Here are all the gory details, and the insight on the current workings of the grandiosely named Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

And now here are my observations. Sportsfans, I am almost at a loss to discuss movies these days. I have nothing to talk about. The only movie I went to see at all was The Nativity Story, and that bore no mention at all, and I knew it wouldn't. I have not watched an Academy Awards show since I was a kid, and I can't even remember the year.

Once upon a time, even being nominated for an Oscar meant something. You'll never guess when that was. So I'll give you a name, sportsfans: William Hays. That's right, William Hays, he of the Office that bore his name and of which he was the head. When he ran that Office, movies had to have plot and character development, because Hays simply did not permit them to sell sex, or the notion of crime as a legitimate expression of rebellion.

Then Alfred Hitchcock had to ruin everything with his film frankly exploiting adultery, embezzlement, voyeurism--and murder. When that film got through, the Hays Office was doomed. Thanks a lot, Sir Alfred.

In the 1970s, not a single Academy Award contender was worth a place in anyone's library, except for Patton and maybe Marooned. Things looked up a little in the 80's--the Reagan years. But ever since then, except for such gems as The Patriot and Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan, Oscar-winning and -nominated films have been the sort that no producer would have touched with the proverbial ten-footer back in the 1930's. Can you imagine any of the recent Oscar winners winning anything in 1939, still regarded as The Best Year for Films Ever?

Add to it that the Academy has given itself over to cheap limousine liberal political polemic, which Hollywood produces for the two coasts. Flyover country gets passed over completely. But such has been the history of theater in the Western world--it always thrives in the cities, and it always thrives on rebellion against God and man.

Maybe--just maybe--toward the end of the Seven Years' Bad Luck, aka the Great Tribulation, you'll see an Oscar show in which those statuettes of Crusader knights suddenly animate themselves, whip up their broadswords to combat stance, and start chasing all those overdressed hacks off the stage. Now that should be quite a sign.