Camille Paglia, being a little slow on the uptake, asks, “How have we come to this pass in America where the assassination of top government officials is fodder for jokes on national radio?:
It’s a very bad subject for jokes, but I think Paglia is old enough to know how it started. Back in 1998 when Clinton was being impeached, Alec Baldwin went on the Conan O’Brien show and screamed: “if we were in another country… we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country.”
The left didn’t get majorly upset over that. Then (in 2006) there was the documentary, “Death of a President,” which used a rather unsubtle power of suggestion to make the idea of assassinating President Bush thinkable.
Before that (in 2004) there was a call for the assassination of George Bush from the Guardian.
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?
Those people were out-of-control, out-of-their-minds angry. If people now are merely making jokes about assassinating the president, maybe it’s a sign that the political scene is calming down. Maybe Camille Paglia should catch up with the times and do the same.