The Death of a President

How things have changed since 2003

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca
5/26/07

Michael Moore will be releasing his latest movie, “Sicko” on June 29th in the United States. With Moore’s work, the words “controversial,” “incendiary,” and “confrontational” get over used, but it’s safe to say, nevertheless, that “Sicko” will be controversial, incendiary, and confrontational. It will possibly also galvanize US voters into throwing off the shackles of the insurance consortium that has all but enslaved this country.

Unlike with “Bowling for Columbine” or “Fahrenheit 9/11", support for his latest seems to be crossing party and ideological lines. A lot of red state voters got hit even harder by the great scam that the medical system has become than the blue states. People in Kansas are dying prematurely because their provider denied coverage, or they had to chose between expensive drugs heavily advertised on prime time TV or eating, or because they simply couldn’t afford to lose their house and leave their family out on the street because they wanted to live an extra year.

I plan to go see it. Hopefully I won’t have to drive 80 miles as I did in order to see “Fahrenheit 9/11," because our local theater owner was afraid to show “F9/11". Even the Medford Theater had a disclaimer on the box office stating that the contents of any movie they showed did not necessarily reflect the political views of management. But this was a couple of years back, and a lot of right wingers still felt that any disagreement was disloyalty, and should be met with brownshirt tactics. We all remember the efforts the far right took to try to destroy people like the Dixie Chicks, or Bill Maher, or Martin Sheen, for questioning The Leader.

Even as the government has gotten worse, and encroached mightily on the judiciary and the rest of the legal system in an effort to turn both into party apparatuses for the GOP, the right wingers have been forced to step back, either because of doubts about what they were supporting, or simply because ordinary people are more willing to stand up to them. In 2003 it took courage to openly oppose the occupation of Iraq. Now 3 in 5 oppose it, and 3 in 4 admit it has gone badly.

Rush Limbaugh blurted out the day after the 2006 election that he was tired of “carrying their water” for the GOP. Of course, he gets that fat paycheck precisely because he is the lead party propagandist – you don’t think he really sells that many odor eater pads and lightweight vacuums, do you? – and he quickly realized that if he wants to keep on earning obscene amounts of money, he better get to toting that water on up the hill for his masters.

Much of the American media continues to carry that water. When the sensational Andrew Comey testimony about the struggle for the justice department waged around the sickbed of John Ashcroft was broadcast from Congress, ABC and the once-proud “news station” CBS simply didn’t mention it on their evening “news.” AP routinely runs party propaganda disguised as news stories about how the Dems face defeat on one issue or another. They had about four such stories in the months before the Dems dropped the timetable from a transitional budget of $125 billion – good for about six months – and I haven’t seen any stories from them about the obvious quid pro quo – the administration’s apparent willingess to cut the number of troops in Iraq in half by the end of 2008.

The political landscape is changing. While it’s true that the red/blue dichotomy was over-blown (all the states are varying degrees of violet or purple, and acreage can’t vote), the number of “red states” has dropped from about 35 to about 2, and all the states have shifted away from the red.

Come July, I expect you’ll be seeing letters to the editor from conservatives saying in effect, “I still hate his guts, but Moore is right on the money about health care in the United States.” The fact is the ideologues on the right are realizing that they got played by Faux and Rush and all of those. And while the media was distracting them with abortion, immigration and Clinton’s penis, the owners of the media were robbing them blind, stripping them of good jobs, the social safety net, and decent, affordable health care.

While Moore’s movie will doubtlessly be superb, I doubt it will be the most memorable one I’ve seen this year.

I saw one of the most startling films I’ve seen in years last night. Made in 2006 and getting very limited showing due to the controversial nature of its subject, “The Death of a President” passed under the public radar.

It deals with the assassination of George W. Bush in 2008, and some of the legal proceedings that ensue as the suspected assassin is caught and tried.

The movie, produced and co-written by the British director Gabriel Range (writing chores were shared with Simon Finch), was released in South Korea late in 2006, and then in the UK, Canada, and Australia under the name “D.O.A.P”. It won the International Critics Award in Toronto, at which point, and with some trepidation, it was released in the United States.

Republicans howled in rage, of course, but the fact of the matter is that not only does the movie not advocate the assassination of the president, it actually has a mildly sympathetic view of Putsch.

The movie is riveting because it is so fantastically realistic. The conceit is that it was filmed a year after the assassination, and mostly has interviews with White House staff, Secret Service agents, and relatives of the accused assassin and others who were involved in the shooting. I actually had to remind myself a couple of times while watching that Putsch didn’t go out and get shot sometime next year.

Given the subject matter, it’s surprisingly apolitical. It talks about how the disillusionment with Putsch over Iraq and the economy had grown to widespread rage (as has happened over the past three years) and in the aftermath, it mentions that President Cheney is really hoping the assassin will turn out to be a middle easterner, and that Patriot III is passed and made permanent by Congress in early 2009.
No matter how you feel about Putsch (and I’m guessing that most of my readers aren’t real fond of him), you’ll find that the movie isn’t a vacant exercise in some rather nasty wish fulfillment, and it isn’t a broadside against the administration. What it is is a fascinating look at the effect the assassination had on people close to Putsch (the aides and SS personnel) and those not so close (the shooter, the others detained, and their families.) It’s an extraordinary filmmaking accomplishment.

So go ahead and rent it (it’s available on DVD) and don’t worry: the jails are all full, so most likely they’ll just put you under surveillance. And let’s face it: if you’re reading people like me, you’re probably already being watched.

Good night, and sweet dreams!