Death of a President

This mockumentary is rated PPP, for Pure Progressive Pornography.

I like porn. Any guy who tells you he doesn’t is either a eunuch or a liar. In porn, all girls are young and beautiful, perpetually horny, and willing to jump into bed in a split second and do a threesome and beg you to give it to them in the ass. What’s not to like? The director here, Gabriel Range, has made what is essentially political porn. (The “Progressive” label is the currently fashionable word that I guess best describes my politics, though I have a libertarian bent, too. I’m sure not a Democrat anymore, and Liberal seems to have fallen out of favor. I can’t imagine why.)

If you are a progressive, too, you’ve thought about it. Don’t lie to me, you’ve thought about it! What if, instead of the 645 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 18 seconds (by the Bush’s Last Days countdown clock on my refrigerator) Monkey Boy still has left to inflict more death and destruction—maybe even a shot at genocide!—on the people of the world and more damage to our democratic institutions … what if, instead of all that time for mischief on a scale the country has never before seen, he were to die …

RIGHT NOW!!!

Wouldn’t you get a charge out of that? I would. Doesn’t that … you know … arouse you? It sure arouses me. So lay it on me, Gabe!

And there he is, arriving on Air Force One, working the crowd, plowing through the crowds of demonstrators in his black stretch armored limo, giving another lying speech … coming out of the hotel in a scene that is lasciviously reminiscent of Ronald Reagan exiting another hotel on another day … oh, yes, yes, I’m getting excited, where’s that lotion? … there is the head of the Secret Service being interviewed later, saying he just “had a feeling” … oh, yeah, baby, give it to me … there’s Monkey Boy in his last minutes of life, working the crowd again … and suddenly, two muffled gunshots! … oh, Gabe, give it to me! A little lower … that’s right, that’s it, harder, harder, harder! … Monkey Boy looks puzzled, and is thrown into the limo, which streaks away into the night … oh god oh god oh god I’m cuuuuummmmmiiiiiing!!!

Oh, jeez. Was that as good for you as it was for me? (Well, it was pretty damn good, my hand replies.) The “money shot” wasn’t all it could have been, there wasn’t much blood and I’d hoped we’d see it again from several angles in slow motion, but you can’t have everything … you have to leave room for a sequel! Yes! Gabe even worked that part right. The downside of Monkey Boy getting offed is, of course, that Dick “Short Dong” Cheney becomes the president … but this was all taking place on October 19, 2008, only weeks away from the election, and though Short Dong quickly finds an Ay-rab fall guy and seems prepared to nuke Syria, he’ll only be in office a short time. So I think Gabe really ought to make this into a trilogy. Part Two: The Death of a Vice-President by Extremely Painful Impacted Bowel Before He Can Be Sworn in to Succeed George W Bush. Part Three: The Inauguration of the First Female President. (Okay, the titles need some work, but you see where I’m going.) After that, who knows? Through the magic of CGI we could have a whole genre of Monkey Boy assassination movies:

{{Dubya Does Dallas
Squeaky Fromme Gets it Right
An Evening at Ford’s Theater
John Hinckley Finally Impresses Jodie Foster

(So, is there anyone out there I haven’t offended yet? Write me, and I’ll see if I can come up with something. If I have offended you, don’t bother to write; It means you accept Monkey Boy as your president, and I’ve done my job. I don’t need to hear from you.)

Now, how does this work as a movie, aside from all the fun stuff of seeing Monkey Boy bite the big one? I’d have to say, damn well. First I applied an acid test: Would I feel differently if the subject of the movie had been Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter? The answer is no. This movie has been carefully thought out and impeccably staged. I had to keep reminding myself that the people in it were actors, not actual participants. I think Short Dong Cheney’s reaction to the events is pretty much exactly the way he would react. The “Bush” people interviewed seemed sincerely moved, to have really loved the man. (I know it’s hard to believe, but I know some people do.) It even has a twist ending, where it turns out what we thought we knew isn’t actually the truth … and even better, the twist affects nothing, as the powers that be are already too deeply invested in their version of the “truth,” so that to go back now would mean losing face, admitting that the system sometimes does not work, and blowing a yummy opportunity to once more stick it to innocent Arabs and make tons more money in the oil bidness. It all rings true.

There is one disturbing scene that I suspect will pass right over the heads of many people because we’re so used to it, but that sums up, to me, much of what is wrong with the country. As the ambulance is arriving at the hospital the SS is already at work “sterilizing the environment,” providing the level of absolutely insane security that has become the norm in this country. This means immediately evicting all the people waiting for treatment in the emergency room. We see them shambling out, bleeding, on crutches, dazed, confused. One man, interviewed later, says the SS was screaming “Get out! Get the fuck out!” These are injured people … but the fuckin’ PRESIDENT is coming, and he is so vastly much more important than they are.

Take a hypothetical case. Say there’s a gravely injured 5-year-old girl on the operating table in there. Doctors are working feverishly to save her life. The SS arrives, tells everybody to fuck off, all doctors are to get to work on saving the life of Monkey Boy. Do I think they would shove that little girl out onto the street? You bet your ass I do. Garbage, that’s all we are to them.

Ah, you say, but the fact that Monkey Boy is in there, dying, proves we don’t have enough security around him. What he needs is more security. And I say to you, So fucking what? Dead presidents is the price we pay for being the most bullet-riddled and gun-poisoned society in the Western World. We don’t need no steenkin’ Ay-rabs; all our dead presidents have been cut down by good ol’ American boys! Even the folks who missed (some of them women, and who says we’ve made no progress in sexual equality?) were American! We should take some pride in that. Goddammit, we take care of our own! And what’s so important about a president anyway? We’ve had four of ’em blown away, and the Republic resumed its work after only a brief hiccup. Those founding fathers knew what the were doing when they provided for a spare.

Assassination is merely an extreme form of dissent. I think presidents ought to walk to work, like Harry Truman did, with maybe half a dozen DC cops. I don’t think airports and freeways should be shut down when the prez comes to town. Let him sit in rush hour traffic, like the rest of us. You don’t think that’s a good idea? Then wall him up in the White House and don’t let him leave until the end of his term. If he has something to say to us, he can say it on TV.

And one more gloomy thought occurred to me about an hour later. Monkey Boy has just been foully murdered by a steenkin’ Syrian Ay-rab on October 19, 2008. (That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.) Do you think that would be enough to push tough-on-terror Rudy Giuliani, or stay-the-course John McCain, or whatever pathetic tool of the oil companies the Republicans nominate next year over the top 18 days later, on Tuesday, November 6, 2008?

Probably.