It's been a bad few weeks for President Bush and his much-vaunted war on terror, what with revelations that his administration's obsession with removing Saddam led it to overlook al-Qaida and the situation he chose to create in Iraq teetering near catastrophe. And he has been taking a prime-time pasting, with characters on sitcoms and dramas alike taking shots at him. But it turns out he has one unlikely small-screen defender: Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher. In last night's orally-fixated episode, after his fiancee, Adriana, explains she has Irritable Bowel Syndrome induced by stress, Christopher asks: "What do you got to be stressed about? That bar?"

Adriana explains: "War, Christopher? The Middle East?"

To that, Christopher snorts: "You don't listen to the president? We're gonna mop the floor with the whole fuckin' world. The whole world's gonna be under our control. So what are you worked up about?"

Experts are divided as to whether this ringing defense of the Bush Doctrine, coming from a violent, coke-snorting, chest-hair flaunting, hot-TV-moving capo-in-training, will play well in the red states. But even if everyone else abandons him, it must be reassuring for the president to know he can count on the unswerving support of the habitues of the Bada Bing.