No one had a wittier response to the Academy Awards' rating debacle than Jon Stewart himself. On his first night back from the Oscars, the comic played a good-humored foil to The Daily Show's droll Brit correspondent John Oliver as he sent out the word that two years ago, Stewart gave a basic-cable performance for a world audience; this year he gave a world-class performance for a cable-sized audience. 

I continue to think the Oscars would do well to embrace Stewart's breeziness and let it aerate the rest of the show, but if it continues to be this lumbering hybrid of glitz and gravitas, I can see only one contemporary comic who could cover all the bases: Martin Short. But Short may worry the producers too much: This is one imp who can't be kept in a bottle.