It’s always gratifying to watch a truly awful movie flopping horribly at the box office but several extra-cinematic factors make the disastrous reception for “Death of a President” even more enjoyable than usual.

The British import drew intense attention (and widespread condemnation) for mixing news footage and staged interviews to portray the assassination of George W. Bush, and the subsequent power grab by President Cheney, in October, 2007. After a tumultuous but mostly positive response at the Toronto Film Festival, glowing reviews from the Roger Ebert website and other mainstream critical voices, and intense controversy (including a combative appearance by director Gabriel Range on the Michael Medved Show) that provided priceless publicity, the film opened on Friday not with a bang, but with a whimper. The much ballyhooed pseudo-documentary entered a grand total of $167,000 on 91 screens across the country, for 27^th place on the weekly box-office list and an anemic per screen average of just $1,835 – a shockingly low figure for a “prestige” project available mostly at selective art house venues. By contrast, the top film in the country last weekend, “Saw III,” averaged a robust $10,830 for its 3,167 screens. Even the low-budget, critically dismissed Christian football movie, “Facing the Giants,” drew a $2,010 average on its 393 screens and has already earned $6.3 million dollars in five weeks—many times to the total possible take for “Death of a President.” In terms of theatrical distribution in the U.S., the assassination fantasy remains unlikely to crack $1 million in box office receipts, and may fail to recoup even its own modest production budget.

The failure of the film carries two important lessons for entertainment executives as well as political pundits.

First, it’s time to retire or terminate the inane, shopworn theory that suggests that controversy guarantees publicity, and publicity guarantees box office success. “The Last Temptation of Christ,” perhaps the most controversial film in movie history, should have discredited this logic 18 years ago. Despite a blaze of top-of-the-news global conflict over the film, and unprecedented attention from magazines, TV news broadcasts, newspapers, preachers, and demonstrations that drew tens of thousands of participants, the movie fizzled at the multiplex, failing to earn back even its modest production budget of $6 million. “Death of a President” similarly provoked intense praise and widespread denunciation (even Hillary Clinton condemned it without seeing it) but failed abjectly in getting people to invest their money to see the actual film. Newmarket, the American distribution company for “Death of a President” (or DOAP), had scored spectacular success with another bitterly debated release, “The Passion of the Christ,” so they liked the idea of commentators going back and forth with complaint and commendation concerning their new, relentlessly mediocre movie. The executives probably assumed that just as it was easy to sell Jesus to a public already predisposed to love the Man from Nazareth, so to it would be easy to sell the Bush assassination to a populace already full of hatred to the man from Crawford, Texas.

That’s the other big lesson from the DOAP fiasco: don’t over-estimate the power of Bush hatred. Critics might feel intrigued by the slick manipulation of imagery to make the shooting of the chief executive look authentic, but for ordinary Americans the world looks threatening and unstable enough without worry about the assassination of our leaders. That’s especially true for a tendentious, ultimately silly piece of work like DOAP: which suggests that the chief executive had it coming, and takes a sympathetic attitude toward the fictional shooter. He’s a grieving father (and a former Army major himself) who blames Bush for the death of his stalwart son in Iraq, and for “destroying” and “ruining” honor, decency and accountability in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

Bush-hatred may be a powerful force in the lives of many Americans, but it’s hard to base an entire movie on that singular, simplistic loathing – just as you can’t base an entire election campaign on distaste for George W. Bush when his name isn’t even on the ballot. The movie business learned this weekend about the limited usefulness of anti-administration rage as a tool for promoting a project. On next Tuesday, the political class may get a similar and related lesson about the waning utility of relentless Bush bashing as a simplistic and single-minded strategy for seizing control of the Senate and the House.

With a fateful election just a few days away, don’t believe anyone who predicts the outcome with certainty.. Midterm Congressional elections always bring a much smaller turnout of eligible voters than Presidential elections: on average, 20% of the voting age population that cast ballots in a given presidential race won’t bother to do so in the Congressional elections just two years later. There may be an even sharper fall off this time, since the 2004 Bush-Kerry race brought the highest turnout in 36 years—60.7%. Though Bush won, the Democratic base was particularly energized in that election, with record participation among college students, inner city voters and others who may not be nearly as motivated to cast ballots this time. Moreover, some of the crucial races are taking place in states that lean strongly Republican – Montana, Missouri, Virginia—and across the country the GOP possesses a stronger, more technologically sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. Even if one-in-ten Bush voters from 2004 end up voting for Democrats this time, the expected (almost inevitable) falloff in core Democratic voters may well leave the GOP ahead in races where it matters most. If committed Republicans bother to vote in anything like their normal numbers they will maintain Congressional majorities – since nearly 60% of the total voting age populace won’t cast ballots at all. When less than half the electorate even bothers to vote (a certainty, this time) turnout isn’t just part of a winning stategy, it’s the entire ballgame.

After less than two years as a US Senator, Barack Obama has suddenly, almost instantaneously emerged as a very real Presidential possibility, the Democrats’ poster boy for the forthcoming elections, the nation’s “Great Black Hope,” and the media’s anointed new messiah of US politics. On “Meet the Press” and the cover of Time magazine, the Junior Senator from Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, wins hosannas for his charisma, intelligence, authenticity (he’s admitted to doing drugs in the past), and fresh approach to the issues of the day.

Of course, much of Obama-mania stems from strategic hype rather than the organic, substantive development of a major leader. Nothing he’s done in his few months as a Senator (with a voting record far more liberal than Hillary Clinton’s, by the way) has particularly impressed his colleagues or even Capitol Hill staffers. The sudden flurry of publicity, rather, stems from the desire to sell his new book “The Audacity of Hope” (riding high on bestseller lists) and the election-eve desperation by Democrats to find an appealing new face for their party that will connect with the voting public more effectively than John Kerry’s, Hillary Clinton’s, Al Gore’s, of Howard Dean’s tired, Baby Boomer physiognomies.

There is also, of course, a natural, even healthy nationwide desire to vote for an African-American candidate for President – the same desire that helped to inspire excitement over potential presidential campaigns by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Given our cruel history toward blacks, the election of a credible candidate of color would seem to settle the issue of whether or not the nation has purged its racist past. And Obama, with his mixed background (his WASP mother is from Kansas, his father from Kenya) represents a new generation that seems less obsessed with arguments over racial identity.

It might be easy to conclude that all of the fascination with the Illinois Senator stems from external elements that have nothing to do with his own talents, ideas or achievements, but then there is the intriguing evidence of his new book. I’ve only read parts of “The Audacity of Hope,” but even a cynical and partisan Republican like me must conclude that it’s several cuts above the normal political pap prepared by potential presidents (try reading pre-campaign autobiographies by Hillary, or even George W. Bush, by way of doleful contrast). There are even hints from Obama of an open mind and energetic intelligence.

You don’t believe it? Consider this passage on the destructive impact of children of the ‘60’s on American politics in the ‘90’s and beyond:

“In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation- a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago – played out on the national stage.” He’s exactly right, of course—and as a former Yalie who collided on the New Haven campus with both Clintons, George W., Joe Lieberman, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Clarence Thomas, George Pataki, and more – his remarks spark special resonance with me. “The victories that the ‘60’s generation brought about – the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority – have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions- that quality of truth and fellow feeling – that bring us together as Americans.”

Naturally, the self-serving aspect of this observation involves Obama’s status (at age 45) as the only Presidential contender who’s clearly a member of the post-Boomer generation--- and therefore untainted by the desperate stridency of the ‘60’s.

His book also displays a startling willingness to pinpoint the weaknesses and failures of his own political party, as he mentions the real danger that Democrats will become known as “the party of reaction.” He writes: “In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, re resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal.”

This stands as an exceptionally acute indictment of the current state of Democratic disarray.

Is Barack Obama the “real deal” (as John Kerry so fatuously proclaimed himself) who can cure that disarray, or just a media sensation--- Barack Flash-in-the Pana?

It’s far too early to answer that question with confidence, but it should be clear that Republicans will underestimate this guy only at our peril.

In the desperate days before a significant election, the liberal establishment has chosen to refocus attention on social issues like embryonic stem cell research (with a sad, exploitative TV spot featuring Michael J. Fox) and same sex marriage (with a sweeping, outrageous new court decision in New Jersey - a decision which the judges chose to announce just days before America votes).

On both these divisive issues, liberals use lying language - habitually, deliberately, shamelessly. Concerning stem cells, the mainstream media regularly suggest that conservatives want to “ban stem cell research.” Aside from ignoring the essential distinctive between research involving adult stem cells (research that’s never been controversial) and science involving embryonic stem cell experimentation (which has always inspired sharp controversy), the talk of a “stem cell ban” hides the even more important difference between government permitting - and government promoting - a course of action. Conservatives don’t want stem cell research banned - but we don’t want our tax money used for that purpose. If Michael J. Fox and his friends want to raise private funds for the medical research they desire, then there’s no legal or political block to this undertaking. The money invested in his manipulative TV spot opposing Senator Jim Talent of Missouri (and distorting his record) easily could have gone directly to research on embryonic stem cells. I don’t want to ban that research - any more than I want to ban handguns (to cite another controversial issue of personal choice). But I’d strongly oppose a government program to buy revolvers for private homes - because people can do it themselves, and many (if not most) American taxpayers don’t want their money used that way. The stem cell issue isn’t a debate over scientific freedom - it’s a debate of governmental subsidies.

Similarly, the media moguls refuse to give up on the term “gay marriage bans” in reference to the eight ballot propositions before voters on November 7^th. In most cases, these initiatives (like previous defense of marriage efforts) ban NOTHING. They merely define marriage as limited to one man and one woman. Such state constitutional amendments (like the Federal Marriage Amendment) could just as easily and accurately be described as “polygamy bans.” They have become necessary because of irresponsibly activist courts like New Jersey’s, that suddenly gives the legislature a 180 day ultimatum and orders the elected representatives of the people to fall into line when it comes to determining government support for intimate relationships. As with stem cells, the real issue isn’t an attempt to ban or restrict any sort of private behavior: it is, rather, a crucial argument over government policy. The fact that I don’t want government promoting gay relationships (with tax breaks, welfare benefits, legal privileges of all kinds) doesn’t mean that I want government to prohibit those relationships. As with stem cells, the proper governmental approach should be strict neutrality - not outlawing, and not endorsing gay intimacy.

The secular liberal establishment wants you to believe that such issues actually show the “extreme religious right” in an effort to impose our values on everyone else. This is, to put it directly, a pernicious lie. It’s our opponents who want to impose their values on the nation at large - by forcing the government that represents all of us to endorse, promote, sanction and pay for behavior which, though permitted as a matter of private choice, remains highly questionable as a priority for public policy.

Leading newspapers have recently suggested that public sentiment is shifting on the question of same sex marriage. “Gay Marriage Losing Punch as Ballot Issue” the New York Times announced in a front page headline, while USA TODAY declared: “Same Sex Marriage Back Before Voters, but Mood Different; Support for Constitutional Bans Weaker than in 2004.” These stories indicate that in the eight states (Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia) that will vote on limiting marriage to one-man/one woman relationships, polls show surprisingly close races – especially when compared to the overwhelming support in 2004 for state initiatives to protect traditional marriage.  The mainstream press says that homosexual activists are now more organized and united to argue against what they misleadingly label “gay marriage bans,” but there are two more significant reasons for the changed mood. First, a series of court cases in California, New York and Washington have indicated that judges are not ready to force gay marriage onto an unwilling electorate—making the marriage protection measures seem less urgent (though the newly announced decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court may foster a new upsurge of popular support for action to protect traditional marriage).  Second, the public suffers from a clear case of what can only be described as “gay fatigue” – simple exhaustion and disgust with Foley, McGreevy, and the endless, wearying, inescapable conversation about all things homosexual. Most people would prefer that homosexuality regain its old position as “the love that dares not speak its name,” and drop the present posture as “the love that won’t shut up.”

I used to invest a great deal of time and creative energy writing pithy analysis of newly released motion pictures; during the five years I served as Chief Film Critic for the New York Post, for instance (1993-98), I published reviews of nearly a thousand different films.

I still review movies, of course, with the “Eye on Entertainment” radio feature (which you can access through our website, michaelmedved.com) and on my nationally syndicated show every Friday, when the new movies come out. For these evaluations, however, I scrupulously avoid writing scripts or even outlines: though I do think about my reviews in advance, they are entirely ad-libbed when I record them or broadcast them live. The whole idea of laboring once again over written critiques fills me with dread and distaste, and occasionally I’ll see an example of writing about movies that stiffens my resolve to try to avoid climbing once more into that sweaty arena of stilted self-importance.

For instance, I recently came across an article in the New York Times by one Dennis Lim (whose work I’d never noted before) about the “Blue Velvet”/ “Mulholland Drive” auteur, David Lynch.

In the text of his appreciation of the shamelessly weird director, Mr. Lim wrote of Lynch’s new film “Inland Empire” that it is “hard-wired into its protagonist’s disintegrating psyche, a condition that somehow prompts convulsive dislocations in time and space…Actor becomes character. Fiction infects reality. The various narrative strands- plagued by déjà vu, doppelgangers and the menacing ambient drone of Mr. Lynch’s sound design – start to unravel. Shuttling between California and Poland, the movie folds in a Baltic radio play, a Greek chorus of skimpily dressed young women and a ghostly sitcom featuring a rabbit-headed cast and an arbitrary laugh track.”

Sounds delightful, right? Fun for the whole family!

As if sensing that the reader might feel put off or confused about the latest towering work of Lynchian genius Mr. Lim describes, he helpfully provides the director’s perspective:

“Asked to elaborate on some of the film’s themes, Mr. Lynch was illuminating, if not always in expected ways. On his apparent conception of the self as fragmentary, he said: ‘The big self is mondo stable. But the small self- we’re blowing about like dry leaves in the wind.’ Regarding the essential elusiveness of time he declared, ‘It’s going backward and forward, and it’s slippery.’”

If you understand any of this, you’ve probably spent too much time at film festivals – or else in Transcendental Meditation, Mr. Lynch’s preferred means of spiritual enlightenment. (A large portrait of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, his chosen guru, apparently looms over his offices). He recently established the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace “with the goal or raising $7 billion to create ‘universities of peace.’”

Perhaps he’d prove more successful in getting these funds if he encouraged direct donations of the cost of movie tickets, with no expectation or demand that contributors must actually suffer through his Greek chorus of skimpily dressed young women and ghostly sitcoms with the rabbit-headed cast.

Even thinking about this forthcoming cinematic experience (and the avalanche of fatuous and heavy-breathing commentary it will no doubt inspire) forces me to recognize the “slippery nature” of time as, alas, my small self blows about like dry leaves in the wind. In other words, I found the observations by Mr. Lim’s and Mr. Lynch “illuminating, if not always in expected ways.”

There is no justification for the outrageous decision by CNN to air terrorist propaganda video of deadly snipers in action. If their own cameramen and technical crews had secured such footage, the network might argue more credibly about the newsworthy aspects of the images, but since the video of terrorist “operations” was prepared and provided by the insurgents themselves, CNN is clearly, unequivocally cooperating with disinformation efforts to sway US public opinion some two weeks before a crucial election.

While the network’s decision provoked widespread, common sense condemnation, many of the angry commentators failed to note the most objectionable aspect of the vile broadcast on “360 With Anderson Cooper” and elsewhere on CNN. The now infamous sniper is captured in conversation with one of his cohorts, presumably the camera man. CNN reporter Michael Ware (who received the video from the terrorists, not from any news agency) then narrates and translates the recorded conversation as the insurgents take aim at an American soldier:

“And they are waiting for their moment, as the soldiers mingle with Iraqi civilians.

“’People are around them,’ warns the sniper’s spotter, who seems to be operating the video camera.

“’Want me to find another place?’”

“’No, no,’ comes the reply. ‘Give me a moment.’

“And then the soldier falls forward.”

Aside from the hideous reality of depicting the random death of an American warrior, this video presents the insurgents in an utterly misleading, totally positive light.

The most objectionable aspect of the whole package involves the suggestion that the two insurgents are worried about inflicting harm on Iraqi civilians. “People are around them,” the spotter says, and suggests another place.

In fact, the insurgents inflict the huge majority of their casualties on Iraqi civilians – not on the American or Iraqi military. All figures on death and maiming in the current war (including the irresponsible, wildly inflated Johns Hopkins guess-timate) emphasize that civilians are the principal victims – and the insurgents are BY FAR their chief killers.

CNN, however, in addition to airing laughably manipulative “peace overtures” from a spokesman for the jihadist “Islamic Army,” helps promote the grotesque lie that the terrorists strike only uniformed Americans—never innocent Iraqis. The daily carnage featuring women, children and old men, at mosques and markets and even schools, gives lie to this absurd, mendacious notion that no responsible press outlet should in any way advance.

The terrorists want to distribute the tape of their sniper attacks on military personnel because it’s so utterly unrepresentative of their actual agenda--- which has claimed far more unarmed Iraqis than members of any army. That CNN should broadcast their carefully framed PR footage without making this essential observation represents a new low in broadcasting sloppiness and stupidity.

I made that point this morning on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Howard Kurtz, but the eagerness to seize any available tool to bash beleaguered Republicans obviously outweighs any old-fashioned notion of journalistic integrity.

What kind of people have enough free time and cash to plunk down more than $50 a seat for an evening of musical Bush-bashing at prestigious New York theatres?

The three shows opening this weekend are commercial ventures, not attempts to raise money for “worthy causes” like the Democratic Party, People for the American Way, the ACLU, or the Free Mumia Collective. And somehow, the producers of “Bush is Bad: Impeachment Edition,” “Bush Wars: Musical Revenge” and “Dumbya’s Rapture” believe that eager theatre-goers in the City that Never Sleeps will flock to see these noble contributions to western civilization.

“Bush is Bad” apparently features a chimpanzee with a striking resemblance to the President, along with “catchy tunes, wickedly funning lyrics and scathing impersonations of the president and his dissembling gang of conspirators” (according to official promotional material. “Some of the new songs for this edition include “Wake Me When It’s 2009” and “Heck of a Job.” The New York Times reports that at the conclusion of the show, the cast members hold up signs with info about impeachment websites to the delight of the wildly cheering throngs.

“Bush Wars,” on the other hand, includes “16musical parodies and dozens of costume changes” concerning “Dick Cheney literally in bed with the oil companies to the Supreme Court’s right hand turn to George W. in a soft shoe number with his bosom buddy, Jesus!...The musical takes a funny but insightful look at how America’s current government has undermined the Geneva Convention, Sccience, Social Security, Personal Security, Religious Freedom, Personal Freedom, Pretzels, Government Secrets, the Courts, the Brain Dead and yes, Democracy itself!” The show-stopping number apparently involves a hilarious song-and-dance routine about the brave Terri Schiavo wanting to die but getting repeatedly blocked by stupid Republicans. The tickets for this sparkling evening of entertainment and wit range from $37.50 to $55.00.

Meanwhile, across town (near Greenwich Village), you can enjoy “Dumbya’s Rapture” – “a political satire that dramatizes the real and true history of the U.S. from 2001 and 2006…the uproarious tale of one president, two wars and thousands of dead… The President is more concerned with assigning nicknames and going on vacation than with the duties of his office. Surrounded by a cabinet that includes a power mad VP, a Secretary of Defense suffering from war fever, a tongue-speaking Attorney General obsessed with pot, prostitution and covering up naked statues…”

The idea of these three shows opening up the same weekend, just two-and-a-half weeks before an election, ought to delight me: after all, money that goes to tickets for these productions won’t go to Democratic campaigns, and it’s hard to imagine that “Bush is Bad: Impeachment Edition"” will make new converts to the liberal cause.

Nevertheless, there’s something terribly depressing about this mad, sad detour for so many theatrical professionals. My own experience with stage productions gives me some sense of the huge waste of effort and talent and hope and energy from the no-doubt talented actors and writers and musicians and set designers and lighting people and stage hands who have worked hard to bring these shows to the public.

It’s also alarming that theatre-goers in Manhattan might prefer to invest their time and money in, say, “Dumbya’s Rapture” rather than going to the Opera, the Philharmonic, chamber music concerts, a Shakespeare production, “Wicked"on Broadway, or dozens and dozens of alternative offerings.

Yes, I understand that many, many liberal Americans hate President Bush with a coruscating, implacable passion. But isn’t it surprising that they should derive so much apparent enjoyment from reveling in that poisonous and paralyzing hatred?

Undoubtedly, these three worthy shows will provide cathartic, deeply meaningful theatrical experiences for all the discerning patrons of the arts who flock to see them. Have a nice weekend!

If an elected official gets indicted for (among other things) stealing $95,000 dollars from Little League baseball teams to pay his rent, wouldn’t you expect that you’d hear something about it? Especially if that veteran Assemblyman in a major state has stolen a total of $2.2 million from taxpayers and labor unions to buy an $80,000 Mercedes for his wife, purchase and install a plasma TV for his “female friend,” and to renovate his $760,000 waterfront suburban home (not to be confused with his other residence in the city)? The 186 page indictment of Assemblyman Brian M. McLaughlin of Queens, New York, totals an amazing $2.2 million in ill-gotten gains – derived from brazen expedients like creating no-show jobs on his legislative payroll and pocketing the salaries for himself. This startling story made the New York press on Wednesday, but it’s hardly provoked the national indignation you might expect. Why not? Because Assemblyman McLaughlin is a Democrat, and only Republican scandals strike the media gatekeepers as fully newsworthy. McLaughlin’s alleged crimes don’t fit into the script about the GOP “culture of corruption” so major news outlets hardly notice—just as they ignored today’s story of a Democratic State Senator in South Dakota under investigation for molesting a teenaged page in that prairie state. The advice to any Republican politician contemplating sleazy sex-capades or land deals (ala US Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid) or outright theft of public (or Little League) money: before you undertake the dirty deeds, change your registration to “Democrat.” You’ll stand a much better chance of escaping condemnation in the national press.

Today (Wednesday) I had the chance to interrogate – or at least interview—David Kuo, author of the lavishly controversial new book TEMPTING FAITH, which has provided the most recent tool for Bush-bashing by the nakedly partisan press.

Most attention has focused on Kuo’s assertions about disrespectful remarks about religious leaders by some of his unidentified past associates in the White House office of Faith-Based Initiatives, but much of the book (which I admit I have not read in its entirety) focuses on the author’s thwarted hopes for vastly increased federal spending on anti-poverty programs. He concludes with an “Afterword” entitled “Fast, Let’s Fast” that argues that just as Jesus and Moses fasted from food for forty days each, so today’s people of faith should “fast” from political involvement-- perhaps for as much as two years. Of course, a fast-fast that lasted even as briefly as forty days would bring us just beyond the upcoming elections, so his plea isn’t even subtle in its attempt to suppress conservative turnout and hand victory to the Democrats.

While it’s easy to sympathize with Kuo’s disappointment that the big federal innovations he expected never took shape, and it’s even easier to sympathize with some of his recent health problems, there is neither sense nor sanity in his desire to immobilize the powerful movement of Christian conservatives so painstakingly assembled over the past thirty years. He writes: “We need to eschew politics to focus more time on practicing compassion. We need to spend more time studying Jesus and less time trying to get people elected.” He ignores the fact that for most people of faith, it’s not an either-or proposition: we can study scripture at the same time that we’re working for our political principles, and we can “practice compassion” in private at the same time we endorse compassionate policies in public. Yes, it’s crucial to extend personal assistance to a frightened, pregnant teenager who might feel tempted to abort her baby, but it’s also essential to use political platforms as well as mass media to help build what Pope John Paul II described as a “culture of life.”

The deepest problem with Kuo’s confessional/polemic (which has drawn attention only because of its usefulness to the political left) is its assumption that by fasting from politics, and handing victory to the determined enemies of traditional religious values, people of faith will help themselves find deeper satisfaction and salvation. His logic represents the political equivalent of suggesting that soldiers can help themselves by deserting the battlefield. Sure, you may personally enhance your life by walking away from a fight but you’ll still need to face your deadly enemy in the future and at that point you’ll need to recapture lost ground.

The political struggles of the moment really do matter– to defend our beloved country from the very real horrors of Islamo-Nazi terror, to protect the institution of marriage from irrevocable alteration, to save some of the millions of babies lost each year to abortion, to defeat the madness of multiculturalism and to affirm the importance of one nation, under God, indivisible. When compared to the consequences of defeat in these battles (a defeat that Kuo, for all his protestations, seems to crave and recommend) his obsession with faith-based anti-poverty initiatives seems petty, almost childish.

In other words, you don’t need to feel tempted in any way by the arguments in TEMPTING FAITH – and you certainly don’t need to support the leftist establishment behind the book by buying it. But you may well want to listen to the exchange in which Mr. Kuo gamely participated on Wednesday, and to his defense of himself and his position from energetic attacks from both the host and the callers.

In response to recent events, the media establishment has conveyed a deeply confusing message to members of Congress who are struggling with their gay identities, On the one hand, if you express your homosexual longings by sending raunchy e-mails to a teenaged page, you will draw universal condemnation as a pervert, reprobate, predator and sleazeball. If, on the other hand, you take your lust well beyond the stage of fantasy and pornographic notes and actually engage in gay sex with a seventeen year old, you can expect fulsome praise as “a role model,” celebrated for your “compassion and wisdom.”

It may sound like a sick joke that in the fetid backwash of the Mark Foley scandal the New York Times would applaud a member of the House for a gay affair with a teenager but it’s God’s timing, not the writers at America’s “Journal of Record,” that displayed a sense of humor.

On Saturday, October 14, just as the media obsession with Mark Foley’s e-mail had begun to subside, the Good Lord called Gerry Studds, 69, to his eternal rest. This twelve term Representative member from Massachusetts joined Mark Foley as the only other Congressional figure in history ever involved in a gay sex scandal with a page. In 1983, Congressman Studds endured a vote of censure from his colleagues when it became known that he had committed intimate acts with a seventeen-year-old victim when he was 37 and a recently elected member of the House.

Nevertheless, in the obituary for Mr. Studds (who collapsed while walking his dog in Boston) the New York Times expressed admiration for his years of service and even for his handling of his humiliation and censure. “Once outed,” the newspaper reported, “Mr. Studds refused to buckle to conservative pressure to resign. ‘All members of Congress are in need of humbling experiences from time to time,’ Mr. Studds said at the time. But he never apologized. He defended the relationship as consensual and condemned the investigation, saying it had invaded his privacy.”

If Mark Foley protested the invasion of his privacy (with his intimate e-mails circulated around the world) would the New York Times ever consider quoting him approvingly?

In fact, the obituary went even further in quoting admiring assessments of Mr. Studds’ importance to the gay community. “’In a sense, he became a role model,’ said Charles Kaiser, author of ‘1968 in America’and ‘The Gay Metropolis.’ ‘His experience convinced other people that it would now be possible to run as an openly gay person.”

The Times also cited a tribute from Mr. Studds husband, Dean T. Hara (as residents of Massachusetts, they married in 2004), who said “all of us will be forever indebted to him for leading the way with compassion and wisdom.”

Why the difference in press treatment of the late Congressman Studds and the former Congressman Foley? No one can claim that gay behavior became less acceptable between 1983 (the year of the Studds censure) and 2006 (the year of Foley’s fall). In terms of physical, psychological and legal impact there is no reason at all to consider internet sex messages more predatory, dangerous or despicable than actual physical intimacy with an underage boy toy. Would Mr. Studds’ admirers insist that his lack of apology and refusal to resign (and six subsequent election victories) represented an admirable course of action in contrast to Foley’s shame-faced retreat to rehab? If so, then they take the appalling position that we can’t judge the substance of a man’s misdeeds but must only evaluate the way he spins them.

In the end, of course, there’s one principal reason we hear applause for Studds at the same time the world roars its disgust with Foley: we always seem to treat sex scandals involving Democrats less seriously than sex scandals involving Republicans. It’s not that the GOP claims moral perfection, or even the consistent high ground, but Republicans do tend to feel remorse rather than defiance when their intimate imbroglios bring shame and disgrace to themselves and their party.

A new report from the Census Bureau has produced new proclamations of “the death of marriage.” The Seattle Times featured a front page article today (Sunday) declaring “Married Couples Outnumbered for the First Time” while the New York Times headlined the same material with the announcement: “It’s Official: To Be Married Means to be Outnumbered.”

This interpretation of the data is ridiculous, manipulative and profoundly misleading at a time when statistics show that at least 85% of Americans will eventually marry, and that more than 60% of U.S. adults above the age of 25 are currently married. Most unmarried adults are aging widows and widowers (a rapidly increasing number) or else young people below age 25 who haven’t yet married, but expect to get hitched eventually.

So what, exactly, are the “experts” talking about when they suggest that married people are now “outnumbered?”

The New York Times announces this conclusion in the following way: “Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority…The American Community Survey, released recently by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7%, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples….”

This may sound worrisome, until you realize that this highly touted figure involves households, not individuals.

To get some sense of the difference, imagine a block on a suburban cul de sac that includes six homes. Three of them are occupied by married couples; the other three are in inhabited by an elderly widow, living alone; a struggling single mom with her kids, and a swinging bachelor with a succession of glamorous dates. In other words, there are a total of six households on “Wisteria Court” and, like the national figures, only half of them feature married couples. But of the nine adults (total) who reside on this block, two thirds are currently married.

This little example illustrates the deceptive, dishonest way that major news outlets have decided to trumpet the new figures. Counting “households” as discrete units, two people who have been married for a long time are balanced by a single person who’s never yet married. The current decline in married couples as a percentage of all households reflects demographic factors concerning the huge baby boom generation: with more boomers counting as officially “unmarried” because they’re victims of divorce, or else widows and widowers.

Despite the desire by critics of traditional marriage to promote “living together” arrangements as the hip new alternative to matrimony, the numbers of co-habiting couples remain relatively low. According to the New York Times, such heterosexual couples represent “a little more than 5 percent of all households” – in other words, they’re outnumbered by currently married couples by ten to one. Meanwhile, the gay couples that have seized so much attention and publicity remain shockingly rare: the Census Bureau reports a total of 776,000 same sex households that include partners who say “they share living quarters and have a close personal relationship with the householder.” Even assuming that all these “close personal relationships” are sexual (an extremely questionable, even dubious assumption) this means that gay couples comprise barely 0.6% of US households. Even in San Francisco, the top city (surprise, surprise!) for such living arrangements, gay male couples are only 2% of total households.

The New York Times report on these new figures featured not only a misleading headline, but also a totally dishonest subhead, declaring “Fewer Tying the Knot.” Meanwhile, in the body of the report, the Times itself contradicted that announcement, writing (accurately) that “the total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry.” If the total number of married couples is indeed “higher than ever,” then how can the paper dishonestly shock its readers by suggesting “Fewer Tying the Knot”? Meanwhile, Times reporter Sam Roberts also quotes Pamela J. Smock, a researcher at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, who said “her research – unaffiliated with the Census Bureau- found that the desire for strong family bonds, and especially marriage, was constant. ‘Even cohabiting young adults tell us that they are doing so because it would be unwise to marry without first living together in a society marked by high levels of divorce.”

Of course, other research consistently indicates that living together before marriage increases, rather than decreases, the risks of divorce, but at least Ms. Smock acknowledges that nearly all young Americans hope to be married.

By playing games with numbers--- suggesting falsely that married couples are now a dying breed—advocates of less traditional living arrangements help to scare prospective mates away from matrimonial commitment. The pernicious myth of the 50% divorce rate (divorce rates have been going down consistently since 1981, and never reached 50% of all first marriages) has definitely entered public consciousness and helped to erode the idea of marital norms and permanent relationships. Honest statistics and impartial analysis indicate that significant majorities of all couples getting married for the first time will stay married until one of the partners dies.

Those statistics also show that married Americans need not feel “outnumbered” or outmoded, despite tendentious twaddle in the press. Dr. William H. Frey, a demographer at the liberal Brookings Institution, proudly told the Times: “This would seem to close the book on the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century.”

Actually, he ought to re-open the book, and consider some of the overwhelming evidence that the traditional family, while undoubtedly beleaguered by often hostile forces in media, academia, government and elsewhere, has managed to survive and even, in some places, to thrive.

Why would any decent person gripe or grumble about movie stars and corporate honchos getting together to raise money for AIDS?

That’s a question that surely occurred to many of my listeners after a spirited hour on the show today discussing the newly-launched “RED” campaign designed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to provide life-sustaining medicines for some of the HIV positive multitudes in Africa.

The concept behind this new effort, launched by rock star/activist Bono and Schwarzenegger brother-in-law Bobby Shriver, is to get major companies (including The Gap, Motorola, American Express, and more) to make special products available with the (RED) designation (for some reason the word always appears in parentheses in its official deployments. The corporations then devote advertising resources to make the specially branded (RED) merchandise look stylish, desirable, hip, and socially conscious. They also pledge a portion of their profits from sale of these products to the relief of African AIDS patients.

Three full-pages of ads (with striking (RED) backgrounds, of course) appeared in today’s New York Times, and Oprah devoted Friday’s show to the ambitious new effort. Bono and supermodel Christy Turlington even appeared with President Bush and Speaker of the House Denny Hastert in Chicago to promote the merchandise (though it’s doubtful that they offer tank tops or tee-shirts or jeans that could accommodate the imposing Speaker.)

Why, then, should I complain about this wonderful synergy of enterprise and philanthropy, or even ask critical questions about the endeavor?

Actually, I have several problems with this endeavor.

1). Big companies are using the (RED) association as an excuse to jack up their prices on ordinary merchandise to ridiculous levels, and not all the difference in price is actually going to the charity. Consumers would do far better to buy the regular non-(RED) products and then give their own contributions directly to their charity of choice. For instance, Gap jeans normally priced at just under $50 are now sold as signature (RED) pants for $198. The Gap promises to donate 50% of their proceeds to AIDS relief – so that still means that the company is taking an extra $50 bucks (not for charity, just for profit) from gullible people who choose to buy the jeans. A Gap long-sleeved t-shirt that last week cost $14.50, now goes for $45…. Meaning that the company still gets an extra $8 of your money on an absurdly over-priced piece of cloth, even after giving their share to charity. Motorola is similarly jacking up prices of their (RED) offerings, and the company’s president of mobile devices, Ron G. Garriques, conceded to the New York Times: “I don’t believe it’s giving up profit. What I believe it is, is making more profit.” Sure, hefty profit margins are the American way, but this is taking advantage of people’s charitable impulses that might have been better engaged in direct charitable giving. In other words, the (RED) scam counts on human stupidity, or at least silliness. I hate ruthless exploitations of thoughtlessness – which is why I hate the gambling industry, and I dislike this.

2.) I’ve seldom read such obnoxious promotional material for any commercial enterprise as the “The (RED) Manifesto” released today. Explaining the idea behind the products, the do-gooders explained: “You buy the (RED) stuff. We get the money, buy the pills and distribute them. They take the pills, stay alive and continue to take care of their families and contribute socially and economically to their communities. If they don’t get the pills, they die. We don’t want them to die. We want to give them the pills. And we can. And you can. And it’s easy. All you have to do is upgrade your choices.” In other words, if you don’t pay extra money for the same stuff, you’re dooming innocent Africans to death. In short, the selling strategy here is telling people: “If you don’t buy, people will die.”

3. There’s an obvious irony is exploiting come-hither sexuality and partial nudity in ads that claim their intention is fight a sex-based disease. One of the striking images among the New York Times full pages spreads features a nude Jennifer Garner, only partially covered by a partially zipped (RED) jacket that is falling off one shoulder. The caption asks: “Can a Jacket Change the World? This one Can. All Gap (Product) RED Clothing is Designed to Help Eliminate AIDS in Africa.” Actually changing sexual behavior is the best and ultimately the only way to stop the devastating spread of AIDS. Racy ads altogether ignore the direct connection between racy behavior and the transmission of the disease.

4. The exploitation of trendy African imagery is a bit laughable in some of the (RED) promotions. For instance, Converse is offering special (RED) shoes “made of Mali mud cloth, a traditional woven cotton fabric that is painted with dyes made of mud and bark.” Isn’t it just a bit laughable that some of the nation’s most trendy and well-heeled sophisticates will over-pay for shoes made of “mud cloth” and dyed with “mud and bark”?

Obviously, I’m not planning to purchase any (RED) merchandise, but I recognize that many others will choose to ignore my reservations and buy the products with enthusiasm, pride and a sense of satisfaction. I recognize (here, and as I did on the air) that Bono and his confederates are wonderfully well-intentioned, sincere in their desire to help suffering millions. I only wish it might be possible to provide that help without the overdoes of manipulation, guilt-tripping and fatuity involved in the current campaign.

As long as the charming and effervescent Kim Jong Il holds back in making use of his spiffy new nukes, we’re supposed to participate in the 2008 Olympics in beautiful downtown Beijing. Imagine, if you will, that the USA proceeded to win every single one of the significant Gold Medals – not just beating the other countries in those medal totals you see in the paper, but sweeping all the major first place victories, across the board. Wouldn’t that provide a strong basis for national pride and celebration?

Why, then, the lack of celebration – or even recognition –regarding the unprecedented US sweep of prizes that matter far more than Olympic gold?

In the sciences and economics, every one of the 2006 Nobel Prizes went to an American. In Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, and Economic Science, the world’s most prestigious and significant awards honored six American researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, the University of Massachusetts, Columbia and NASA. Each of these US geniuses received a monetary prize of more than a million dollars for breakthrough work of profound benefit to humanity.

The more politically correct Nobel Prize in Literature went to a Turkish novelist (Orhan Pamuk—there’s a household name) while the “Peace” Prize, when it’s announced in the next few days, will no doubt go to an America basher – and perhaps even to an American America basher (Noam Chomsky? Cindy Sheehan? Hugo Chavez?). The Swedish Nobel voters have made similarly stupid selections for the Peace Prize in the past, including, you will no doubt recall, the repulsive and self-righteous Jimmy Carter.

In any event, in the sciences no nation has ever before won every available medal – which should provide a powerful answer to those gloom-and-doomers who insist that the USA is falling apart, a shadow of its former greatness, corrupt and brain dead, ready for total collapse at the slightest push from (pick one) Islamo-Nazi terrorists, greedy globalist corporations, fire-breathing Christian fanatics, or the dreaded New World Order.

Actually, the United States continues to dominate the world – intellectually, economically, culturally, scientifically, militarily, politically. The scope and depth of US leadership is unprecedented in all of human history: even the ancient Roman Empire, as powerful as it was, co-existed with other mighty civilizations (China, Persia, India, Meso-America) and influenced them not at all. Today, no corner of the globe counts as so remote or isolated that it can escape the impact, for better or worse, of decisions made in Washington or trends launched in LA or New York. When my daughter began making her college plans last year, we looked at an in depth analysis of the world’s top twenty universities published in the distinguished British journal, the Economist. According to their rankings, all but three of the twenty best universities on earth—some 85% of the top schools - are located in the United States (Shayna attends the University of Washington, ranked number 17).

Of course, Americans remain morbidly if appropriately conscious of our nation’s imperfections – of the economic challenges faced by most middle class people, the tackiness of our popular culture, a suddenly rising crime rate, the stubborn continued existence of poverty in the midst of plenty, an inconclusive war in the Middle East, and so forth. But even in the heat of a fiercely contested election campaign, the startling Nobel sweep ought to remind us how fortunate we are, and how many of the best brains on the planet are either born as our neighbors, or else choose to make their lives here to give their genius free reign.

It may seem heretical to forget about Mark Foley’s disgusting e-mails for even a moment, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out that American scientists had walked off with every available Nobel Prize and, yes, it’s even better than winning Gold Medals for fencing, high hurdles or weight lifting. Time, in other words, to break out the champagne for the weekend and toast our pride in this Greatest Nation on God’s Green Earth.

You’ve probably already heard some of the horrifying news…

In more than a dozen nations around the world, angry Christian mobs have attacked U.S. businesses and British embassies, venting their rage at a what is perceived as a grievous affront to their faith. Beginning in Nigeria, some of the Anglican faithful left church services last Sunday after being whipped into a frenzy by fiery sermons, and proceeded to burn cars, smash shop windows, attack police officers, and to burn Bush and Blair in effigy. Catholics in Bolivia bombed a police station and vandalized railroad cars, while Pentecostals in Ukraine called a two day general strike and staged mass protest rallies to demand that their stunned government take prompt action.

The basis for the worldwide Christian fury, still seething in many corners of the globe and ready for further explosions of violence, was the release of a “death metal” album on a nominally British label (EMI) by the controversial American group Slayer. The name of the album, “Christ Illusion,” seemed calculated to provoke devout believers, especially because the shocking cover art featured an image of Jesus with both arms amputated and an eye gouged out of its socket, posing in front of other bloody severed heads and limbs. A featured song on the album, “Skeleton Christ,” further provoked outrage from religious communities that seemed unable to control the spontaneous indignation of the furious masses.

If you haven’t heard chilling reports of these world-wide riots, don’t blame the news media: you haven’t learned of them because they never happened. There have been no Christian riots in Nigeria, Bolivia, Ukraine or anywhere else. I made the whole thing up --- in order, I hope, to make an important point.

Christians everywhere have been too busy caring for their families, working hard at their jobs, helping the less fortunate, worshipping God and studying his word to surrender to the temptations of outrage and revenge. The album from Slayer, “Christ Illusion,” is all too real, and it is indeed calculated to wound, insult and offend Christian believers. But one of the reasons I love, honor and respect my faithful Christian neighbors and fellow citizens is that they have reliably refused to take the bait. In India, leaders of the tiny Catholic community lodged some peaceful protests and the corporate officials at EMI India agreed to remove the offensive albums from sale. This moderate response appears to represent the most intense objection anywhere to the album’s international release.

The contrast with the Muslim reaction to any perceived insult to Mohammed or Islam is hugely instructive. The now infamous Danish cartoons really did provoke worldwide rioting (and cost at least 200 lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage) while representing a far less formidable affront than the new Slayer album. The veteran rockers are far better known, with a vastly wider international audience, than the obscure Copenhagen cartoonists, and the corporation promoting “Christ Illusion” is one of the world’s leading music conglomerates, not a single newspaper little known outside of Denmark. Try to imagine that the death metal geniuses had called their new release, “Mohammed Illusion” instead of “Christ Illusion,” and had featured cover art with an image of the Prophet with his arms cut down to bloody stumps and a missing eye and mutilated face. Isn’t it safe to assume that such a pop music release would have provoked universal denunciation, death threats, fatwas, fire-breathing sermons everywhere, bombs, hysteria, surging lynch mobs, self righteous ululation, UN resolutions, vandalism, hijackings, recalled ambassadors and new confirmations of the epidemic of paranoia among hundreds of millions of crazed adherents of ROPO (the Religion Of Perpetual Outrage).

The fact that Christians didn’t respond in this way to the Slayer silliness isn’t an indication of the weakness of their faith, but a demonstration of its strength. The constant agitation of Muslim leaders, always ready to explode over some new expression of alleged disrespect, doesn’t show the power and sincerity of Islam, but its pathetic insecurity and its prevailing sense of vulnerability.

Is it any accident that atheists and secularists today display a touchiness and a quickness to take offense that more closely resembles the attitudes of fanatical Muslims than the long-suffering, tough-to-shake confidence of believing Christians? The insistence on erasing or at least opposing public religious symbols of every kind – including those that were installed many decades ago – echoes the eagerness of the Taliban to obliterate the 1,600 year old Buddhas of the Bamayan Valley of Afghanistan. For both secular militants and Muslim extremists, the intolerance of any dissenters and infidels stems from a deep-seated sense that the tide of history is running against them: that the battle of ideas and the ongoing struggle for the souls of a new generation don’t favor the frenzied followers of either Mohammed or Bertrand Russell. Judeo-Christian believers, on the other hand, comfortably can accept expressions of religious attitudes very different from our own because of an unshakable inner certainty that our faiths are flourishing.

That doesn’t make the ugly Slayer album any more acceptable --- or their wretchedly adolescent, cacophonous music any more endurable. But the mild, philosophical, largely indifferent reaction from fervent believers (who have learned to expect and accept heavy doses of Christian bashing) serves to remind the world what constitutes the true “Religion(s) of Peace.”

\