The morning after the Academy Awards, I’ll hand out my own!

We’ll start with Jennifer Lawrence who won the Oscar for Best Actress.  Good for her.  Although she was great in the movie, I just like her.  I like her even more after seeing her flip someone off in the press room after winning last night.

My awards from last night also go to Shirley Bassey for her “Goldfinger” performance, and the “We Saw Your Boobs” song.  It was funny.  People need to get a sense of humor.

The “No More, Please” award goes to the red carpet crap. I honestly don’t care “who you’re wearing” or how awesome your stylist, hair and makeup people are – and it’s pretty sad to think that enough of us do care to continue this ostentatious parade every year.

But the “Enough is Enough” award goes to Ryan Seacrest.  Seriously.

The “You Really Fucked Up, but Then Did the Right Thing Award” goes to the usually reliably funny twitter account of The Onion. Whomever had tweeting responsibilities during the Oscars really stepped in it with a vile tweet about the adorable, youngest-Best- Actress-nominee-ever with the unpronounceable name.   I won’t repeat it here, as it was that ugly.  You know what it was.  But during the show this morning, The Onion’s CEO posted a real apology on their Facebook page:

Dear Readers,

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

Sincerely,

Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion

A good lesson on humility and apologies for kids…

Now on to more important awards.  The big one goes to The Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation.  The people who brought us ALEC Exposed have hit another grand slam with the Peterson Pyramid (although the name doesn’t explain it as succinctly).   CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves joined me for most of the first hour this morning to pull the curtain back from the “Fix the Debt” campaign and expose if for the corporate shill, astroturf group that it is.

It starts with Pete Peterson, who is spending billions to save the tax breaks for billionaires and take crumbs from seniors and the poor, and this graphic:

I encourage you to listen to the interview and visit PetersonPyramid.org for lots more information including who is behind this and what they’re trying to do, and help spread the word.  Our future is truly at stake.

After a news update from Victoria Jones at the Talk Radio News Service it was time for our weekly look back at what we were subjected to on the Sunday talking head shows.

Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars joins me every Monday morning for the award winning segment Fools on the Hill… Today, she brought us this:

Welcome to “The media is everything wrong with this country” Part the infinity.

You know, the media that inadvertently admits that they are impugning Chuck Hagel’s competence…er, I mean, questioning his competence.

Or lets Sen. Tom Coburn say that rather than strengthen background checks (which is universally more popular among the left and the right), Congress should just ‘eliminate recordkeeping’ on guns in the US.

Or lets Grampy McCain (who is on for the third Sunday in a row) say that he loves his townhall meetings and not bring up that he called an attendee a “jerk”.

Or whine about not knowing about the President playing golf because it’s all about their access.

And then there’s the Oscars. Which conservatives love to scoff at, although they still watch it. George Will actually believed that absent any evidence, Zero Dark Thirty would win Best Picture, to teach those Democrats like Levin and Feinstein a lesson. Because that’s exactly how the Academy thinks.