that makes the Academy Awards a dubious yardstick of artistic excellence, the organization uses that money for all kinds of wonderful film preservation, research, education and celebration purposes that I whole-heartedly support.
So I want the show to do well, while also sticking to its main purpose. Not entertaining enough for ya? Well, if you want them to run the less-glamorous categories on some Saturday night Siberia program, why don't you just watch the People's Choice Awards every year and have done with it? If you're suggesting fewer interpretive dance sequences, I think we can all get behind cleverer or edgier presentation decisions.
Which, of course, will result in lots of hand-wringing by people who can't take a joke and the fervent telecast-haters who complain about every aspect of the show, regardless of how contradictory their specifics may be.
And it doesn't matter, really. This year's supposedly supertedious program's ratings were up. And Seinfeld is still the funniest guy this side of Borat.