"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is the most conservative-themed song I've heard playing in regular rotation anywhere. It isn't truly a "country" song any more than "Drug Store Truck Driving Man" is. (Come to think of it, that would make a great song critical of the Bush Administration...)

But look at the song. To begin with, its association of the Devil with Georgia clearly is saying "Bill Clinton is Satan." Which is the one mantra that Limbaugh and the right-wing noise machine has been chanting forever. They'll do it 50 years after his death.

Second, it shows Satan negotiating. Which Republicans never do, since to give in to your values is evil.

Third, the song lionizes a hick kid named Johnny who manages to pull himself up by his...well, not bootstraps, but fiddle strings...without the help of the government. Just like all those people flooded out in New Orleans are supposed to.

Fourth, when the Devil plays with his "band of demons" (because Democrats gang up on the poor individual trying to make his own way like an Ayn Rand hero) what they play sounds like a combination of Mick Jagger and soul music. Obviously, drug-using rock guitarists and blacks are evil.

Fifth, Johnny conquers the Devil with a song with no improvisation, no intricacy, just a straightforward country melody. Simple ideas for a simple political philosophy.

And finally, Johnny calls the Devil Clinton a "son of a bitch," one in a long line of curses that Republicans throw at people with whom they disagree. Although some of the ones uttered by Cheney, Bush and the like are far less printable than "son of a bitch."

If you're making an album, I'm sure that any Charley Daniels songs will qualify - come to think of it, most of them are pale imitations of "Devil." Although I haven't yet heard the one where he talks about putting Jews into camps, I'm sure I'll hear Eric Cartman singing it on a future episode of "South Park."

The one curious thing about this series is its narrator, the woman who killed herself as the initiating plot of this series. Her soul, or ghost, or whatever, is the narrator of the series. But she never says anything about herself.

In fact, she politely waited until the right point in the first season to watch her supposed former friends discover the reason and circumstance of her suicide. At least in the Harry Potter series, Moaning Myrtle (a girl with more personality than any of them) never stops talking about her death. (The series creators missed a perfect opportunity for the second season. Imagine this: after having the bimbos figure out her reason for suicide and deduce everything according to their limited intelligence, the ghost would say, "A wonderful explanation - but they're one hundred percent wrong." Talk about yanking the viewer's chain.)

At any rate, Hollow Point Head or whatever her name is remains there, disembodied, commenting slyly on her former friends, who aren't really friends, either to her or each other or anyone else, really. There is only one conclusion I can come to about this situation.

The narrator is not only dead, she's in Hell, and she's sitting and waiting for her four associates to die, because that's where they'll all end up. All of her comments about the "life lessons" displayed in each episode is her cynical comment on the Housewives's inability to live up to any kind of knowledge or moral code.

I'm old enough to remember the flood of spy shows of the early 60's. Many were campy and silly and incomprehensible, but in their own way they were smarter than "Alias." The most popular, "The Man From UNCLE," had as its star an actor whose graduate thesis involved the impact of McCarthyism on the acting profession. Perhaps it was only in modest ways, but Robert Vaughn pushed the series to occasionally question the Cold War and the whole need for espionage - and the tragedy it brought to its practicioners.

The pilot episode of "The Man From UNCLE" had Napolean Solo, Vaughn's character, facing off against a modern-day pirate whose thefts were intended to fund a retreat from the nuclear apocalypse he saw as inevitable. As Solo allowed the pirate to go down with his ship, he quietly agreed with his view of world governments heading downhill into nuclear war. Where in "Alias" was there any acknowledgement that all their globe-hopping hop-scotching had anything to do with our real-world fears of terrorism? Where was there any hint that the lives of ordinary people depended on their gadgets and seduction games?

"UNCLE" had a brief spin-off show, "The Girl From UNCLE," in which the not-very-political Stephanie Powers attempted to provide a more sexy and less thoughtful spy. I couldn't help but think of Sydney Bristow as a modern-day version of April Dancer; more overtly sexual, a lot dumber, and without the ability to see a bigger picture between all her high-heel jogging.