I can understand being upset with a politician for their policies, for their statements, for their views and actions. But I am appalled at the extent and acid of the rhetoric employed by George W Bush's detractors.
I voted for Gore in 2000, and for Kerry in 2004, and count myself as a centrist Democrat. But there is such a thing as respect for the office of the presidency, and such respect demands that no matter how strongly or passionately we detest a leader (for the record, I don't detest Bush, I simply disagree with much of his policy and leadership), we do not call for his death, we do not overstate our dislike by making comparisons to the worst humanity has ever produced. To do so borders, in my opinion, on treason. Yell and scream about his decisions, the policies of his administration, of his moral, ethical, or political flaws - but don't you dare call for his death as though it meant nothing more than "hey, man, I really disagree with you and want you out of office". You want to yell about genocide - what about Darfur today, and Ruwanda a decade ago? Where were your cries then and now?
No, if he is so bad, if "W" is such an evil in the world, then surely there will be enough decent minded Americans swayed by the truth of arguments to this effect that he can be successfully ousted from office - banished from politics and cast aside to history as a president removed from office for his sins. Trouble is, there is not truth to these arguments. Those who espouse such claims would do well to be mindful of the adage: "better to remain silent and let others think you are an idiot, than to open your mouth and prove it."
Shame on you who make these calls and comparisons. Shame on you.
~JDS
A NEW LOW IN BUSH-HATRED
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sunday, September 10, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/
oped/articles/2006/09/10/a_new_low_in_bush_hatred/
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.
Channel 4 Television
The assassination scene from "Death of a President," a television film whose subject is George W. Bush.
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.
Update September 12, 2006: Subsequent to posting the above, I came across a wonderful parody of President Bush. It is funny, and is a good example of the sort of mockery and jest that falls within acceptable limits. Notice how Will Ferrell doesn't call for the death of the president?
Update September 13, 2006:Cheney = Hitler? I neglected to consider in the post above the name-calling directed at the Vice President. See here for the full article from which the following excerpt comes:
"Of course, Khatami would have refused to participate in such a debate. But had a debate between him and Cheney been organized, it would have been interesting to see which side the protesters outside of the Harvard Club in Boston would have supported. Expressing the view of his 200 fellow demonstrators, Nick Giannone told the Crimson that having Cheney speak at the Harvard Club was, "the equivalent of Hitler coming back to life and coming to Boston." Giannone continued, "This guy's a straight-up fascist. I also find it pretty appalling that someone would pay… to sit in a room with a war criminal.""
Again, I fail to see the comparisson between a twice-democratically elected leader (albeit a Vice President) and a fascist dictator who, upon gaining power proceeded to consolidate his control of the state, eliminate political and social enemies, turn a republic into a police state and then get to work killing 12 million civilians all while waging one of the deadliest wars in human history. But I guess, I didn't go to Harvard, so I wouldn't know about all of Dick Cheney's analogous actions, policies, and perpetrations.
You will pardon me if I am more than content with my non-ivy league college experience at this point.
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