A week after the inauguration of President Obama, Charlie Brooker wrote of contrasting feelings he felt watching the event. On the one hand, inspiration, the new, the fresh; on the other, the fear that at any moment the president would be gunned down. So ingrained is the image of the foiled celebration, the presidential assassination, that the idea of hope crashing to the ground in a second of gunfire seemed all too possible. It’s no surprise, for a surfeit of fictional rehearsals for such an ending lie scattered across the mediascape. Real death, the promise of actual murder, hides behind each frame. The simulacrum has a shadow. As Denis Leary once said,
‘We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get shot live on TV one Sunday morning, we were afraid to change the fucking channel for the next thirty years.’
The catastrophe plagued Brooker in hypothetical tones. But what if Obama’s ceremony had been ruined by ne’er-do-wells? His brawn may have been ample to fend them off, to beat them into submission, perhaps. Spider-Man’s already helped him, but who’s to say Peter Parker isn’t still wandering around taking pictures? On Obama’s back is one large shield constructed to deflect any number of Fox News wet dreams. The bullets will have a tough job, but one may still penetrate the shield, one gruesome nightmare of Coulter wishes and Limbaugh imploration.
What hero might fight this repulsive ‘what if’? Who will be the palliative delivered to this form of nauseating drivel, the ballads of talk radio and nonsense television? Who’s the destroyer of pernicious dreams? Who’s not only fit to stride into the hypothetical realm but to annihilate that very realm, to kill ideas best not thought?
The volunteers are many, as are the nominees, but only one is truly qualified for the task.
Jean Claude Van Damme, he is the legitimate heir to reality’s throne of decency. The man’s monopoly on virtue is surely enough to kill a few hastily spoken words, to smash hate-filled hypocrisy. And as for any actual bullets, a swift kick would be enough to deflect them.
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