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I have long believed that politics and pop culture have more in common than the same volume of the encyclopedia.

I have even said, when I'm feeling ornery, that the most telling symbol of Reagan-era economics is "Pretty Woman" - a Disney-sanctioned Cinderella fairy-tale romance centered on a corporate shark and a prostitute, who bond over conspicuous consumption at Beverly Hills shops.

We are living in an age when Janet Jackson's nipple becomes a political scandal, or a Kentucky movie exhibitor can make the national news by boycotting "Monster-in-Law" because of co-star Jane Fonda's anti-war stance in the 1970s. (Apparently the guy didn't watch the movie - as Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum suggested in her review, the way the movie abuses Fonda's feminist ideals and dignity, you would think Ann Coulter wrote the screenplay.)

But comparing George W. Bush to Darth Vader? That's stretching things.

A few pundits on the right - those fine folks who made political footballs out of a decorated Vietnam veteran's record and a Florida woman's coma - have whined that some of the dialogue in "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" takes potshots at the Bush administration's handling of Iraq.

Craig Winneker, writing for the conservative Web site Tech Central Station, detected "a recurring anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War message [that] has no place in a 'Star Wars' flick." A group called Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood - which famously petitioned John Ashcroft to file treason charges against Michael Moore - has called for a "Star Wars" boycott (forgetting that the movie's distributor, 20th Century Fox, is in the same corporate family tree as the right's much-beloved Fox News).

Here are two examples of what these conservatives say is George Lucas' Bush-bashing (skip the bullet points if you want to avoid any spoilers):

l When the Republic's Senate votes for Chancellor Palpatine's request for absolute power, Sen. Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) comments, "So this is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," an apparent comparison to the U.S.A. Patriot Act.

l When Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) tells his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," it supposedly recalls Bush's post-9/11 statement "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Not that the right is alone in finding political fodder in "Star Wars." The liberal MoveOnPAC.org is mounting an ad campaign comparing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's power play in the U.S. Senate to Palpatine's machinations. The ad doesn't use any of Lucas' copyrighted icons, but the text scrolling on the screen is yellow and placed at a familiar slant.

At a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Revenge of the Sith" premiered out of competition last Sunday, Lucas acknowledged his saga's themes could apply to the Iraq war.

"In terms of evil, one of the original concepts was how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship," Lucas said.

When Lucas began writing "Star Wars," though, the war was in Vietnam and the president playing fast and loose with the Constitution was Richard Nixon - though Lucas did say this week, "The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

What's more unbelievable is that Lucas planned to go after Bush with his sixth (and likely final) "Star Wars" movie. In the past, he has always tried to keep "Star Wars" above partisan politics (remember the unsuccessful litigation to stop the movie's name from being used to describe Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative?) and he's too savvy a marketer to want to alienate the pro-Bush part of the "Star Wars" audience.

Besides, as all those Joseph Campbell interviews have taught us, the "Star Wars" themes - good and evil, heroes and villains, an all-encompassing Force connecting all living things - are universal and timeless, not bound up in whoever currently resides in the White House.

Could conservatives be getting a little paranoid? Are they seeing too much of the current political situation in "Revenge of the Sith" and blaming the movie rather than blaming Bush? If pop culture is a mirror to society, the reflection often reveals less about the mirror and more about who's looking into it.

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Got a question about the movies? Send it to movie critic Sean P. Means: The Salt Lake Tribune, 90 S. 400 West, Suite 700, Salt Lake City, UT 84101, or e-mail at movies@sltrib.com.