An Unhealthy Fixation

I have often written about the fixation that the Left has on George Bush as a type of illness, which some name Bush Derangement Syndrome. This fixation leads some to blame Bush for all of the world’s ills and to consider him more dangerous than terrorists, a nuclear-armed Iran, and just about anything else. It’s this kind of thinking that led British filmmakers to create a fantasy-docudrama in which Bush gets assassinated in Chicago (via Hot Air and Michelle Malkin):

This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.
Set around October 2007, President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.
Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its ‘War on Terror’.
The 90 minutes feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly put in the frame.

I like a good political potboiler as much as the next guy, although the last really good entry in that category may have been No Way Out, or perhaps The Package, both of which featured the great Gene Hackman and the latter of which explores a similar theme as this movie. The Package centers on an assassination in modern time that is meant to recall the Kennedy assassination, right down to the use of a patsy in an office building nearby.
Filmmakers usually have the good taste not to use real-life people as characters in their movies when the plot involves killing them. It’s not just a good-taste issue, either. Films that tie themselves to particular politicians almost immediately date their films, ensuring that it will be seen as an anachronism within just a few years. The Package makes that mistake by using a Gorbachev look-alike, but since it was a Cold War film anyway, it would have faced the same fate regardless.
In this case, the filmmakers use Bush as their character for one reason only: to engage fellow BDS victims. They want to pander to an audience that appreciates an assassination fantasy when it involves George Bush. They don’t really want to see him assassinated, at least for the overwhelming percentage, but they don’t mind imagining a world without him.
This should really offend Americans of all political stripes. If someone made a docudrama about the assassination of a real Democrat such as Harry Reid or John Kerry, I would find it equally offensive. We live in a world where too many people cannot distinguish reality from fantasy, and creating fiction about the ill and good effects of political assassinations of real leaders not only has no artistry to it, it has no point to it. Either the film would have to have a message that assassinating Bush is a good thing, which would be despicable, or that assassinating Bush would be a bad thing, hardly an earthshaking conclusion.
Peter Dale, the head of the television network which will air this film, believes it to be a “thought-provoking critique” of American society. I’d say it’s an indictment of the lack of taste and judgment in the entertainment industry.
UPDATE: Of course, some on the Left will cheer this quite openly and explicitly. The Anchoress found this one, and has more thoughts.

4 thoughts on “An Unhealthy Fixation”

  1. SICK AND DISGUSTING

    This poster does not care if the rest of the film has any hint of merit, the premise alone should be universally condemned.
    And maybe someday, Democrats will wonder if this was yet another Rovian Conspiracy, destroying the DNC election hopes once …

  2. The Day “Bush Hatred” Jumps the Shark

    A few years ago the press and the left were gasping about the “brilliance” of some novella (whose name escapes me – it was called Checkpoint, or Flashpoint or Freakpoint or something – I’ll have to go to the Borders Bargain Bin and se…

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