The word was "strategery," which acclaimed Land of the Lost actor Will Farrell made famous back in 2000, when he lampooned the man who would become President George W. Bush.

Always hip to popular culture, Press Secretary Gibbs instantly recognized the reference, saying, ""I love it how a 'Saturday Night Live' word has entered into the lexicon." He then threatened to curse.

Who knew government could be so darn great? Plus, as an added bonus, it gives Gibbs' opponents some fuel for their "he's not dignified" fire.

Here's the clip of Farrell on SNL, in case you don't remember...

His new ad for PETA only adds to the actor's tough/sensitive mystique (even if it may remind audiences that Rourke himself is no stranger to superfluous surgeries). However, what of Rourke's admission to GQ that though he didn't really follow politics enough to pay attention to Barack Obama's election, people need to start laying off President Bush?

"President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't know how anyone could have handled this situation," the actor said in an interview with GQ magazine.

"I don't give a —-- who's in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem... I'm not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This —-- between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn't it." He added: "It's too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don't think that anyone really knows quite what to do."

The actor also told the magazine he was surprised at Britain's approach to fundamentalists and the freedom of speech in the UK.

"I was in London recently and I couldn't believe all these hate-talking fanatics you have over here who are allowed to carry on doing their thing even when a bus full of women and children gets blown to pieces."

Mickey, a bit of advice: a little contrarian conservatism will only add some spice to your quirky profile, but when Big Hollywood come along and asks whether they can append your byline to their latest boilerplate screed against gay Communist Muslim executives in Hollywood, just say no. You don't want to offend any!

• Mickey Rourke Gets in the Ring with PETA [E!]

• Mickey Rourke defends George W Bush over 9/11 [Telegraph]

It all began when Barbara Walters brought up Bush's final press conference and dubbed it unusually introspective. This didn't sit quite right with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the Bush BFF who invaded the Oval Office over the weekend, had a 15-minute conversation with the president about dog biscuits, and now feels qualified to pronounce Bush her replacement husband should Tim's remote ever linger too long on MSNBC.

Predictably, Joy Behar threw herself into the mix, and the resulting melee was a shouty clusterfuck that recalls the ladies' good ol' days. We led with the clip in which Hasselbeck compares Bush to Abraham Lincoln (!), but so much went on that we've provided a second, even more high-volume sampling. Enjoy!

• The View [ABC]

Relax: Hasselbeck still doesn't have the football or the nuclear codes. We think. Still, the White House visit (as recounted on today's episode of The View) was a worrisome reward for the conservative cohost; we can sympathize with Joy Behar, who gnawed on her inner cheek throughout Hasselbeck's story, then spat blood into her coffee mug during the commercial break. At least Hasselbeck's baby son seized the opportunity to attempt a headbutt that would knock the president out of commission. He is a secret liberal and will be thrown into Gitmo immediately.

As for this, we're pretending it never happened. For your health.

• The View [ABC]

Truth be told, we can relate — aside from GlitterGlassesGuruGate, Elisabeth hasn't done anything particularly interesting this month on The View (though a shiver did go through our bodies the other day when she randomly brought up a conversation with her "good friend Gary Sinise"). On today's show, the archconservative revealed just how things have fallen: Bush has revoked her annual invitation to the White House! On a positive note, Elisabeth still has an open-ended invitation to visit Sarah Palin at her Alaska igloo, which she has decorated with bloody turkey feathers and a mug she swiped from the set of Saturday Night Live. Her one-way ticket is paid for by Joy Behar.

• The View [ABC]

MEN

1. Dana Carvey, 3:04:21 (Ocean to Bay Marathon, 1972) — Carvey is the only hint this marathon ever existed, though with photographic evidence scarce, we reluctantly place him at the top of the list of the World's Fastest Celeb Marathoner.

2. Björn Ulvaeus, 3:23:54 (Stockholm Marathon, 1980) — The ABBA co-founder also engineered a revolutionary antecedent to the Walkman and iPod, trademarking the waist-cinching Phonostrap to blast LP's on his high-energy training runs.

3. William Baldwin, 3:24:29 (New York City Marathon, 1992) — Before Alec divorced Kim Basinger, he was the only Baldwin brother to finish a marathon.

4. George W. Bush, 3:44:52 (Houston Marathon, 1993) — In an eerie harbinger of things to come, finished in 158th place but was declared the winner anyway.

5. Will Ferrell, 3:56:12 (Boston Marathon, 2003) — Trained naked, obviously, but ran the marathon in full Alex Trebex regalia (see above).

WOMEN

1. Kim Alexis, 3:52:00 (New York City Marathon, 1992) — Would likely have broken 3:40 if not for the mid-race "stretch break" with Baldwin.

2. Oprah Winfrey, 4:29:20 (Marine Corps Marathon, 1994) — Wanted to get in shape for her internationally televised Oscar humiliation by David Letterman less than four months later.

3. Lisa Ling, 4:34:18 (Boston Marathon, 2002) — Cost her View co-host and compulsive marathon-better Barbara Walters $1,200 when she couldn't finish under 4:30.

4. Katie Holmes, 5:29:58 (New York City Marathon, 2007) — If she finished at all. We're not so sure.

5. Ali Landry, 5:41:41 (Boston Marathon, 2002) — The former Miss USA vowed to finish the marathon if it was the last thing she ever did. And with the exception of her short-lived series on the WB, it pretty much was.

• Why I'm Running the NYC Marathon [HuffPo]

• List of Marathoners [Wikipedia]

"The damn movie leaves you feeling sorry for this fucker at the finale, and that ain't hay." — Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere

"It's a gutsy movie but not necessarily a good one. Its greatest strength is that it wants to talk about what's on our minds right now and not wait for historians. ... The film gets off to an awkward start with a presidential bull session with speechwriters and top advisers that produced his 'Axis of Evil' speech about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. It borders perilously close to a Saturday Night Live sketch." — Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

"At its best, it holds up as a dramatized character study of the father and son presidents which will be watched keenly in years to come. At its worst, it is submerged by an over-populated cast of characters and a tone which shifts awkwardly between dramatic storytelling and smartass political comedy. ... [T]he film is not a biopic by any means." — Mike Goodridge, Screen Daily

"For the most part, Stone and his actors meet the basic requirements of pulling off this quick-draw portrait of still-evolving history. ... Dominating are borderline distorted closeups, especially of Brolin, along with shadowy lighting and generally lackluster lensing. Some of the song choices are downright sophomoric in their too-obvious irony." — Todd McCarthy, Variety

"Brolin should be nominated for the Oscar. We'll see whether the crowd around Best Actor is too big for him to crack, but it is a letter-perfect performance that looks much, much easier than most critics and audiences, I think, will understand. ... The question of the film is, 'Why?' " — David Poland, The Hot Blog

Why, indeed? We're digging for the critics' bunker as we write this, determined to have an answer one way or another by the time W. opens next week. Send help if you don't hear from us.

If Brolin comes off as a good ol’ boy, he’s actually a Hollywood scion, the vigorous sprout of a six-foot-four tree named James Brolin. “My dad is probably one of the handsomest guys ever,” says Brolin. “I was making a joke and I said, ‘If I was a chick, I’d f—- you.’ He was like, ‘You can’t say that! Shut your mouth!’”

While we admire the younger Brolin's candor, we hope he left his paternal fixation at the palatial Streisand residence instead of bringing it onto the set of W. The audience appetite for two more hours of George W. Bush may be further diluted by a scene in which W., high on peyote and aroused by a marathon session of brush-clearing at his Crawford ranch, places a late-night, naughty call to his father, whispering, "How'd you like to make a preemptive strike against my Fruit of the Looms, Poppy?"

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Josh Brolin [W]

“The trick with all of these people is to try to come out as fair and evenhanded as possible,” Mr. Meyers, who is also the head writer for “SNL,” said.

Not to quote from an internet meme or anything, but, "O RLY?"

Mr. Meyers said the inclusion of Ms. Poehler’s Clinton character “made it safer to mention things about Sarah Palin without making it seem like an attack piece.”

...“The Palin people were happy with it as well, which was the weird thing,” Mr. Meyers said.

Well, yes, that may happen when you're taking great pains not to offend. The thing is, though: is that what SNL is about? Or is it simply another example of how the cable news reliance on equal-time talking points has obscured actual investigation all across the TV spectrum? After all, it's hard to imagine some of SNL's past, famously acerbic writers prioritizing fairness at the expense of scathing, truthful comedy.

Ironically, for an institution that's presumably liberal, the show's gotten most of its modern mileage out of satirizing Democrats (with the exception of Dana Carvey's early 90's run as Ross Perot and the elder George Bush). After Will Ferrell left the show early on during the George W. Bush presidency, SNL attempted a few recasts of the role, though none truly broke out. Is that the reason the show hasn't been able to produce a single iconic Bush skit since Ferrell's departure (while satirists like those at The Daily Show made hay of the president's material), or is it simply because when it comes to making fun of Republicans, SNL suddenly needs to bend over backwards to appear fair and balanced?

• SNL Cast: Even Sarah Palin Likes Tina Fey Playing Sarah Palin [NY Times]

• Access Hollywood [via Hollywood Elsewhere]

Full scene: [Hollywood Reporter]

"It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy," said Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush. "Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run." ...

"The problem here is it goes to this notion of Bush as being the passive receiver of policy and the White House being run by (Dick) Cheney, (Donald) Rumsfeld, (Karl) Rove and others," Draper said. "Bush's adversaries have been ill-served by this belief that Bush is an observer to his own presidency. This notion that his schedule is driven by what's on ESPN is ludicrous."

Damage control is underway at Stone's office, where the director immediately summoned behind-the-scenes dirt for his rewrite of the protracted Bush/Rove World Series of Poker standoff of 2006, which ended with Bush turning off an episode Rove hadn't seen, thus planting the seeds for Rove's resignation and prompting a verrrrry high-stakes, all-night Texas hold 'em bender with visiting Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf.

• Bush biographers mixed on script for Oliver Stone's 'W' [THR]

We Think We Buy: "When his father cries after losing to Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush sticks it to his dad by telling him that he would have won if he'd ousted Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War."
Bullshit, Right? "When he hears about French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's desire to give weapons inspectors 30 more days to work in Iraq, Bush explodes: 'Thirty days! I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of s—'s throat!' "

We Think We Buy: "Before the invasion, he tells a shocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair about alternative plans such as baiting Saddam by painting a U.S. spy plane in U.N. colors and assassinating the Iraqi leader."
Bullshit, Right? "In one scene, Bush practices his parachute landing in the White House pool but forgets to properly release the harness and sinks to the bottom."

We Think We Buy: "At one point, Bush describes giving up sweets as 'my personal sacrifice to show support for our troops.' "
Bullshit, Right? "Bush explodes in a profanity-laced outburst , 'Did you tell her I don't like motherf— who gas their own people! Did you tell her I don't like a— holes who try to kill my father! Did you tell her I'm going to kick his a— all over the Middle East?' "

We Think We Buy: "But the film also strives to paint a humanistic portrait of the commander in chief, with Bush once telling the Rev. Billy Graham that 'there's this darkness that follows me.' "
Bullshit, Right? "During the planning of the war, Bush and his top advisers are shown locking the war-wary Powell out of a room, erupting into laughter when they finally let him in."

So wait — it's a comedy? Try as we might, we cannot envision an Oliver Stone so out of touch with reality that SNL-grade practical jokes would elude broad editorial snips. That said, we've also long suspected the Animal House qualities of the Bush 43 Cabinet, and at the end of the day (even April Fool's Day) we can't imagine ABC foisting a gag this political on its readers. Did we miss a clue somewhere that gives this away, or are we actually supposed to be looking forward to this?

[Photo Credit: ABC News]

• Daddy Issues, War Lust in Oliver Stone's 'W' [ABC]