If it seemed like everyone was ganging up on James Franco, Anne Hathaway, and the Oscars yesterday, it’s because they were. In one of many brutal takedowns, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers said, “The stirrings I felt from the 83rd annual Oscar show made me want to puke. How could so many stars bore so many people breathless?” Few critics could find anything positive to say about the ceremony, and many echoed the same declaration of “Worst Oscars Ever.” But that phrase may sound familiar – it’s been summoned on several occasions in years past (it’s also somewhat accepted that 1989′s show was really the worst ever). Here, a look at how reviewers of the annual spectacle have summoned the same refrain:

We’ve mentioned a couple of times on this blog before the New York Times reporter Nazila Fathi, who during the protests over the Iran election this past June was often the only reporter on the ground reporting for the Times. Now she too has departed.