I've seen things down in the tunnels. A rat giving a 20-minute acceptance speech for finding half a bagel. A raccoon thanking his agent. But even I wasn't ready for what two comedians just exposed about Hollywood award shows.

David Spade and Dana Carvey sat down for their "Fly on the Wall" podcast and said the quiet part out loud. Hollywood can't hand out a trophy without first reading the winner's demographic paperwork.

Spade laid out the evidence, as reported by Fox News Digital. At award shows, he said, he keeps hearing announcers add the history lesson. "The first in 30 years," and so on.

"I wish they would quit saying that," Spade said. "If you just say we're all actors... we're all just the same. We're all acting."

Somewhere in Burbank, a diversity consultant clutched a lanyard.

Then Carvey delivered the closing argument. When he won his Emmy, he joked, they announced he was the "198th straight white male that has won this award."

That's the bit. That's the whole investigation. Hollywood has turned the envelope into a census form.

Picture the modern award show. The envelope opens. The presenter reads the name, then the stats, then the footnotes, then the historical context. By the time they get to the actual movie, the orchestra has played the winner off, the stage manager has gone home, and the film has been canceled by a streaming service.

Back when he worked on the NBC sitcom "Just Shoot Me" from 1997 to 2003, he said, they would tell him whenever a woman was directing that week.

"Female director," he said. "It feels like a little, not condescending, but a little diminishing."

Imagine you're a director. You went to film school. You survived a decade of 4 a.m. call times. And the set introduces you like a weather advisory.

Carvey agreed that "female director" is "a funny thing to say." He's right. Nobody walks on set and announces "male director." They just say "the director" and then complain about his lunch order.

Here's what's cooking down in the tunnels. The people who invented this habit think they're celebrating everyone. Then they spend the whole ceremony sorting everyone.

And the industry has bigger problems than its announcer scripts. Earlier this year, Spade complained on the same podcast that "the Hollywood industry is dying," and he even mentioned that the old CBS Radford lot he used to work on had filed for bankruptcy. Mayor Karen Bass's office pushed back at the time, pointing to slashed filming fees and more than 120 sound stages under construction.

So the stages are getting built. Great. Now someone needs to fill them with a movie people want to see, instead of a press release about who made it.

Meanwhile, regular people just want a good show. Meet Carla, a dental hygienist in Fresno who paid $17.99 for a streaming service this month. She doesn't care about the history-making demographic milestone of the third assistant editor. She cares whether the detective catches the guy before she falls asleep.

Down here in the tunnels, we hand out one award a year. Best Rat. Nobody reads a bio. Nobody mentions a first. The winner just grabs the cheese and runs.

Hollywood could learn from that. Read the name, hand over the trophy, and let the 199th winner just be a winner.

This article is satire from The Demorat. It's based on reporting by Fox News Digital and on public comments David Spade and Dana Carvey made on their "Fly on the Wall" podcast, and it's written for comedy.

The real story that inspired this