My gag reflex got a good workout while reading this report on the completion of a hagiographic work on the life and career of Senator Robert Byrd -- The Soul of the Senate.

Four years in the making, the first documentary about the life of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., will premiere Saturday at the Clay Center in Charleston.

In its 58 minutes, “The Soul of the Senate� blends photographs and vignettes from Byrd’s early life as a boy and young state legislator to his role on the national and world stage today. It offers comments from many of his present and former colleagues.

Produced by MotionMasters and the West Virginia Humanities Council, the film is billed as “a story of strength and fortitude. A story of the orphan who became orator. The produce clerk turned statesman. A coal miner’s son who rose, with a bow and fiddle in hand, to be a giant in the United States government.�

Some historic shots were discovered in the massive television video archives WSAZ-TV has given to the Cultural Center in Charleston and Marshall University in Huntington.

“It was a treasure hunt,� said Diana Sole of MotionMasters.

“We had to pry some of those old [video] cans open. We found one film of Senator Byrd a week before he was sworn into the Senate.�

Sole also used footage taken by Bill Drennan and Mike Willard. In the mid-1980s, they worked on, but never finished, a documentary they planned to call “A Day in the Life of Senator Byrd.�

Photographs show Byrd playing his fiddle, leading Appropriations Committee hearings and walking with Erma, who married him nearly 68 years ago in 1937. A particularly colorful clip shows Erma watching her husband play fiddle on the television show “Hee-Haw.�

“Soul of the Senate� highlights moments in Byrd’s life from his graduation as valedictorian from Mark Twain High School in Stotesbury in 1934, to being congratulated by President John F. Kennedy as he received his law degree at American University in 1963, to chairing major committee hearings in the U.S. Senate.

Actor James Brolin adds an effective narration to the documentary, which also boasts an original musical score.

I've no doubt that this will leave out his time as an active Klansman, his filibuster of civil rights legislation, his record of voting against every black man ever nominated for the US Supreme Court., and his repeated public use of racial slurs. Sadly, a copy will be placed in every secondary school library in West Virginia, where future generations of West Virginians will be misinformed about this great blemish on the history of their state.

And may I be permitted to say that if Robert Byrd is truly the soul of the Senate, the institution is a shriveled, dessicated piece of excrement which deserves to be repudiated by every supporter of freedom, equality, and American patriotism.

Michelle Malkin and HundredPercenter News also comment.