Seth MacFarlane‘s Hitler joke during this morning’s announcement of the 2012 Oscar nominations rippled awkwardly through the AMPAS room. (And brought back memories for FishbowlLA of Ricky Gervais‘ aborted plans to come out for one Golden Globes telecast dressed as the Führer, waving at the crowd “Heil!” style.)

But that was nothing compared to what happened when the nominees for Best Director were announced. The tweets quickly started flying as west coast entertainment journalists rustled up at the break of dawn reeled in the face of the omission of Ben Affleck (Argo) and Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty). Tom Hooper was also passed over in the category for Les Miserables, but that was something a number of pundits had actually been expecting.

The first wave of shocked analysis is floating all kinds of theories as to why Bigelow and Affleck were snubbed. Did accusations of Zero Dark Thirty being “pro-torture” hurt Bigelow? Was all that fawning over Affleck this awards season too much for jealous Academy members to bear?

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There was no HFPA silver lining this morning for Robert De Niro. Deadline Hollywood awards expert Pete Hammond thinks he knows why:

The omission of Silver Linings Playbook’s Robert De Niro [from Best Supporting Actor] was among the most surprising snubs to me but clearly those two Django co-stars DiCaprio and Waltz rode in and stole his thunder (he also was too busy working to do the all-important – in terms of nominations – HFPA press conference).

Over at TheWrap, Steve Pond leads off his analysis with a look at how the lack of a Beasts of the Southern Wild Best Drama nod underscores the starry-eyed HFPA ballot view:

How else to explain the way the Globes voters ignored Beasts but nominated Nicole Kidman for the laughably trashy The Paperboy? And not only did they go for Kidman in that potboiler, but they gave her a second nomination for her performance in the TV movie Hemingway & Gellhorn.

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Thanks to this year’s nifty Oscars.com “All Access” app (pictured), it was possible to watch winners visit the backstage press room without actually having to be in the press room, suited up in journalist formal wear. So bravo to the Academy for giving FishbowlLA the ability – from the comfort of home – to track the various reporter tactics attempted deep in the bowels of the Kodak Theater.

NPR’s Amy Walters tried to get Best Adapted Screenplay winner Aaron Sorkin to bite on a Mark Zuckerberg tease, wondering how the writer felt about his subject now. But Sorkin expertly dodged the Q-trap, commending Zuckerberg for his Saturday Night Live appearance and suggesting that no one would want to have a film made about their behavior at age 19.

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