Pirate's Cove

You remember Charlie Brooker, right? He’s the guy who ruminated about someone shooting President Bush if he was re-elected. And now he writes

Last week I watched the most frightening horror movie I’ve ever seen. It was about three hours long, and, incredibly, it all unfolded live. I’m talking, of course, about the inauguration of Barack Obama. Yes it was inspiring, yes it was uplifting … but it was also genuinely terrifying on a very human level, because just like you I was watching it with the terrible nagging suspicion that he might get shot at any moment.

At this point it’s worth stating unequivocally that I’ve never wanted to see anyone being shot, thank you very much, whether they’re a president or the world’s biggest arsehole or both. And fortunately, such things rarely happen. But I’ve seen too many films, and far too much 24. I’ve been conditioned to almost expect it. So now, whenever the news cuts live to a politician – any politician – making a speech, I’m gripped by an eerie sense of dread and have to change the channel.

Um, Charlie? ‘Memba this?

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? (empasis mine)

I guess it is easy for Charlie to write that he has never wanted to see anyone shot, since the Guardian pulled the story after it got reamed from around the world. They threatened me for publishing the whole thing, at which point I told them if they put it back up, I’d take mine down. Never heard from them again. But Charlie heard from the United States Secret Service, and apologized for his derangement in a short article that replaced the original.

The rest is a screed about the racists and gun nuts, meaning Conservatives and Republicans, and how scared Charlie, who mostly writes about television programs, was for The Messiah.

I wonder how long this kind of stuff will go on? Will BDS be turned in to OSS (Obama Scared Syndrome?)