"It helps to either be coked up or in your 40s and 50s to truly love Caddyshack."

Would you care for 60s?

I think Maher was pointing out, rightfully, that the Academy Awards, much like the other Awards shows, have become too self-congratulatory and/or - dare I say it - boring.

The again, the Oscars have always been boring. Hell, I'm still pissed off that Robin Williams didn't get nominated for "Moscow On The Hudson," and Teri Garr didn't win for "Tootsie."

I've seen two of the nominated movies. "Judas" was a reminder, as if we need such reminders, that J. Edgar and History's Yard Waste are still scumbags, no matter how long they've been dead and "Chicago 7" is a perversely funny (thanks to Sascha Barron Cohen's portrayal of Abbie Hoffman and Sorkin's fleshing out the behind-the-scenes fixing done by both the Johnson and Nixon administrations) in showing that not much has changed in American jurisprudence.

Maher's greater gaffe, in my view, was in his opening monologue when he bombed on a joke about Prince Phillip. Even his hand-picked audience didn't like it. The rest of the show wasn't half bad.

Remember, too that upon release, Caddyshack got skewered so bad that one of its writers killed himself. Talk about a Hollywood ending.