C’mon. I thought the consensus on the right was that Satan looks like Karl Rove.

The bad news? The producers have a media shinolastorm on their hands over what was almost certainly an innocent casting decision. The good news? We now have a new front-page thumbnail for when Obama pushes an especially terrible policy.

“The Bible” Executive Producers, Mark Burnett & Roma Downey said Monday:

“This is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics– including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our President.

“The Bible” Executive Producer Roma Downey adds:

Both Mark and I have nothing but respect and love our President, who is a fellow Christian. False statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of The Bible.”

Important footnote: Not only has Burnett donated to the Democratic National Committee, he maxed out in donating to Obama himself in 2008. That’s a strange thing to do for a man who’s accused of thinking O is the Father of Lies. And no, there’s not much chance that Burnett has since changed his mind. You’ve seen the poll numbers among Democrats on keeping Gitmo open and using drones against American citizens. There’s virtually nothing The One can do as president, including adopting the Bushitler’s policies, that would alienate an O-bot who was devout enough to drop several thousand bucks on him a few years ago. If anything, be happy Burnett didn’t cast the Obama lookalike as Jesus. Although that would, at least, have been true to the spirit of O’s fans in Hollywood and the media circa five years ago.

Burnett himself has an … interesting theory for the resemblance:

Burnett — a deeply religious man — tells TMZ … he believes there is a devil on earth. Burnett says the devil has stirred the pot and created a false likeness between Obama and the TV devil.

Why, you ask, would the real devil care about a TV show? Fact is … the show is HUGELY popular and is having a big impact on viewers. Burnett notes the show last night featured a face-to-face meeting between Jesus and the devil … BUT it’s not the first time the TV devil has appeared on the show. The TV devil appeared in the Garden of Eden scene awhile back and no one said anything.

Burnett believes the real devil is scared that Jesus has now entered the picture and is trying to distract from Jesus’ message by creating a false story.

Satan’s trying to derail the message by … generating an amazingly valuable publicity stunt for the production? I.e. the lord of eternal death reimagined as the lord of eternal debt? I’ve watched five minutes of the series so far but next week is now appointment viewing just so I can see Jesus square off with “Obama.” No surer way than that to get a conservative atheist to reconsider, my friends. (Then again, there’s not much to reconsider. Evidently, most atheists already believe in God.)

I’ll leave you with this from John McCormack, who gets to the heart of the matter in a very Jack Handy-ish way:

Everyone asking why Satan character looks like Obama. When will MSM ask real Q: Why does Obama look like Satan? https://t.co/SsdDHA4zcK

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) March 18, 2013