The "Plot" Against George W. Bush

Take one part Oswald, one part Hinckley, one part Sirhan, stir it together with plenty of enmity toward GWB, and what have you got?

As of today, you’ve got this screen shot released by England’s Channel 4.  It’s a promotion for a 90 minute fictional documentary, to be aired in October, chronicling an imagined 2007 assassination of George W. Bush.  The film is scheduled to preview at the Toronto Film Festival in January.

Of course, the overwhelming tendency will be to dismiss this program as a crass effort to push the media marketing envelope.  If so, that would overlook a notable, if twisted, political, cultural and even sociological materialization. 

If art is fertile ground for primitive wishes and impulses, this “plot” would seem to represent the ultimate, if perverse vehicle for Bush sufferers everywhere (particularly the Europeans?) to fantasize a return to sanity and the restoration of a more proportioned international power balance.  Before hard-liners start to howl, however, perhaps its worth considering –given the extent to which the Bush Administration is guided by paranoia and propelled toward violence — just how far this fictional narrative actually deviates from their own political lexicon.

And then, perhaps the purpose of this program even contains a practical and organic component. 

In an era in which traditional forms of protest have failed to capture more widespread imagination, is it possible the media/entertainment sphere has become the new platform for dissent?  In this case, perhaps the real “plot” here is to deliver a less-than-metaphorical jolt to the continuous and lethargy-inducing drone of Administration propaganda.

(image:  channel4.com.  September 1, 2006.  Via YahooNews.)