The Awesome Power of “What If?”

[[T U B E]] * This is sure to tick off the prez’s few remaining supporters. CNN reports that “British public broadcaster Channel 4 is courting controversy with what it calls a ‘shockingly real’ drama about the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush. Death of a President, shot in the form of a documentary examining the assassination, will use a blend of archival footage and computer-generated special effects to portray Bush in October 2007 arriving in Chicago during an anti-war rally. In the film, Bush is killed by a sniper, and the investigation quickly focuses on a Syrian-born man. It will air in October on Channel 4’s More4 digital channel, as well as at the Toronto Film Festival in September.”

According to TV Squad, the purpose of this film is “to show what the implications such an event would have in a world where we can’t take shampoo on an airplane.”

There’s no word yet on whether any U.S. network will be courageous enough to pick up this Channel 4 drama. I guess we can count out White House cheerleader FOX. And forget, too, about Disney-owned ABC, which has plans to air a “docudrama,” on September 11, written by a right-winger named Cyrus Nowrasteh, that, against all sense, tries to blame the World Trade Center attacks on former President Bill Clinton, rather than on Bush, who pooh-poohed warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. (As Heather Havrilesky writes in Salon, “Maybe my memory fails me, but the only person I remember talking about Osama bin Laden back in 1998 was President Clinton, while the current anti-terrorist stalwarts worked the country into a frenzy over what? Blow jobs.”) The chances of a U.S. network running Death of a President are probably the same as the chances that Mel Gibson will convert to Judaism.

It amazes me that, with Bush scraping historic lows in the popularity ratings and distrusted by the majority of Americans, he might still be able to make network execs timid about broadcasting a speculative show regarding the affects of his assassination. Yeah, sure, Rush Limbaugh and his ignorant, flag-waving ilk will whine about how raising the possibility of killing a president verges on treason and somehow emboldens “the enemy.” But where were those same “concerned” folks when winger columnist Ann Coulter recently mused nostalgically on her missed opportunity to shoot Clinton? Nowhere to be seen, of course.

It’s about time the U.S. networks picked up the words being said about Bush from Americans in all corners of the land: “Enough already.”

READ MORE: “GOP Congress Blocked Clinton Push for Anti-Terror Legislation,” by John Aravosis (AMERICAblog).