Timothy King’s grandson is 7 and enamored with skeletons. So King told him the joke about skeletons. “How do skeletons call one another?” he asked. “They use the tele-bone.” Guffaw. Roll your eyes.

This year's Academy Awards brought out the biggest names in Hollywood for a night of fun and mutual back-slapping. Even under the shadow of a highly publicized diversity controversy, the show was ...