Google

Precinct 333


Saturday, July 03, 2004

Bad taste? Or illegal threat?

New book centers on murder of President George W. Bush

One of my memories as a high school kid was the resignation of Jackie Kennedy Onassis from her job as a book editor at Viking because of her disgust over the company's plans to publish Shall We Tell the President?, by Jeffrey Archer. In it, he posited an assassination plot against President Teddy Kennedy. She found it unacceptable to make him the target given family history and acted to call attention to something very wrong. To this day it remains one of the things I most admired about her.

Fast forward to 2004. Author Nicholson Baker has written Checkpoint, all about an attempt to murder President George W. Bush. It is to be published in August by Knopf. I've got a problem with that, every bit as big as I did with the Archer plot to kill Teddy (a man I despise). Responsible people do not write about, plan about, the murder of the sitting president, whoever he may be.

here's hoping that Knopf gets a serious case of responsibility and pulps this piece of trash, or at least is responsible enough to wait until Mr. Bush is out of office, whether we are talking January 2005 or January 2009.

|

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.