Lights! Camera! WingNut!

We're coming to you from the If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em Department here in the marbled halls of IM Central today, a wholly owned subsidy of the How Hard Can It Be Corporation. Michael Moore, look out. Rick Santorum is getting into the documentary filmmaking business and he's out to tell 'the other side of the story. "My wife got me this video camera for my birthday, so as soon as I can figure out how to set the date and time, I'm going to make a movie."

The first project, Santorum said, would explore the relationship between radical Islam and the radical leftists in various countries around the world, including Latin America. It would be about an hour in length. "After that I start getting cramps in my arm from holding the camera."

The second would be a longer, broader documentary that he said would aim to ''change the culture of America.'' He declined to go into specifics about the proposal. "It will be the Star Wars of the new century," he said. "I play Mr. Spock."

Both of Santorum's projects are still very early in the planning stages and neither has the necessary funding yet, he said. "Spielberg and Lucas are considering my pitch. See, 'pitch' is how us movie makers talk."

Central to most of what he is doing, though, is his focus on what he says are the dangers of 'Brown People,' which Santorum often talked about as he toured the state during his re-election run last year because talking about his record in the Senate was too painful. "The people of Pennsylvania were more interested in jobs and health care," he said. "How you going to like your health care when the Arabs run the country, huh? You made my daughter cry."

He said at the end of his campaign he made a decision to stay in the public sphere because of the gravity of the danger he thinks America faces from people who are neither white nor Christian. "Well, that and no one offered me a job."

''One of the reasons we are not doing well is because our leaders, including myself, have not been direct in describing this enemy and why it is so dangerous,'' Santorum said. "So I figure a movie is the way to go. What about this, evil Islamic robots from the future come back to kill me because they know I am the keymaster? Or maybe it's my son in whom the force is very strong. Not my son in real life, but maybe Matt Damon, or Leonardo DiCaprio."

Santorum is also having a book written for him on a related topic, speaks at bus stops and laundromats and has signed on as a contributor to Fox News. ''The key for me was to stay in the world of ideas,'' Santorum said. "It's not like I have a lot of actual skills, which made me perfect for Fox."