BBC4 assassinates Bush.

So, I'm a little bit late with this one, but here goes: BBC4 has filmed psuedo-documentary showing Bush's future assassination. They apparently used footage from the attempted shooting of Reagan, and CG'd Bush's head into place.

Predictably some people are really pissed off about this. Equally predictably I am not amongst them.

To a certain extent I agree that it's not in the best taste. Put politics aside and he's got a wife and daughters, he's got siblings, he's got parents. It's kind of unsettling - I don't think anyone would really like to think about someone in your family being murdered, especially not when there really is a fair chance that people are actually going to try to kill you because you're not real popular.

On the other hand: He's an American president (and a rather controversial one at that), so "What happens if someone tries to kill him" is a valid question. BBC4 says that they made it to "explore the effects of the war on terror" at home in the US, and I think that academically that's valid. Controversial, sure, but something that generates controversy is more likely to generate thought, which means that it's more likely to mean something. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing it.

Besides, it's not as if they've introduced some terrifying new possibility to the public. I'm quite certain that many people have at some point thought "Hey, what would happen, in today's political climate, if someone even tried to take out the president?" Hell, immediately after the 2000 election, prior to when the Supreme Court overthrew the constitution, I was invisioning massive bouts of attempted assassinations and tanks rolling through the streets of DC. A BBC fake-documentary is not going to convince anyone to shoot the president: his idiotic and inflammatory policies are doing that just fine.