THAT was a performance, as opposed to what we’ve seen from Streep for the last two decades.

I have a very simple rule when it comes to acting: If I notice the acting, if I see the strings — you’re doing it wrong. If you break the spell and take me out of the film with all your “technique” — you’re doing it wrong. If I notice your accent — you’re doing it wrong.  Patrick Swayze’s performance in “Road House” was ten-times better than almost anything Streep’s done since 1998. That’s not a joke, either. Swayze was more convincing, and that’s what true acting is really about. The rest is nothing more than bait for foo-foo critics and shallow Academy voters.

Anyway, here’s a wrinkle in Streep’s march to another trophy:

A Weinstein Company email that appears to skirt AMPAS campaign rules by using a third party to reach Oscar voters has stirred up anger among Academy members and rival campaigners.

But the email does not violate Academy regulations, AMPAS COO Ric Robertson told TheWrap on Tuesday. One of the organization’s campaign rules, he said, “allows for media entities to send such things to valid subscribers who’ve opted into being a subscriber.”

The email in question, which went out on Tuesday morning, is not part of Weinstein’s aggressive Best Picture campaign on behalf of “The Artist,” but instead promotes Meryl Streep’s Best Actress candidacy for “The Iron Lady.”

It was sent as a third-party advertisement by the Hollywood Reporter’s parent company, Prometheus Global Media, to THR subscribers, some of whom are Academy members.

Headed “From: The Weinstein Company: The Iron Lady,” its subject line reads “Exclusive Meryl Streep Video.”

The email contains a “for your consideration” ad with an embedded link. The ad is headed with a Thelma Adams quote – “It’s been TWENTY-NINE YEARS SINCE MERYL STREEP WON AN OSCAR and she certainly deserves to win for her performance in ‘The Iron Lady’!” – and then contains a link to a video interview with Streep on the Weinstein website.

The interview is moderated by Pete Hammond, who mentions the 29-year gap in his introduction and says, “Something has to be done about that!”

The rest of the article amounts mainly to push-back from the Weinstein Company:

“It seems that every time TWC is innovative there is always some jealous competitor who… comes out of the woodwork.”

It’s all inside-insidery that only helps to illuminate how bent leftists get at the thought of unbridled competition. These self-imposed rules surrounding Oscar campaigns are famously absurd (at least in the real world):

Academy campaign rule number four specifically prohibits emails that “extol the merits of a film, an achievement or an individual,” emails that contain references to past awards, and links to websites that promote an eligible film.

Rule five adds that references or links to websites are only allowed if the website contains basic screening information, with no promotion or “photographic, audio, video, graphical and other multimedia elements.”

The subtext is: Please, heavens, no, don’t make me compete! I can’t stand the pressure! And as a result, you have the Weinsteins pushing for every advantage they can, and frequently benefiting from it.

Isn’t that right “Private Ryan?”

I have varied tastes, having argued the merits of gross-out comedy vs. Oscar bait type of movies. Everyone I met in the movie business claimed “Election” was their favorite movie of 1999, and the only person I met who had actually seen “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” was Rob Schneider’s agent. And he was lukewarm about it.

Total worldwide box office take for “Election” = $16M ($14.8M Domestic).

Total worldwide box office take for “Deuce Bigalow” = $92M ($65M Domestic).

Not bashing either movie; I love them both. But you can see a discrepancy.

Anyway, the nominees for Best Picture:

“Gladiator” – Saw this at the pre-ArcLight Cinerama Dome and was blown away. Still have to watch it on TNT at least one of the thirty-eight times a month they play it.

“Erin Brockovich” – One of my favorite genres: Movies that suck on paper but are actually really good. I never expected the movie to be as funny as it is. Albert Finney wuz robbed.

“Traffic” - The crowd where I saw it at the General Cinema AVCO Center in West L.A. booed Orrin Hatch’s cameo. Childish? Yes. Hilarious? Hells yes. Really like the movie a lot.

“Chocolat” - Wait, what?

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” – Ang Lee brings high wire kung fu to the masses.

WHAT SHOULDA BEEN NOMINATED?

“Erin Brockovich” - You know why everyone thinks that all lawyers are backstabbing bloodsucking scumbags? Because they are!

“Memento” - I told my boss about your condition and stuff, and he said try and rent him another room.

“Almost Famous” - They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.

“Traffic” - Is this like freebasing? No, not like. It is.

“Gladiator” - It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed.

WHAT SHOULDA WON

“Erin Brockovich” wins by a nose for me. The truth behind the movie doesn’t bother me so much because unlike in the case of, say, “Fair Game” (this one, not this one), the filmmakers sought to make an entertaining movie. The liberal agenda was not the focus of the movie. Furthermore, an argument could be made that it’s not a liberal movie at all.

Soderbergh finally took a stab at a mainstream Hollywood movie with 1998’s “Out of Sight,” which didn’t find the audience it deserved. 1999 saw him return to edgier fair with “The Limey,” a fractured crime drama with a great performance by Terrence Stamp. Was he as good in “The Limey” as he was in “The Phantom Menace?” I’m not sure. Chancellor Valorum is a character that will be remembered for-never.

“Erin Brockovich” has no business being as good as it is. The key to me is the humor. It’s a really funny movie with a great central character. Julia Roberts tears into the title role, and she has the perfect foil in Albert Finney, who plays a rumpled, somewhat frazzled attorney who’s just never met anyone like the snarky, bitchy Erin.

I worked in a movie theatre in Austell, Georgia in 1999. It was the type of theatre where “Election” bombed and “Deuce Bigalow” made bank. At least half of the people who bought tickets for “Notting Hill” did so as follows: “Two for the Julia Roberts movie.”

If you question Julia Roberts’ talent, fine, we can disagree. But she was, at the time, a pure movie star. Consider the poster: her. Sneering. In sunglasses. With a baby slung on her hip.

Movie. Star. She is such a big star that when “Duplicity” bombed, no one thought to ask if it was because Clive Owen isn’t a movie star. Sexist Fair or not, the movie’s failure was placed entirely on her shoulders. Audiences were rejecting her, not Clive Owen. I guess that makes sense.

She’s never been better than in “Erin Brockovich,” stepping just outside her comfort zone to play a woman who’s sometimes tough to like. But we like her anyway because (a) Julia Roberts plays her and (b) she says things many of us wish we had the nerve to say. And she’s funny.

It’s not a perfect movie. This wasn’t a great year for movies. But Soderbergh, screenwriter Susannah Grant, and Julia take a very standard story that could have been a preachy, weepy, Lifetime movie and make it a funny crowd pleaser by turning the template for this type of movie on its ear. Time after time, this is what Soderbergh excels at doing, from “Traffic” to “Oceans Eleven,” he defies and winks at genre conventions, which – when he’s on — sets his movies apart from others in their respective genres.

Maybe, but it’s hard to see why.

There was a time when the Academy Awards were an institution, where the nation devoured the nominations and joined together around their TV sets to watch the show itself.  It was fun – the whole family watched.  But that time is rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror of American culture.

It’s more than the fact that there are, literally, other things to watch while in the past the other two networks bowed to the inevitable and counter-programmed with “Mannix” reruns.  But the ratings are now in freefall.  We don’t care about Oscar because Oscar stopped caring about us.

Let’s look at the Best Picture nominees:  “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Help,” “Moneyball,” “War Horse” and “The Tree of Life.” For many of these, that’s the first time anyone has looked at them – only three of these movies are even nearly within even the loosest definition of a “hit.”

“The Help,” which has its fans but struck many as another movie about plucky white folks rescuing blacks, thereby making its nomination a certainty, made about $170 million. “Moneyball” and “War Horse” made about $75 and $72 million respectively. And the rest of the nominees? They’re coming soon to one of those supermarket bargain DVD bins near you.

Hollywood defaults to the darlings of the urban elite – I’m doubting “The Tree of Life’s” mopey, soul-searching spiritual journey through time and space and Sean Penn’s soul did a lot of business outside of hipster-infested coastal cities where neo-beatnik audiences in skinny jeans snapped their fingers in approval of the groovy insights Terrance Malick flashed on screen in the place traditionally filled with things like ”a plot,” “action” and “a point.”

The presence of Tom Hanks and its high-falutin’ literary heritage are the only things selling “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” – but America isn’t buying.  It’s made just $12 million. I guess 9/11-related journeys of self-discovery are a hard sell. And I guess the only people who don’t get that live in Hollywood.

There’s Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Well, if it’s Paris there’s no reason why he couldn’t have somehow incorporated Roman Polanski into it too and made it the ultimate Hollywood tribute to elite-approved and excused sexual exploiters.

“The Descendants” had a big downside – smug lefty George Clooney in the role of  “Sensitive George Clooney” – and one huge upside – it was written by the hilarious Jim Rash, best known as the Dean on “Community.” “Hugo” was generally seen as a pleasant diversion. But neither was a huge hit – probably 5-8 million out of 310 million Americans saw each of them. And more importantly, neither has sent out the cultural shockwaves of truly great films – they’re just movies, and not a hugely memorable ones.

Where are the classics, the movies that in future years we will stumble upon on AMC on Sunday afternoons and be unable to look away?  These aren’t “Best Pictures” – they’re “Meh Pictures.”

Now, “The Artist” has enjoyed raves but, at $12 million, made little impact at the box office. It seems like a pleasant enough film, but a black and white, silent movie about old Hollywood isn’t a Best Picture. It’s a novelty, and one that’s only been noticed at all because it flatters Hollywood by being about Hollywood.

Maybe “Harry Potter and the Damn Thing Finally Ends, Part 3″ was not the best picture of the year, but did the Academy really expand the number of Best Picture nominees just so that another session of cinematic onanism from Malick could stagger onto the list?

It’s not supposed to be a dry exercise in film criticism – where’s the showmanship, the pizazz that Hollywood used to deliver? This isn’t a Best Picture nominee roster; it’s a laundry list of mediocre movies no one will remember in six months. Sheesh, there’s not even anything amazingly, awesomely awful enough to get our pulses pounding.  3-6 Mafia, where are you!

So, will Americans gather together in their living rooms on Oscar night, with partisans of “The Descendants” shouting down those favoring “Moneyball?” Yeah, sure. And Jonah Hill deserved to be nominated over the great Albert Brooks.

Hollywood is out of touch and disconnected from its audience on every level. Its theaters are miserable, its content dull or worse, its politics offensive and the ticket price for it all outrageous. The idea of a movie star is dying, and it appears the Oscar is on life support.

Best Picture

“The Artist”
“The Descendants”
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”
“Hugo”
“Midnight in Paris”
“The Help”
“Moneyball”
“War Horse”
“The Tree of Life”

Best Actor

Demian Bichir, “A Better Life”
George Clooney, “The Descendants”
Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Gary Oldman, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”

Best Actress

Glenn Close, “Albert Nobbs”
Viola Davis, “The Help”
Rooney Mara, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Michelle Williams, “My Week With Marilyn”

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, “My Week With Marilyn”
Jonah Hill, “Moneyball”
Nick Nolte, “Warrior”
Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Max Von Sydow, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”

Best Supporting Actress

Berenice Bejo, “The Artist”
Jessica Chastain, “The Help”
Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”
Janet McTeer, “Albert Nobbs”
Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best Director

Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Terrence Malick, “The Tree of Life”
Alexander Payne, “The Descendants”
Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”
Steven Spielberg, “War Horse”

Best Original Screenplay

Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
JC Chandor, “Margin Call”
Asghar Farhadi, “A Separation”
Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, “Bridesmaids”

Best Adapted Screenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxton, Jim Rash, “The Descendants”
John Logan, “Hugo”
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, “The Ides of March”
Aaron Sorkin, Steven Zaillian, “Moneyball”
Bridget O’Connor, Peter Straughn, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Animated Feature

“A Cat In Paris”
“Chico & Rita”
“Kung Fu Panda 2″
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”

More here. Winners will be announced February 26.

In other words, had Weinstein’s movie been snubbed altogether, I think people would remember it more fondly than they do. If I recall correctly, no one was complaining much that the movie was nominated, but the win immediately changed the perception of the movie.

I loved a lot of movies released in 1998, but only one of them was nominated for Best Picture. It’s a very tough year for me to pick a favorite. The nominees:

“Shakespeare in Love” – Only saw it once, and I liked it. Costume dramas really ain’t my thing, but costume comedies? Well, that’s…wait, I don’t like them much either. But I guess this one’s alright.

“Elizabeth” – See above. Never seen it.

“Life is Beautiful” – Roberto Benigni winning Best Actor for this remains one of the great whiffs in Academy history.

“Saving Private Ryan” - The invasion sequence alone remains worth the price of admission.

“The Thin Red Line” – For my money, this is a pretentious mess. I’ve got a buddy who says it’s his favorite movie. I say he’ s trying to seem smart. But what do I know? I’m the guy who would have nominated…

“There’s Something About Mary” - Stalker? Big time.

“The Big Lebowski” - Am I wrong? Am I wrong? No, you’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an assh*le.

“Out of Sight” - You don’t have an extra clip I can use, do you?

“Rushmore” - Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I would have sons like this.

“Saving Private Ryan” - The Statue of Liberty is kaput. That’s disconcerting.

This is really an absolute squeaker. Why? Partially, it’s because I love all of these movies so much. But mostly, it’s because I’m stupid.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly established themselves with “Dumb & Dumber,” then made the box office bust “Kingpin,” which deservedly found an audience on video. No one expected much from their third movie. Leading man Ben Stiller was not yet a star or a box office draw, but he had honed the nervous stammering act of his in pretty solid comedies like “Flirting With Disaster” and turned in hilarious supporting work in “Happy Gilmore.” In 1998, he had a breakout year, appearing in the underrated “Zero Effect” and the misanthropic “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

Released in the middle of July, less than a week after “Lethal Weapon 4″ and just before “The Mask of Zorro,” the Farrelly’s comedy was a genuine word-of-mouth sleeper hit. It hovered in the lower half of the top five until the end of August, when it finally crept up to number 2 at the box office. First week of September, it claimed the number one spot — a full seven weeks after it debuted at number 4.

Its performance is part of the reason I pick it over the more obvious choices on the Academy’s list and my own list. I worked in a theatre at the time, and I witnessed the slow build. By September, older couples were coming to see the movie — and were loving it. The Farrellys had done something amazing; they had made a vulgar comedy that crossed over to people who would never see a vulgar comedy, much less embrace it.

The key to their success is the unconventional screenplay, and the cast.

Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz have been more than overexposed by now, but in 1998, they seemed like a breath of fresh air. I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for a dude to get the girl more than I did in “There’s Something About Mary.” No one has ever deserved a girl who was so out of his league in the history of movies.

This is set up from the very beginning and then pounded into our heads, sometimes with subtlety and sometimes with the force of a sledgehammer to the nuts. The Farrellys make Ted (Stiller) go through hell to land dreamgirl Mary (Diaz); it’s a journey during which no good deed goes unpunished for Ted, and our heart sinks with his about a dozen times over the course of the movie. Consider:

- He comes to the aid of her mentally challenged baseball loving brother Warren (W. Earl Brown – fantastic performance) and almost gets his ass kicked for his trouble. He later gives the gargantuan Warren a piggy back ride.

- He shows up to pick up Mary for the prom and is told by her father Charlie (Keith David? Genius casting.) that Mary already went to prom with Woogie — a Mr. Everybody’s All American type from a different high school. Ted slumps, frowns, but what makes it UNBEARABLE is that he not only pretends that he’s not hurt by the jilting, but that he seems to think he deserves to be jilted. Of course, Mary’s dad is “just f*cking with” Ted, and Mary is home the whole time ready to go to prom with Ted.

- Ted offers Warren a baseball but inadvertently touches the big man’s ear; Warren goes psycho, tears the room apart and delivers a belly to belly suplex on Ted atop a coffee table. I love the  tension in the aftermath of this moment. Ted’s freaked out, Mary goes upstairs with Sheila, her hot mom (Markie Post), to fix her dress, and Charlie consoles Warren and barks at Ted. Ted defends himself, Charlie responds: “Are you yelling at me? Are you yelling at me in my own damn house?” Ted insists he’s not. Awesome. But the capper is when Ted asks where the bathroom is and Charlie answers, “Grrrrrrrrrrr!”

- The bathroom scene. One of the two most talked about scenes in the movie. “Franks & Beans!” Once again, a misconstrued situation — this time only a look, a glance, a harmless peek! — leads Ted into an uncomfortable situation. Perhaps the most uncomfortable situation in movie history. Sheila sprays Bactene on his nuts, a cop shows up (“What? The f*ck?” he exclaims), a fireman — pretty soon the bathroom’s packed with people and Warren is in the hallway screaming, “Franks & Beans.” If you don’t exit this scene with pee-stained pants from laughing yourself wet, there’s something wrong with you. More importantly, if you don’t exit this scene hoping Ted gets Mary, there’s something wrong with your soul.

- On Ted’s day off, he helps his boss’s brother move. Not his boss. Not his brother. His boss’s brother, who happens to be a crusty, mean, profane man in a wheelchair. Genius line: when Ted complains that a gigantic armoire is heavy, the guy in the wheelchair seethes, “Heavy?! What I wouldn’t give to know what heavy feels like, you insensitive prick!”

- He also, out of the goodness of his heart, offers a serial killer a ride, takes a fish hook to the mouth, and is made to dress up in a superhero costume. Nothing in the movie would have been as funny without our empathy for Ted. In “Mary,” the Farrelly Brothers dodge a landmine. She likes golf. She likes to drink beer and watch football. She likes to talk about football. In essence, she’s too perfect, and women should have rooted against her. But, using subtlety and a sledgehammer, the Farrellys make her vulnerable… to stalkers. She’s got so many stalkers she had to change her name. The only reason that Ted ever got a chance to go to the prom with her is because her high school boyfriend Woogie “got weird.” Like a stalker.

Ultimately, it’s my pick because from a pure story standpoint, it’s the most difficult of any of nominees (actual and in Cam-Land) to pull off — a comedy about stalkers that’s actually really sweet despite relentless vulgarity. Its unconventional-but-still-mainstream-and-not-weird structure (the romantic leads are apart for a good chunk of the movie — ask Gore Verbinski how hard it is to pull that off) makes it an even more difficult movie to pull off. But ultimately, it’s the constant barrage of jokes both verbal and visual, great characters and strong performances that make it my favorite movie of 1998.

This week, movie producer Brett Ratner was forced out as the producer of the Oscars telecast after using a gay slur on Howard Stern’s radio show. Let me begin by pointing out that Brett Ratner is an idiot. Anyone who uses the slur he used in an interview — even an interview with Howard Stern — is an idiot. However, the real story here isn’t that some idiot in Hollywood said something stupid. The real story is the situational morality and selective outrage of the left — and in particular the gay left.

Where was the left’s outrage when an actor like Orlando Jones joked about killing Sarah Palin? Where is the left’s outrage when Rosie O’Donnell talks about 9/11 being an inside job? Was Jones blacklisted in Hollywood? Was Rosie forced to walk across broken glass and hot coals to beg for forgiveness? No, these and other Hollywood idiots get a free pass because they chose to bash a person or group that the left has decided is worthy of hate and scorn. The hypocrisy is stunning and no group is more stunning in its hypocrisy and its selective outrage than the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Definition (GLAAD).

GLAAD is the leading mouthpiece for the gay Gestapo in this country. While pretending to be the vanguard for tolerance and diversity, the gay Gestapo is actually committed to stomping out anyone who doesn’t buy into their radical left-wing political agenda. For all the talk of “tolerance” and “diversity,” it is clear that there is zero tolerance for ideological diversity with the gay Gestapo.

GLAAD’s tag line is “Words and images matter.” Of course, this didn’t stop GLAAD from giving its “Blogger of the Year Award” to Joe Jervis of the blog “Joe My God.” Jervis’s blog, which has been the subject of a Daily Caller story in the past, regularly attacks gay conservatives. As was pointed out in the Daily Caller story from earlier this year, “Jervis’s site is littered with hateful and misogynistic comments on his message boards …”

Full story here.

Christopher R. Barron is a Republican political consultant and Chairman of the Board of GOProud, a national organization for gay conservatives and their allies. He blogs at Red Barron.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed Ratner’s departure. President Tom Sherak said in a statement that the 42-year-old filmmaker “did the right thing for the academy and for himself.”

“Brett is a good person, but his comments were unacceptable,” Sherak said.

Ratner used a pejorative term for gay men during a question-and-answer session at a screening of his film “Tower Heist.” He also discussed his sexual exploits on a recent episode of “The Howard Stern Show.”

Ratner issued a lengthy statement Tuesday apologizing for his behavior and explaining his resignation as producer of the 2012 Oscar telecast. The academy had announced in August that Ratner would produce the show with TV veteran Don Mischer, who helmed the 2011 broadcast.

In a letter beginning, “Dear Colleagues,” Ratner apologized for “the hurtful and stupid things I said in a number of recent media appearances.”

“As difficult as the last few days have been for me, they cannot compare to the experience of any young man or woman who has been the target of offensive slurs or derogatory comments,” he said.

Ratner went on to say that he is “taking real action over the coming weeks and months in an effort to do everything I can both professionally and personally to help stamp out the kind of thoughtless bigotry I’ve so foolishly perpetrated.”

The director, whose credits also include the “Rush Hour” films, said that being asked to produce the Oscar show “was the proudest moment of my career,” but he didn’t want to distract from the academy “and the high ideals it represents.”

I don’t approve of, like, or use the word “fag,” but I know a raging double standard when I see one, and I also know a bunch of humorless prudes who make the Church Lady look like Hugh Hefner. We’ve spent years watching leftist Hollywood attack the identity, values, beliefs and everything held dear by over half of this country. For decades they’ve mocked, lied, demeaned, snarked, stereotyped, and flown their flag of bigotry like the Hollywood résumé enhancer it is.

And never ever forget that leftist Hollywood has celebrated, defended, and bestowed honors upon a craven piece of scum who drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13 year-old girl.

But here’s what finally has these same hypocrites in a sanctimonious tizzy:  “Rehearsal is for fags.”

Remember that in leftist Hollywood, you can call the Pope a Nazi, joke about killing a mother of five named Sarah Palin, and relentlessly mock and stereotype Southerners as toothless, inbred sister-humpers eager to make you squeal like a pig. Oh, and feature films can revolve around the mocking of Christians. But, BY GOD, don’t you dare tell a joke that includes a gay slur.

Spare me, you hypocritical bigots.

Spare.

Me.

These people are a thousand times worse than Will H. Hays, who was at least somewhat consistent in his censorship. And if they agree to go to Hell, I promise to carry their bags to the door.

Ratner called the 50-year-old entertainer “a comedic genius; one of the greatest and most influential live performers ever.” Mischer called Murphy “a truly groundbreaking performer” whose “quick wit and charisma will serve him very well as Oscar host.”

This will be Murphy’s first time hosting the Academy Awards. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for his supporting role in “Dreamgirls.”

Murphy said in a statement Tuesday that he is “enormously honored” to join the ranks of past Academy Awards hosts such as Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg.

You know, it’s kind of amazing that as telecast ratings for the the Academy Awards sail over a cliff, the Academy appears to be in complete denial over what the real problem is. For starters, a large number of their recent hosts — Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Chris Rock and Jon Stewart — are polarizing and divisive figures who turn off well over half the country. Those of us who don’t live on the coasts don’t like these people, and why should we? They continually insult us, who we are, and what we hold dear. No Bitter Clinger in their right mind wastes a Sunday night with their guts in a knot waiting for a Leftist sucker shot.

Oscar has the same problem with presenters and winners. Every time some mouthy jerk grabs a trophy we sit there on edge waiting, waiting, waiting for it.

If you believe in traditional marriage, love Jesus, adore America, hate terrorists and have finally figured out Obama’s a failed president — watching the Oscars sucks.

Billy Crystal does, however, transcend that problem. Not 100%, but he is a national figure who isn’t polarizing, puts on a great show, and in the talent and class department comes as close to a Bob Hope and Johnny Carson as anyone today. And sadly, he’s about it.

If Crystal were to return to hosting duties, I have no doubt ratings would improve thanks to the enormous amount of goodwill he’s built up over the last few decades. However, if Hollywood ever wants to return to that golden era when watching the Academy Awards telecast was a national viewing experience, they have much, much bigger issues to deal with.

Hey, Hollywood: You can add 100 best Picture categories for all we care and hire all the young, pretty hosts most of us have never heard of like James Franco — but your real problem is that most of America is just not-liking you back.