Wednesday, 24 August 2005 - 10:28 AM CDT

I'm surprised that there weren't protests in the street during the publishing of "Checkpoint" by Nelson Baker, which advocated - through a character in the book - the assassination of George W. Bush.

From a review of the book by Charles Taylor at http://www.salon.com/books/review/2004/08/16/checkpoint/\

What is the point of imagining such a premise if you defuse it before you begin? There is something cowardly about Baker's conception of his would-be assassin, an addled screw-up with fantasies of radar bullets and radio-controlled buzz saws that would fly to their targets. If anyone is looking for the real insult to George W. Bush in this book, it's not that an American writer has created a character bent (halfheartedly, it must be said) on killing him -- but that the writer cannot even take the prospect of Bush's murder that seriously. And that is also an insult to those of us who, as Janet Malcolm recently wrote in a letter to the New York Times, "are scared of what another four years of his administration will do to this country and to the world."

I find it amusing that liberals wish nothing but disaster on George W. Bush and death to American soldiers in Iraq, but when some half-senile, quarter-insane TV preacher falls out of rocking chair, bumps his head, and lets a comment escaping the pre-screening stage and go straight from his three-quarters shriveled brain to his vocal chords, that all of a sudden the right has to stand up en masse and say, "Robetson is a loon".

That would obvious to anyone with the misfortune to listen to himRobertson for a minute. (But perhaps, not to liberals.)

Wednesday, 24 August 2005 - 8:47 PM CDT

Thanks for the stuff about Baker's book, which I had only heard about in passing.

If people want to advocate the assassination of world leaders, let them. And then let them bear with the choices they make when they do so.

It's a dangerous choice, but people make them all the time. And lots of times, it costs them everything.