George W. & Jesus H. -- Separated at Birth?

You must read Frank Rich's discussion today of a new bit of Bush/Cheney propaganda, "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," "a DVD," writes Rich, "that is being specifically marketed in 'head to head' partisan opposition to 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' This documentary first surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed 'Family, Faith and Freedom Rally,' a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives. Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be 'The Passion of the Bush,' and it succeeds."

And this key paragraph: "More than any other campaign artifact, ["George W. Bush: Faith in the White House"] clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a 'fortunate son' of privilege into a prodigal son with the 'moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet.' Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from 'a throat full of Texas dust'), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth...."

The Ralph Reed mentioned above, incidentally, is the same Ralph Reed whose name surfaced yesterday in a scandal involving Republican lobbyists for Indian gambling: "...a broad federal investigation into lobbying abuses connected to gambling on Indian reservations has unearthed evidence that Reed has been surreptitiously working for an Indian tribe with a large casino it sought to protect -- and that Reed was paid with funds laundered through two firms to try to keep his lucrative involvement secret. Reed has always operated behind the scenes, and apparently he didn't want to risk becoming a humbled hypocrite like his right-wing cohorts William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh."

Amazing how Republican paragons and the evidence of "hypocrisy" seem magnetically attractive to one another!