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“When it gets down to around 20 entries, just by entering, you have a one in five chance of being nominated,” said Bill Freimuth, the academy’s vice president for awards. “That’s not as competitive as we’d like these awards to be.”

Really? And what kind of competition is there for "best spoken word" (which encompasses everything from poets, historical recordings, comedy, drama, oh yeah and liberals' books on tape):

Grammy Awards of 2009
Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood for An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It by Al Gore
Grammy Awards of 2008
Barack Obama for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Grammy Awards of 2007
Jimmy Carter for Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis; and
Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee for With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together (Tie)
Grammy Awards of 2006
Barack Obama for Dreams from My Father
Grammy Awards of 2005
Bill Clinton for My Life
Grammy Awards of 2004
Paul Ruben (producer) & Al Franken for Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
Grammy Awards of 2003
Charles B. Potter (producer) & Maya Angelou for A Song Flung Up to Heaven
Grammy Awards of 2002
Jeffrey S. Thomas, Steven Strassman (engineers) & Elisa Shokoff (producer) & Quincy Jones for Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
Grammy Awards of 2001
Rick Harris, John Runnette (producers) & Sidney Poitier for The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
Grammy Awards of 2000
LeVar Burton for The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Grammy Awards of 1999
Christopher Reeve for Still Me
Grammy Awards of 1998
Charles Kuralt for Charles Kuralt's Spring
Grammy Awards of 1997
Hillary Rodham Clinton for It Takes a Village
Grammy Awards of 1996
Maya Angelou for Phenomenal Woman
Grammy Awards of 1995
Henry Rollins for Get in the Van
Grammy Awards of 1994
Maya Angelou for On the Pulse of Morning
Grammy Awards of 1993
Earvin "Magic" Johnson & Robert O'Keefe for What You Can Do to Avoid AIDS
Grammy Awards of 1992
Ken Burns for The Civil War
Grammy Awards of 1991
George Burns for Gracie - A Love Story
Grammy Awards of 1990
Gilda Radner for It's Always Something
Grammy Awards of 1989
Jesse Jackson for Speech by Rev. Jesse Jackson
Grammy Awards of 1988
Garrison Keillor for Lake Wobegon Days