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The final poster for The Muppets.

Some good may come of this after all. Brett Ratner may go down as the best terrible use of a gay slur now that Eddie Murphy quit as the host of the Oscars today. For a guy whose dream job is directed a film adaptation of Wicked, Ratner really put his foot in it. By the way, in addition to saying something really offensive about what is understood to be a core audience for something like Wicked, directing a musical would require a ton of rehearsal. That makes Ratner probably the worst choice possible for something like that.

Brian Grazer is the new producer, and there are a lot of pretty good options in front of him for replacement hosts. Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, and past hosts like Billy Crystal, Hugh Jackman, and Steve Martin are getting tossed around on Twitter. Some of those may be great, but there’s an even better choice out there that’s gaining traction. With ABC, a Disney corporation, broadcasting this year’s ceremony, The Muppets must be the hosts for the 2012 Academy Awards.

Cinematical, Movies.com, HitFix, and others have all weighed in on the groundswell of social media popularity for this idea. HitFix even talked to The Muppets director Nick Stoller, who said that three months would be enough time for the production staff to make a Muppets-hosted Oscars work.

Just over a year ago, when the Jason Segel-penned script that would become The Muppets was working its way around and filling out its cast, they offered the female lead to Amy Adams. She was choosing between three different movies at that point, the other two being Cameron Crowe’s We Bought A Zoo with Matt Damon, and Spielberg protégé Alex Kurtzman’s directorial debut Welcome to People with new Captain Kirk, Chris Pine. Do you know why she turned down those other movies in favor of The Muppets? BECAUSE NOBODY TURNS DOWN THE MUPPETS!

Can you imagine the list of presenters or cameos in an Academy Awards ceremony emceed by The Muppets? How amazingly star-studded would that opening montage video be? Dom DeLuise, Tim Curry, Mel Brooks, Michael Caine, Cloris Leachman, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor all had parts in previous Muppet films. Orson fucking Welles was in The Muppet Movie. Nobody turns down the Muppets.

You know when politicians get in the mood to reassert their feelings on an issue we all can unequivocally agree on, like being against terrorism or child pornography? Liking the Muppets is one of those things, one of those absolute certainties. There are people out there who do not prefer Muppets, for whom The Muppet Show and the Muppet films aren’t very funny. These people are Scrooges. Far more people from all four demographic quadrants of television viewers would tune in to watch this band of variety show veterans than watched the lamest Academy Awards ever with Franco and Hathaway last year.

The other hosts that have been bandied about, like Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Fallon, Ricky Gervais are great personalities and would be fine choices. Personally, I thought Seth Myers would be a pretty good idea, after his gigs at the White House Correspondents Dinner and the ESPYs. But here are the obvious roadblocks to any of those popular, well-deserving candidates:

  • Fallon and Myers work for NBC, and the Academy Awards are on ABC.
  • Gervais’ attitude and acerbic wit was perfect for the Golden Globes, a mockery of a legitimate awards show, but they wouldn’t fit right for the Oscars
  • Neil Patrick Harris works for CBS, and has hosted the Emmys and Tonys, and he’d be the perfect combination of potential hosts like Hugh Jackman and Fallon, but other than How I Met Your Mother, his newest project is A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas.

If you haven’t been reading Erik Adams’ reviews of the first season of The Muppet Show over at The A.V. Club, then you’re missing out. They’re a fantastic look back at a show that was on well before I was born, but caught up on over the course of my childhood. I have a stuffed Kermit the Frog somewhere in the closet of my childhood bedroom. I frequently use Fozzy Bear’s line “wakka, wakka, wakka” the dismay of many friends. I grew up watching The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and Muppet Babies on VHS all the time.

Everything is there: the variety show format, the timing, the mass appeal. Everyone who has heard this story can construct easy bits for Fozzy, Gonzo, Dr. Teeth, Miss Piggy, Rolf, Kermit, and others throughout the night. If Brian Grazer has his head screwed on right, he’ll take this movement seriously and consider breaking with the horrific downward trends of recent years and get the Muppets to host the Oscars.