ARE “CHRISTIANISTS” TAKING OVER TENNESSEE? Clark Stooksbury wonders how he missed it: “Maybe I have breathed in too much smoke from cross burnings or have been bitten at too many snake handling services, but I hadn’t previously considered how the post-election decision of one Tennessee network affiliate to preempt a Madonna concert for such ‘Christianist’ propaganda as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would have on the election in Tennessee two weeks earlier. ”

Perhaps that’s more of Ann Coulter’s space-time bending at work. Plus, Stooksbury observes: “The other big election in Tennessee was for governor. We reelected Phil Bredesen, the son of a Tennessee dirt farmer who became a Pentecostal preacher. No wait, Bredesen is actually a New Jersey born, Harvard educated health care executive who was overwhelmingly reelected this year — he carried every county.” Subtle they are, those Christianists.

UPDATE: Subtler than I knew! James Somers emails:

I couldn’t help but notice that here in Connecticut tonight, one of the network affiliates is going to be running “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in primetime. What does this mean? Sure, Connecticut is the only state in America that, without being compelled by a court order, enacted legislation recognizing civil unions between gays. Sure, we nominated Ned Lamont to run for Senate. But you know, I’m sure they could have run a Madonna concert instead of this Matthew Broderick hash if they had wanted. From this I can only assume that Puritanism isn’t dead here in New England, and that the dark forces of the Theocratic Christianist Theoconservatives are alive and well in the Nutmeg State. Can we be far at all from banning kite-flying and conducting mass executions at soccer stadiums?

This whole “Christianist” thing is kind of silly, as episodes like this one illustrate. At best, it’s a vapid book-marketing term, but it seems more like a variety of bigotry on its own account, and a pretty empty variety of bigotry at that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Like I said. Sheesh.