Charles Krauthammer begins his current column this way:

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers.

I've seen Paradise Now and I'm sick to death of the suggestion that it's pro-terrorism; this notion is being spread on the right, almost certainly by people who've never seen the movie, and you'll hear it even more if Paradise Now wins the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Paradise Now is a ticking-bomb thriller; the two young men at its center are both the bombs and the only ones who can keep them from detonating. Yes, the film says that ordinary people and not necessarily monsters choose to become suicide bombers, but the bombings themselves are still treated as horrors, both morally and politically.

I haven't seen Syriana or Munich, the other films Krauthammer denounces, but Paradise Now -- which may have the best chance of winning an Academy Award Sunday night -- absolutely does not belong in a column titled "Oscars for Osama."

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UPDATE: And here's Cal Thomas to tell us that Paradise Now is "well-produced propaganda for the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian side and a justification for people who blow themselves up and take innocent children, women and men with them." Bet he can't produce a ticket stub, either.

Thomas willfully ignores the distinction between the real-life suicide bombing that's said to be the basis for this film and the film itself, and writes, "Most people would find such a horrific act beyond the pale of any religion or politics, much less entertainment, but apparently Hollywood thinks it good movie material." Yes, and The Silence of the Lambs portrays a brilliant, charismatic man who eats human flesh, therefore it's pro-cannibalism propaganda. And what's with "Hollywood"? Paradise Now is actually a Palestinian/Dutch/German/French co-production; "Hollywood" had nothing to do with it, apart from the decision by the independent-film division of Warner Bros. to pick it up for distribution in the U.S.