The Scandalous Song Robin Williams Wasn’t Allowed to Sing at the Oscars
It was all Robin Williams’ idea.
After he learned that he’d be presenting the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 2005 Academy Awards, he contacted the Tony-winning songwriters from Hairspray with a suggestion for a funny song for the show. The concept: Poke fun at right-wing evangelist James Dobson, who’d organized a “SpongeBob must be gay” protest after the cartoon character showed up in a campaign promoting tolerance. The whole thing was ridiculous, which was the point of the song.
The songwriters, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, whipped up a little ditty for the show, but it never got far. “We ran into such censorship at ABC (and truth be told, if we wrote it today, we’d probably be censored from all sides) that we pulled the song,” Shaiman revealed this week on Instagram.
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You can hear his version of the song in his post:
The song’s big joke: If SpongeBob is gay, what are other beloved animated characters up to? Lyrics like these give you an idea…
Pinocchio's had his nose done
Sleeping Beauty is popping pills
The Three Little Pigs ain't kosher
Betty Boop works Beverly Hills
Williams would have made a full comedy meal of the song if given the chance. But in a 2005 essay in Entertainment Weekly, Shaiman revealed that the song was torn to shreds during rehearsal. When Dobson was brought up in the song’s introduction, for example, Oscars producer Gil Cates asked why they wanted to give the zealot more publicity?
Fine, said Shaiman. Losing Dobson was an easy edit.
Then the censors chimed in. Sleeping Beauty popping pills? We can’t promote drug use on national television. “Oddly,” wrote Shaiman, “they seemed to have no problem with prostitution or (this being Hollywood) facial reconstruction.”
Shaiman continued singing during rehearsal:
Superman is on steroids
Tinky Winky is in the pink
Dammit to hell
Wake up and smell
The stink beneath the ink!
Chip 'n' Dale both are strippers
Scrooge McDuck is really tight
Bugs Bunny's a sexaholic
And Snow White has been up all night!
More cries from the censors: You can’t say strippers or sexaholic on TV (despite Desperate Housewives featuring regular storylines on the topics).
By the time Shaiman sang the line about Caspar the Friendly Ghost being in the Ku Klux Klan, Standards and Practices insisted on major edits. But cutting all the sharp-elbowed jokes would neuter the song’s satire. “Knowing it would be impossible to rewrite this song in a way that pleased these time travelers and ourselves, we pulled the number,” Shaiman revealed. “If this silly song caused the powers that be so much grief, it boggles the mind to imagine what else is censored ‘on our behalf’ every day, far away from the Kodak Theatre.”
Dobson passed away this week, leading Shaiman to remember the song on social media. As with many “you couldn’t tell those jokes today!” complaints, it’s hyperbolic to say the tune couldn’t be performed in 2025. It’s easy to imagine a South Park version, for example. But it’s a potent reminder that “the good old days” when you could joke about anything never existed.
