If, as one multiple Oscar winner once put it, comedy is tragedy plus time, then the timing around the Oscars felt very off to a lot of people on Sunday night. It has now been so long since the Oscars had a successful host (Billy Crystal in the 90s? Bob Hope in the 60s?) that complaining about the MC the day after the event – or on social media during the shindig – has become as traditional as the nausea induced by the acceptance speeches.

Yet even by the plummeting standards of the recent years, Seth MacFarlane can lay proud claim to being the most reviled host yet. He achieved the impressive feat of making Anne Hathaway and James Franco's effort two years ago look smooth; by comparison, Crystal blacking up last year looks tasteful. Even the august New Yorker felt compelled to run not one, but three blogs about MacFarlane's hosting effort the following day, in which he was described in very unaugust tones as "scrubby, self-satisfied and sexist", "a gross miscalculation" and (whatever would William Shawn say?) a "bitter asshole".

Yet MacFarlane was not the only criticised element of the night, which may well disappoint him, considering moral outrage appears to be his bread and butter. During the ceremony satirical newspaper the Onion tweeted, "Everyone else seems afraid to say it but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right?" For the first time ever, the Onion issued an official retraction and apology.

Part of the difficulty in discussing whether an attempt at humour is edgy or just infantile is that reactions to comedy are subjective – a fact that is oddly often forgotten by fans and critics. Few high-profile comedians inspire the kind of partisan reaction and tribal devotion as MacFarlane. I can't think of many topics – not feminism, not parenting, not even the controversial subject of animal hats – that have inspired such impassioned feedback as my dislike of MacFarlane's comedy, with reactions ranging from strong agreement to: "Take a hike and get someone who doesn't have an agenda to write a proper review." It is not surprising that MacFarlane's fans defend him so aggressively because aggressive, frattish, "if you don't get the joke you're a loser" humour is their idol's modus operandi. This was demonstrated in HD by his performance on Sunday, which, in short order, reduced female actors to "boobs" and riffed on domestic abuse, racism, antisemitism and the idea of a nine-year-old – who was sitting right there in the audience – dating George Clooney. His brain-bleedingly awful opening song about all the women in the audience whose breasts he has seen on screen was Page 3 in song and dance, reducing the women to their mammaries, and no claims of "irony" can get around that (the screengrab of Naomi Watts' rehearsed reaction to MacFarlane's song shows her seat neighbour taking his cue from the lyrics and looking down her dress). Perhaps the weirdest thing about it was that hardly any of MacFarlane's references were from recent years (The Accused?). By contrast, there have been plenty of penises on screen of late (Django Unchained, Shame), but the thought of MacFarlane crooning "We've seen your dick" is unimaginable. Because that would be totally gay, right?

His targets over the course of the night were women and minorities, which was par for the course seeing as he told the New Yorker last year that mocking women and minorities is his "guilty pleasure" and that "some people say stereotypes exist for a reason". MacFarlane, for the record, is 39 years old.

The Academy hired MacFarlane, a man with next-to-no presenting experience, because, despite the disastrous effort of Hathaway and Franco two years ago, it is still trying to give the Oscars youth appeal (presenters were forbidden from mentioning that this was the 85th Annual Academy Awards, for fear of making it sound fuddy duddy; only in LA do people worry that an event needs Botox). Numbers-wise, they succeeded: according to the ratings, there was a 19% rise among the valued 18-49-year-olds. Whether the powers that be think such a rise justified blatant misogyny remains to be seen. Seeing as women still make up only 23% of the Academy vote and won a mere nine out of 39 awards this year, they probably do.

Looking at the Onion's tweet, it is obvious that the paper was not defaming Wallis but mocking the way women are casually dissed on the internet by discussing the most adorable nominee of all time in the crudest possible manner. A nine-year-old child should never be called "a cunt", but at least the Onion was trying to make some kind of point, albeit hamfistedly.

No such claim can be made for MacFarlane. Comedy doesn't always have to have a message but it does if it's courting offense, especially if it's offensive about groups who are still in the minority; otherwise it's just gratuitous bullying. Equality in Hollywood isn't anywhere near imminent but it would be nice if, along the way, the biggest night in its calendar wasn't a big ol' festival of misogyny.

People find different things funny. But there comes a point in an evening when you realise you just watched a man joke to more than a billion people about the time a 20-year-old woman was beaten to unconsciousness and sung about all the boobs he has seen in various movie rape scenes. At that point you find yourself stooping to MacFarlane's level and the only thing to say is – you know what? This guy is just an asshole.