Do you know how Rick Warren got famous.....

I don't know why today, but with Rick Warren inexplicably bailing on Stephanopoulos at the last minute, I thought I'd reprise Rick Warren's rise to fame.

Rick Warren was a regional, somewhat influential born again preacher, who, like so many, had a book on the market. Sales and exposure had been okay, doing well among the born again market, but not really penetrating nationally. Then it happened.

A prisoner escaped a courthouse in Atlanta and ended up holding a woman (Ashley Smith) captive. This was carried live and huge and breathless by CNN. When she got free, Ms. Smith told a story of devotion, that she had talked the kidnapper into releasing her by reading him segments of her favorite devotional book, Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.

Now, we later learned that this angel was actually a meth freak, and meth was more a part of her escape than Jesus, but that was not before she was seized on and lionized by the religious crazies, and not before Warren had hit the talkshow circuit, Larry King, Oprah, etc, selling his book on this "angel's" story.

And thus Rick Warren, megapastor to the nation, was born.