A new low in Bush-hatred By Jeff Jacoby Monday, September 11, 2006 Six years into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink? George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention. What's left for them to say about Bush? That they want him killed? They already say it. On Air America Radio, talk show host Randi Rhodes recommended doing to Bush what Michael Corleone, in "The Godfather, Part II," does to his brother. "Like Fredo," she said, "somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw!" -- then she imitated the sound of a gunshot. In the Guardian, a leading British daily, columnist Charlie Brooker issued a plea: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?" For the more literary Bush-hater, there is "Checkpoint," a novel by Nicholson Baker in which two characters discuss the wisdom of shooting the 43rd president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character fumes. Some Bush-hatred masquerades as art: At Chicago's Columbia College, a curated exhibit included a sheet of mock postage stamps bearing the words "Patriot Act" and depicting President Bush with a gun to his head. There are even Bush-assassination fashion statements, such as the "KILL BUSH" T-shirts that were on offer last year at CafePress, an online retailer. Lurid political libels have a long history in American life. The lies told about John Adams in the campaign of 1800 were vile enough, his wife Abigail lamented, "to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world." But has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography? As with other kinds of porn, even the most graphic expressions of Bush-hatred tend to jade those who gorge on it, so that they crave ever more explicit material to achieve the same effect. Which brings us to "Death of a President," a new movie about the assassination of George W. Bush. Written and directed by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, the movie premieres this week at the Toronto Film Festival and will air next month on Britain's Channel 4. Shot in the style of a documentary, it opens with what looks like actual footage of Bush being gunned down by a sniper as he leaves a Chicago hotel in October 2007. Through the use of digital special effects, the film superimposes the president's face onto the body of the actor playing him, so that the mortally wounded man collapsing on the screen will seem, all too vividly, to be Bush himself. This is Bush-hatred as a snuff film. The fantasies it feeds are grotesque and obscene; to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society. That such a movie could not only be made but lionized at an international film festival is a mark not of sophistication, but of a sickness in modern life that should alarm conservatives and liberals alike. Naturally that's not how the film's promoters see it. Noah Cowan, one of the Toronto festival's co-directors, high-mindedly describes "Death of a President" as "a classic cautionary tale." Well, yes, he says, Bush's assassination is "harrowing," but what the film is really about is "how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush's divisive partisanship and race-baiting has forever altered America." I can't help wondering, though, whether some of those who see this film will take away rather a different message. John Hinckley, in his derangement, had the idea that shooting the president was the way to impress a movie star. After seeing "Death of a President," the next Hinckley may be taken with a more grandiose idea: that shooting the president is the way to *become* a movie star. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/...ush-hatred&ns=JeffJacoby&dt=09/11/2006&page=1
as much as i hate and despise the current administration i have to agree with hapa on this one. not having seen the movie i will reserve final judgement, but i would like more details. the left is wrong if they support this movie. if i have missed something i will be the first to admit it.
There's a reason why I didn't REALLY place you on ignore. As much as I think you come up with some looney stuff, my intuition says that you're a decent (and witty) person who I merely disagree with. I hated Bill Clinton and all he stood for. If someone had suggested to me that Clinton be slain I would have socked the sicko in the jaw.........
"What can you say"?!? Well, for starters, how about: Irregardless of one's party affiliation or political beliefs, we should ALL condemn films basking in the fantasy of assassinating the President for the stated purpose that the director disagrees with the President? I realize this is all a tiny blip on your consciousness, way below getting your next nicotine fix, but still....
it only goes to show that this guy's 'movie' has little else to sell, if he feels he has to resort to such 'bad taste' tactics... best not to lend too much attention, thats all this guy & the film festival organizers want, attention...
Kill Bush mania By Michelle Malkin Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Let me sum up in two words how the unhinged Left copes with the threat of global jihad: "Kill Bush!" On the fifth anniversary week of the September 11 attacks, the anger of entertainment industry liberals and anti-war zealots is directed not at Islamic terrorists telling us to convert or die. Not at American al Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn smirking at our country's pain and praising the throat-slitting, children-incinerating hijackers as "strong-willed men." No, their thoughts are not focused on killing jihadists. Their dreams lie with killing George W. Bush. The mainstreaming of presidential assassination chic is on. In her new book, "Peace Mom," Cindy Sheehan confesses on page 29 that she has imagined going back in time and killing the infant George W. Bush in order to prevent the Iraq War. It's the moonbat version of pre-emption. Sheehan admits she has entertained this infanticidal fantasy "often." That ice-cream-and-coffee hunger strike is getting to her head. Meanwhile, our friends in Canada celebrated the screening of a new kill-Bush fictional documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival. "Death of a President," a British mockudrama, is set in the fall of 2007 and looks back at the impact on America after President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. The 90-minute feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly accused of the crime. The movie director, Gabriel Range, produced a similar tinfoil hat retrospective fake documentary about a terrorist strike that turns out to be an inside job wrongly blamed on a Saudi trader. Range stalked the president to gather footage for the movie, according to the Los Angeles Times, and gained access to film Bush's arrival in Chicago earlier this year for a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. He also filmed anti-war rallies, faked others and staged a 14-car presidential motorcade sequence with hundreds of extras posing as protesters, shouting anti-war slogans. The film crew hid behind the acronym "DOAP," Range explained. "We called the film 'DOAP' and very few people ever asked us what it stood for. To those who did ask, we said it stood for 'Death of a President' and it was a fictional film, the small distinction being that the president wasn't exactly fictional." Right. What are a few white lies when you are creating a murder-Bush masterpiece? Tastefully done, of course. While blame-America Brits and Canadians munch their popcorn and soak in President Bush's fake blood on the silver screen, no one can top our own homegrown moonbats in their hatred of George W. Bush. Malachy McCourt -- Green Party candidate for the New York governorship and brother of author Frank McCourt -- earned "Hardball" loon Chris Matthews' praise for voicing his anti-Bush assassination fascination on national TV (thanks to NewsBusters.org for the tip-off): Matthews: "Look, let me ask you this. Where are you on capital punishment?" Malachy McCourt: "Capital punishment? I think that if, if I've got to find that guy in Spain who indicted Pinochet and get him for war crimes, and I get him to do the same thing for Bush. And in that case, I would be for capital punishment. Otherwise, I am against it . . . " Matthews, at the close of the interview, guffawed: "Well, I had to tell you, I hereby make my stand, I like you already. Malachy McCourt, Green Party candidate." Bloody Bush Derangement Syndrome isn't new. But September 11 and the campaign season do seem to have exacerbated the symptoms. And the commercial success and social acceptability of "Kill Bush" literature, talk radio rhetoric and art on the Left is on the rise. From Sarah Vowell's best-selling murder travelogue of assassinated Republican presidents, "Assassination Vacation," to Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," a novella conversation between two people about the advisability of assassination Bush, to mock stamp art exhibits depicting Bush with a gun to his head, to anti-war placards featuring a decapitated Bush with blood dripping from his neck, acute BDS underscores the complete intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Left in America and around the globe. Jihadists are gunning for Bush, our troops and innocent civilians at home and abroad. But when it comes to how they would combat the true menaces to the West, all the kill-Bush crowd can shoot are blanks.