So apparently, liberals aren’t all that high on Michael Moore anymore.

Really. Let me explain: Tuesday morning, the Oscar nominations came out, and Mr. Moore’s “Fahrenheit: 9/11” didn’t get a best picture nomination – or any nominations, for that matter. Mr. Moore made his work ineligible for the best documentary category by putting the film on pay-per-view television. The academy has a strict policy that disqualifies any documentary that airs on television within nine months after its theatrical release. Mr. Moore told the Flint (Mich.) Journal last week, “I already have a documentary Oscar, and it’s been a great year for documentaries, so let somebody else have it.”

I noticed that the liberal political blogs lacked much hue and cry about Mr. Moore’s snub on Tuesday afternoon. In fact, it became hard to find even one liberal commentator who was bothered by the fact that the most prominent and widely-discussed anti-Bush polemic had gotten passed over for “Ray,” “Finding Neverland,” “The Aviator,” “Million Dollar Baby,” and “Sideways.”

After commenting on this odd silence on my TKS blog at National Review Online, I heard from many liberals who said … that really, they had never liked Mr. Moore that much to begin with.

One liberal reader said he wasn’t surprised because Mr. Moore’s film “was terrible – over the top, conspiratorial, shallow, you name it.” Another of my regulars wrote in, “The fact is, liberals feel not much more than a big yawn about F/911.” Others suggested that “my assumptions about who is a big Michael Moore fan are hopelessly flawed” and that “Michael Moore is not the spokesman for the Left.”

Really? I’m not saying every liberal was a fan of Mr. Moore, but I don’t remember too many folks on the left disliking Mr. Moore last year, other than the hawkish New Democrats at the New Republic magazine. Time magazine reportedly strongly considered him (with fellow controversial filmmaker Mel Gibson) as their “Man of the Year.” Who was buying all his books, and tickets to his movies?

One Hollywood screenwriter who reads my blog suggested, “the reason no one is talking about Michael Moore – and why he received no nominations – is that it finally sunk in to many on the left that the film did a lot more damage than good. Had Kerry won, Moore would have been celebrated, and he surely would have received at least a Best Pic nomination. But he is now old news, and people can often turn on those they love very quickly – particularly in Hollywood. I think he’s taking heat now because the Hollywood crowd realizes he helped cost Kerry the election.”

Well, Mr. Moore’s liberal fans may have abandoned him, so maybe it’s time for a right-of-center guy to stand up for the chubby, unshaven documentarian.

While conservatives gave Senator McCain roaring applause when he called Mr. Moore a “disingenuous filmmaker” at the GOP convention, I don’t think many voices on the right would argue that “Fahrenheit: 9/11” wasn’t important, or even powerful filmmaking – even if we disagreed with his viewpoint, and demonstrated he got a lot of facts wrong.

The conservative film critics at the Web site Libertas made the case for Mr. Moore, and the year’s other controversial surprise hit, “The Passion of the Christ”:

Why not nominate Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion, together? The Academy’s choices for Best Picture are so staid, so utterly conventional and unambitious – three milquetoast biopics (The Aviator, Finding Neverland and Ray), one morbid melodrama (Million Dollar Baby) and one completely inconsequential, made-for-TV level comedy (Sideways). 2004 was a break-out year in which several films – The Passion, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the doomed Theo van Gogh’s “Submission,” to name only the most obvious – had an impact on popular culture not felt since the 1970s. The movies were relevant again in this past year, in a way they haven’t been in a long time – yet none of this is reflected in the Academy’s lifeless selections.

Hollywood pretends to honor filmmaking that is bold, risk-taking and personal. Mel Gibson and Theo van Gogh certainly took extraordinary risks in their films last year – van Gogh even lost his life on an Amsterdam street for it. And even Michael Moore rolled the dice with his picture – and lost, big-time (Bush won the election).

This year’s best picture nominees are all nice enough films, but does anyone think that five years from now people will still be discussing the “Sideways” hijinks of two losers vacationing in wine country? Love him or hate him, Mr. Moore demonstrated that there’s a $119 million market for angry political polemics at the multiplex. And Mr. Gibson’s $370 million box office take showed that millions of Americans were hungry for a visionary, intensely personal work that took their Christian faith seriously.

If those achievements don’t warrant at least a best picture nomination, what does?

Mr. Geraghty writes the “TKS” column for National Review Online.