Oscars: Watch Sacha Baron Cohen Spills Kim Jong-Il On Ryan Seacrest

The world didn't implode. Oscar Night wasn't ruined forever. And for a change, something legitimately amusing happened on the ????? Theater red carpet.

After much fuss, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at last relented and let Sacha Baron Cohen - invited representing Paramount Pictures' Best Picture nominee "Hugo" - walk the red carpet in costume as Adm. Gen. Shabazz Aladeen, the titular tyrant of the upcoming "The Dictator." The Academy was concerned not only that the notoriously outrageous Cohen would distract from the prestige of the ceremony and award-winners, but that letting him dress in character would be allowing unfair promotion of his (and Paramount's) forthcoming comedy.

For what it's worth, it's not the first time the Academy has given Cohen the cold shoulder. The Academy asked him to present in 2007, but he declined when he was informed that he couldn't present as his boorish Kazakhstani reporter persona, Borat.

The very worst act committed by Cohen walking the red carpet? Well, he made sure that pre-show correspondent and "American Idol" show-pony Ryan Seacrest would bring one of recent history's more notorious dictators home with him - on his tux, and probably straight up his sinuses, too.

Have a look below, and tell us in the Comments section: could this be Cohen's most hilarious, character since Borat? His most inflammatory? And finally, was all the fuss by the Academy really worth it?