Thursday, August 31, 2006

How despised do you have to be

for TV stations to start making documentaries about your assassination when you're still alive?

British broadcaster Channel 4 has made a pseudo-documentary about the future assassination of George W Bush. The film uses archival footage and special effects to portray the assassination of Bush during an October 2007 anti-war rally in Chicago. It examines the ensuing investigation's focus on a Syrian man, and is meant to be "a thought-provoking critique of the contemporary US political landscape".

I wrote in a previous post about the phenomenon of Bush-loathing; how I've never seen such widespread and profound hatred for any US President since I started watching politics during the Johnson administration ("hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"). My old post referenced the outburst of one person who said she'd like to kill Bush, but this is different. That was one person; this is media. The media doesn't start trends, they reflect them, usually as they're evolving from trend to ubiquitous mainstream philosophy. There was a time when a movie like this would have been considered too whacked out to be taken seriously, but apparently Betty Williams is not alone. There are enough people who feel the way she does to make a Bush assassination movie an acceptable and viable project. Wow -- even I don't hate George enough to want him dead: just permanently clearing brush in Crawford.