Conservative Media Attacks "Phony," "Divisive" Oscar Broadcast

"What was offensive was the in-your-face politics at every corner," said Breitbart editor Alex Marlow.

Across radio and television on Monday, conservative media personalities lashed out at Sunday night's broadcast of the 90th Academy Awards.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, on his radio show on Monday afternoon, gleefully pointed out several times that the broadcast was down in viewership compared to last year's broadcast. (Hannity said he watched the broadcast to kill time while waiting for Homeland to come on.)

"All this #MeToo, Time's Up, I've never seen such hypocrisy in my entire lifetime," Hannity said. "The people of this country, they get it. Hollywood doesn't get it. The people get it, and they're tired of the hypocrisy." (He suggested that Hollywood has, in the past, embraced Roman Polanski despite accusations against him.)

Hannity connected the ubiquity of armed security at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday night to Hollywood's embrace of gun control measures in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Florida.

"It wasn't a 'gun-free zone' at the Oscars," he said mockingly. He added, "I didn't see, thank God, any shootings at the Oscars last night."

On the Breitbart News radio show on Monday morning, editor Alex Marlow also accused Hollywood and the mainstream media of hypocrisy.

"The Left wants to act like the Right is divisive and Trump is divisive," Marlow said. "This was the most divisive Oscars ever. There was politics around every corner."

Marlow and his guest, an executive at the conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center, agreed that Oscar-winning movies like The Darkest Hour and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri were not the problem.

"The winner's not offensive," Marlow said. "What was offensive was the in-your-face politics at every corner, and the obsession with race, the obsession with ethnicity, sexual orientation."

The cast of Fox News morning show Fox & Friends argued that host Jimmy Kimmel's jokes were too political and too negative. "Jimmy Kimmel is basically Chuck Schumer with a sense of humor,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said, comparing the comedian to the Senate minority leader. "I could not get through it."

Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, on his digital platform for subscribers, said he didn't watch the broadcast "because phonies on parade has zero appeal for me."

"Spare me the Oscar telecast where artistic achievement has been replaced by idiotic bombast and shallow posturing," he said. "That’s not entertainment."