As you may have heard, an Academy Award nomination for the title song from the movie “Alone Yet Not Alone” has been rescinded. Naturally, even the Motion Picture Academy lacked the nerve to say it was because the song and the low-budget film promoted Christian values. Instead, they insisted it was because emails had been used to help promote the song to Academy voters. That’s the sort of bald-faced lie that should even have secular liberals in Hollywood chuckling.

The fact is that everyone in Hollywood campaigns for nominations and awards. It would take a Jesuit to explain why it is okay to mail DVDs to voters and to take out any number of ads in the Hollywood trade papers, but employing the far less expensive alternative of emails is strictly verboten.

The irony is that the person who sings the song, Joni Eareckson Tada, is the sort of person Hollywood loves to make schmaltzy movies about. A quadriplegic, Ms. Tada taught herself to paint by holding a paint brush between her teeth, and is also an author and inspirational speaker. I can assure one and all that her appearance at the Academy Awards would have been far likelier to stop the show than any of the over-produced laser-enhanced dance numbers they come up with year after year, courtesy of choreographer Debbie Allen.

I suppose there are still some people who don’t believe that Hollywood is at war with Christianity, just as there are those who are convinced that Islam’s war with western civilization is a fantasy concocted by conservatives.

Over at NBC, somebody should tell Bob Costas that when you’re 62, your toupee should have at least a smidgen of gray in it. But the rug aside, Mr. Costas actually spent several minutes of air time smooching Vladimir Putin’s heinie. Unless he feared being tossed in a gulag while covering the Olympics, there is no explaining why he felt compelled to describe Putin as a peacekeeper who has done God’s work in Syria and Iran. Fox’s Kimberly Guilfoyle summed it up as “a gigantic man crush.” But it may be something as simple as both of them being opposed to the Second Amendment.

Russia’s deputy prime minister announced they had surveillance cameras in hotel bathrooms that showed tourists were turning on their showers, aiming them at the walls and then leaving the room. Later, Russia’s version of Jay Carney said he had been mistranslated. My initial reaction is that nobody has ever mistranslated “surveillance cameras.” My second reaction after having seen the toxic waste coming out of those showerheads was surprise that the walls survived the chemical blast.

As for Putin, he spent several billion rubles in order to introduce the new Russia to the world, proving only that, one, he is as adept at wasting other people’s money as Barack Obama and, two, that the new Russia apparently looks and smells a lot like the old Russia. The only thing that ever changes over there is the name of the dictator.

Speaking of he who is the most dangerous demagogue in American history, Obama and his favorite henchman, Eric Holder, have rolled out the red, white and blue carpet to those people from the swamps of the Middle East who have “only a tangential connection to terrorists.” The question that leaps to mind isn’t how and who decides the difference between actual terrorists and those who merely aid and abet them, but why on earth do we need additional immigrants from nations that breed jihadists the way Holland breeds tulips?

What’s more, there has been found to be fraud involved in 70% of the cases involving political asylum, most notably in the case of the Boston-bombing Tsarnaevs.

Proving that the world doesn’t exactly quake in fear when Obama speaks, no sooner had the Pipsqueak-in-Chief called for North Korea to release Reverend Kenneth Bae than the poor guy was promptly transferred from a hospital to a labor camp.

On the other hand, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, in one of those rare inspiring moments in the world of diplomacy, apparently said, “F— the European Union!”

Inasmuch as the two things one can safely say about the EU is that Germany, France, Spain and its other spineless members are willing to kiss Iran’s heinie and will take every opportunity to collude with Arabs and Muslims against Israel, I would love to see her replace her boss, John Kerry, who could then be retired once and for all to stud duty at a horse ranch.

By the way, she made her remark during a private phone call to our ambassador to the Ukraine, a conversation that was tapped by the Russians. It makes you wonder if the Russkies also have any of those pesky surveillance cameras in Ms. Nuland’s bathroom.

In the wake of the government report that ObamaCare will eliminate well over two million jobs, the Democrats rushed to spin the news, telling us that all those people would be free to pursue their dreams, unless, of course, their dreams consisted of having a fulltime job and making a decent living.

It is merely the latest case of life imitating art, in this case a comic strip. “The Wizard of Id” ran a strip a while back in which the little wizard is standing on his balcony, addressing the crowd below. He says, “Elect me and I promise you free health care, free housing, free clothing and free food stamps! And jobs for everybody! Any questions?” “Yes,” responds a voice from below, “what do we need jobs for?”

In Obama’s America, the short answer is that half of us need to keep working so that the freeloading half that vote for Democrats needn’t bother.

Starting on Wednesday, March 12th, at 1 p.m. (PST), I will debut my new weekly one-hour show on Hollywood Talk Radio, found at 4khd.com. The call in number will be (225)209-6188. The topics will mainly focus on politics, but will be dictated by the callers and I’m certain will include movies, TV and baseball.