Sideshow: Murphy's out of the Oscars

Big changes are afoot for the 84th annual Academy Awards show in February. As in: No host or producer! Host

Eddie Murphy

withdrew Wednesday. On Tuesday,

Brett Ratner

, producer (and Eddie's creative partner), resigned under pressure, one day after apologizing for using a gay slur at a screening of his latest film,

Tower Heist

, which stars Eddie. Brett had also bragged on

The Howard Stern Show

about intimacies with

Olivia Munn

. Academy president

Tom Sherak

was slightly rough in a statement, saying Ratner "did the right thing for the academy and for himself. . . . Brett is a good person, but his comments were unacceptable." As for his own exit, Eddie said yesterday that "I completely understand and support each party's decision with regard to a change of producers. . . . I'm sure that the new production team and host will do an equally great job."

Billy Crystal

!

Steve Martin

!

Whoopi Goldberg

! Check calendars! Phone agents!

Speaking of leaving,

Regis Philbin

will exit

Live! With Regis and Kelly

on Nov. 18. He has announced his final guests, and they include his onetime, longtime sidekick

Kathie Lee Gifford

! He'll build up to her, having

Don Rickles

and

Jimmy Fallon

on Monday,

Donald Trump

on Tuesday, and

David Letterman

on Wednesday. Singers

Tony Bennett

,

Bret Michaels

, and

Josh Groban

will stop by and musicalize. Then, Kathie comes aboard for the penultimate show on Nov. 17. The last day will be a long, loving backward look, with fun surprises.

This

is the kind of rumor we at "SideShow" live and die for. Well, OK, live for. Die, that's a little much. Still, would it not be

delicious

if it were true? That

Rihanna

's pregnant, we mean.

MediaTakeOut.com says it spoke with an Anonymous Member of Rihanna's Camp (what is this, the Girl Scouts?). Those two shows the unmarried warbler canceled last week? She said it was the flu. Sure it was, says Anon, who says all her buds "suspect it's more than just that." Ri has stopped drinking alcohol, lifts nothing heavy, and is on doc's orders to rest.

OK, so we know we're not the father. Who is, then? Lately, she had a secret hi-there with old flame Matt Kemp, and an Irish fling with boxer Dudley O'Shaughnessy. Could it be one of them? We almost wrote "one or both," but that would be arch. Not to mention impossible.

A shout-out to fire chief

Dominic Pasinella Jr.

The candidate for town council of Schaghticoke, N.Y., was at a polling place when

Ptarmigan Fox-Etman

stopped by with husband and announced she was there not to vote but to give birth. Dom helped deliver the child,

Charis

, and then went on to . . . lose the election, coming in third.

Mwa mwa mwa

(fail trombone) . . .

How do you make a best-seller? Publish something that's mostly stolen! So seems to be the moral with

Q.R. Markham

's

Assassin of Secrets

. It got pulled Wednesday by Little, Brown & Co. when they found out a bunch of it had magically come right out of

James Bond

books and stuff. "What do we care?" shout readers! They're snapping up remaining copies. The book's ranking improved on Amazon.com from 43,996 on Tuesday afternoon to 1,034 Wednesday morning. . . . Meantime, a manuscript by a young

Charlotte Brontë

is set to attract up to $482,000 at an auction at London house Sothebys. It dates to 1830 and is written in teeny-tiny, make-believe, doll-sized magazine format that can fit in your palm. . . . Run, do not walk, to your local bookstore and get

Capti

, the new novel by

Stephen Berard

, a prof at Wenatchee Valley College in Washington state. But only if you know Latin, because that's what all 637 pages of it are in. Maybe we should have written

Corrite, noliteque ambulare

! It's supposed to be the first all-Latin novel published since 1754.

Besides being a flinty actor and a darn fine director (his

J. Edgar

is just out),

Clint Eastwood

is a libertarian who has voted for every GOP prez candidate since 1952, and he loves talking politics at high volume. Guess whom he likes?

Herman Cain

, of course! "I love Cain's story," he told the L.A. Times recently. "He's a guy who came from nowhere and did well, obviously against heavy odds. He's a doer and a straight-talker, which I don't see enough of from either party."

Shakira

, 34, pride of all Colombia, now has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the 2,454th star to grace Hollywood Boulevard. Girl's been making hits in many languages since 1995, has won mucho music awards, plus she's been a notable philanthropist, donating scads of well-earned dough to children's causes, and working tirelessly in Haiti for reconstruction and earthquake relief. Know how you get to have a star? A committee selects you, and if you accept, you pay $30,000 in costs and fees. She'd been selected in 2009, but turned it down, saying she didn't want to be seen as a Hollywood star.

A flood of Twitter traffic falsely reported the death of actress

Ruby Dee

, 87, Tuesday night. It's said that confusion arose between Dee and rapper

Heavy D

, 44, who did pass on Tuesday. There's also been a spate of absolutely idiotic Twitter pranks claiming celeb deaths, and this might be the latest. Anyway,

the Rev. Jesse Jackson

and other folks passed it on as fact, so it viralized quickly. Jesse quickly detweeted, sending out a new message that Ruby Dee's demise was unconfirmed.

Oscar-winning actor

Morgan Freeman

will pick up another bauble for the trophy case on Jan. 15, when he receives the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Globes, announced Wednesday. Freeman, 74, received five Oscar nominations before taking home the bacon for 2004's

Million Dollar Baby

. His noms include best actor for 1989's

Driving Miss Daisy

. While he didn't take Oscar home that night, he had already copped a Golden Globe for the role. DeMille Award winners are chosen by the board of directors for the foreign press group, which includes about 90 reporters who cover Hollywood for overseas outlets. Past winners include

Robert De Niro

,

Steven Spielberg

,

Barbra Streisand

,

Shirley MacLaine

,

Jack Nicholson

, and

Clint Eastwood

, who directed Freeman in

Million Dollar Baby

.