Lin-Manuel Miranda gets one shot at Penn Commencement speech

THE MAN behind "Hamilton," the biggest, smartest hit on Broadway, will be Penn's commencement speaker this year.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, playwright, actor, MacArthur "Genius" Award winner (and the man who wrote Neil Patrick Harris' brilliant raps when he hosted the Tony Awards), will give the address to the Class of 2016 at the May 16 ceremony.

Miranda will receive an honorary Doctor of the Arts. Other recipients of honorary degrees will be Somali Human Rights activist Hawa Abdi, Wharton eeconomist Elizabeth Bailey, journalist David Brooks, opera soprano Renee Fleming, theoretical physicist Sylvester James Gates Jr., Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jahangir and Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel.

We are especially pleased with the Kandel honor. Tattle was a friend of the Kandels long before we were Tattle (or shaving).

The

Washington Post

reports from New Delhi that even though a French kiss could find the cutting room floor in India, porn star

Sunny Leone

(a Canadian of Indian origin) is one of the most popular celebrities in the country.

The Post says Leone, 31, was India's most-searched-for person online in 2015. And in the past three years she has left her porn star past (films like "Sunny and Cher" and "Sunny in Brazil") to host the dating show "Splitsvilla" on MTV India and has acted in a variety of non-porn film genres in the Indian film industry.

Said Leone about her porn career: "Everything I've done in my life has led me into this seat," she said. "Everything has been a stepping stone to something bigger or better."

"I don't have any horror stories," Sunny added. "I wasn't abused, I wasn't beaten, I wasn't molested."

Sex remains a conundrum in India (and just about everywhere else). The Washington Post noted that not only is India the land of the Kama Sutra and the world's third-biggest consumer of porn, it's also the country that censored a kissing scene from the James Bond movie "Spectre" because the kiss lasted too long.

Former

Daily News

Entertainment/Theater/Casino reporter

Chuck Darrow

is announcing exciting news today.

A new radio program, "That's Show Biz with Chuck Darrow" will launch Feb. 2 on WWDB-AM 860.

The show will air every Tuesday from 3-4 p.m.

The program will feature interviews with actors, musicians, producers, writers, directors, etc., and discuss all things entertainment, be they national or local. Darrow said there will be an emphasis on what is happening in music, theater, dining and casinos in the Philly region.

"It's kind of ridiculous that the fourth-largest media market has never had a regularly scheduled radio program dedicated exclusively to entertainment and the arts," Darrow said.

"This is the realization of my dream to bring this kind of programming to the Delaware Valley."

*

Al Sharpton

has called for an Oscars boycott, which could inspire people who've never watched the Oscars to now tune in.

* Presidential candidate Ben Carson isn't concerned about a boycott. "The American people have far more important concerns than a few Hollywood elites handing themselves awards. If we paid as much attention to growing the economy as we do to the extravagant . . . Oscar party the glitterati throw for themselves, we might have fewer families wondering how they're going to make ends meet."

Uh, Ben, the movie business does grow the economy. Just because "Straight Outta Compton" didn't get an Oscar nomination, doesn't mean it didn't make $161 million.

Throw in $107 million for "Creed" and that's two 9-digit grossing movies made by African American directors in the same year. That's what's going to change Hollywood and give black filmmakers more opportunity. Oscar recognition would be nice but the demographics of the Academy will change the same way the demographics of the country will change.

Just not as fast as some people want and some people don't.

This is not to diminish the pioneering film work of Oscar Micheaux, Sidney Poitier and Melvin Van Peebles, but 30 years ago, there was Spike Lee. Basically just Spike Lee.

Then came Carl Franklin. And John Singleton. And Tyler Perry. Tim Story. F. Gary Gray. Ryan Coogler. Ava Duvernay. Kasi Lemmons. Antoine Fuqua. Gina Prince-Blythewood. Philly's own Lee Daniels and many others.

The box office is starting to speak the only language Hollywood really cares about. The institutions are always slow to catch up.

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.

Email: gensleh@phillynews.com

Phone: 215-854-5678

On Twitter: @DNTattle