Too good to ignore, from Newsweek's Perspectives:

"That's unconscionable ... I believe in family values." —Seminole County (Fla.) Republican Party chairman Jim Stellings, testifying in the defamation suit he filed against a political rival who he says falsely accused him of having been married six times. The correct number of marriages is five.

Buy five, get one free?

George Lucas knows how to get people talking about his movies. A right-wing website has added him to its long list of boycotted entertainers. (The website demands “Please name one liberty we’ve lost, Mr. Lucas,” right under their online petition asking the Attorney General to charge Michael Moore with treason.) Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. From the New York Times:

For sheer lack of subtlety, the light-saber-wielding forces of good and evil in George Lucas’s “Star Wars” movies can’t hold a candle to the blogging, advertising and boycotting forces of the right and left. (Or left and right.)

More a measure of the nation’s apparently permanent political warfare than of a filmmaker’s intent, the heroes and antiheroes of Mr. Lucas’s final entry, “Episode III - Revenge of the Sith,” were on their way to becoming the stock characters of partisan debate by mid-Wednesday, hours before the film’s opening just after midnight:

µThe liberal advocacy group Moveon.org was preparing to spend $150,000 to run advertisements on CNN over the next few days … comparing Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, to the movie’s power-grabbing, evil Chancellor Palpatine, for Dr. Frist’s role in the Senate’s showdown over the confirmation of federal judges.

µConservative Web logs were lacerating Mr. Lucas over the film’s perceived jabs at President Bush - as when Anakin Skywalker, on his way to becoming the evil Darth Vader, warns, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” in an echo of Mr. Bush’s post-9/11 ultimatum, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

µA little-trafficked conservative Web site about film, Pabaah.com - for “Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood” - added Mr. Lucas to its list of boycotted entertainers…

µEven the Drudge Report Web site got into the act: beneath a picture of Darth Vader, it compared the White House press corps to the vengeful Sith, after reporters peppered a press secretary for pressing Newsweek magazine to “repair the damage” in the Muslim world caused by a retracted report about desecration of the Koran.