Oscar 2006: happy to be out of touch.

They tried to tone down the politics at the 78th annual Oscar ceremony on February 5, despite the controversial, leftist, secular nature of most of the nominees and winners. They didn't quite succeed. They also failed completely at making the show family-friendly or Christian-friendly.

Crude sex jokes, including jokes about homosexuality and sex-change operations, pervaded a good portion of the pre-planned speeches from the stage, including Jon Stewart's emcee work and the beginning of the show. The beginning of the show is the most likely time that impressionable children might be watching. Yet, it was during that time of the show that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their emcee chose to make the most homosexual jokes of the evening, even to the point of claiming, tongue in cheek, that the famous Westerns of yesteryear were full of hidden homosexual messages.

Of course, by shutting out the best family movies with wholesome and godly Christian messages--like The Chronicles of Narnia, Dreamer, Madagascar, and Chicken Little--the Oscar ceremony ensured that it would get the lowest ratings ever from the television audience, the vast majority of whom are families and Christians with TV sets in their living rooms.

Indeed, overnight ratings reports show a 10-point drop in ratings for the Oscar show compared to last year's already low ratings.

As usual, only one of the winners gave God or Jesus Christ any thanks or credit for their blessing. That was one of the artists behind the winning song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp."

It's hard to see how such a tone-deaf song even got nominated, much less win the award. Jon Stewart had the best quip of the night after this song won the Oscar. "I think it just got easier out here for a pimp," he joked.

The sexually explicit homosexual movie Brokeback Mountain won Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director. George Clooney walked off with an Oscar for his supporting performance in Syriana, a radical, anti-American diatribe. Someone Crash-ed the party for Brokeback, however, when the provocative and sometimes worthwhile Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture. Even so, Crash contained the highest amount of foul language of any of the major nominees, and the movie had other moral and political flaws.

Paul Haggis, the writer/director/producer who picked up two Oscars for Crash, and George Clooney exposed the neo-Marxist agenda of most of the nominees at the Oscar ceremony. Haggis quoted the Marxist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, saying, "Art is not a mirror held up to society, it is a hammer by which to shape it." Clooney, responding to Jon Stewart's point that many people think that most leaders and celebrities in Hollywood are "out of touch" with America, said, "It's good to be out of touch. I'm proud to be out of touch."

Clooney then mentioned the involvement of some in Hollywood in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and in promoting awareness of the deadly homosexual sodomy disease, AIDS.

Clooney didn't respond to Stewart's point that many people think Hollywood is "too liberal." Nor did Clooney respond to Stewart's joke that many people think Hollywood is an "atheistic pleasure dome."

The four best movies--and the most conservative and Christ-centered movies--receiving any nominations (and they were pretty minor nominations, when you think of it) were Pride & Prejudice, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sophie Scholl, and Merry Christmas. They didn't win any major awards all evening.

Thus, although the members of the Academy balked at giving Brokeback Mountain the big award of the night, the Oscar ceremony overall proved exactly what Stewart was talking about in his monologue.

Not only are the Oscars out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, they have indeed become an "atheistic pleasure dome."

There is still some good news coming out of Hollywood, however. Several of the most powerful people at the six major studios are excited about the chance to reach the vast potential audience of the 177 million Americans who go to church regularly.

The financial success of such movies as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, and The Passion of The Christ have convinced them that there is a big audience out there that is hungry for the kind of positive and redemptive family and Christian values that these movies represent.

Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE. Dr. Tom Snyder is editor of MOVIEGUIDE.