A 13th EGOT? A 3rd PEGOT? Maybe

Monday afternoon update #2: I was right, the red envelope was part of the problem. From cnn.com:

A 2016 Los Angeles Times story detailed one such precaution: the envelopes themselves. The names of the categories are printed on the outside to prevent confusion and the text used is "large enough for a presenter and cameras to read easily," the piece noted.

It's worth noting, however, that this year's envelope design was changed from gold paper with white labels to red paper with gold lettering -- considerably harder to read in dim backstage lighting.

Monday afternoon update: Miranda didn't win, but if he had, his accomplishment would be overshadowed by the Best Picture screw-up. Thoughts:



It's a 3 1/2 to 4 hour live broadcast, with lots of moving parts and lots of fallible human beings. It's a wonder screw-ups don't happen more often.

The red envelope with gold letters is striking but I'm guessing next year it will be a white envelope with large black letters.

Warren Beatty clearly knew something was wrong. Why didn't he ask for help? Showing the card to Faye Dunaway sure wasn't the way to solve the problem.

The headline currently at cnn.com calls this an "historic Oscar blunder" and the story includes "how this went down" and a moment-by-moment forensic analysis, which strikes me as overkill. This really isn't the most important thing that ever happened.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is 37, he's got time. He'll get that EGOT eventually.

Another accomplishment being overshadowed by the screw-up belongs to Viola Davis. She is only the 23rd person to win the "Triple Crown of Acting" (an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy) and the first African American women to do so.

Finally, as I've been known to say about stunts on The Bachelor, no way do I believe that "tourists on the bus" thing just happened. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure the participants would have had to sign legal releases before their faces could be shown on camera. The stunt was silly and it took too long, one of the reasons the show ran for more than 4 hours. Too much.

Original post:
If Lin-Manuel Miranda wins an Oscar tonight for Moana, he'll become the 13th member of the EGOT club - performers who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. There are currently 12 "pure" EGOT members, who won all four awards in competitive categories:

Richard Rodgers
Helen Hayes
Rita Moreno
John Gielgud
Audrey Hepburn
Marvin Hamlisch
Jonathan Tunick
Mel Brooks
Mike Nichols
Whoopi Goldberg
Scott Rudin
Robert Lopez

Barbra Steisand, Liza Minelli, James Earl Jones, Alan Menken and Harry Belafonte are also EGOT members, but in each case, one of their awards was "non-competitive," for example, the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian (Oscar) Award for Belafonte, and a Star of the Decade Special Tony Award for Streisand. Regardless, very elite company indeed.

If Miranda wins tonight, he'll also become just the third member of an even more exclusive club, the "PEGOT," in which the P stands for Pulitzer. Who else is in this rarefied company? Marvin Hamlisch (for A Chorus Line) and Richard Rodgers (for South Pacific.)