The Latest Fake-Umentary From Gabriel Range

'This film is based on meticulous research and interviews with FBI agents and people on the other side of the war on terror. (emphasis mine)...(it) is a serious, sensitive film.  There is no way it would encourage anyone to assassinate Bush and usher in Cheney's America.' 

Thus spake Gabriel Range to the UK Times in describing his already controversial documentary, Death Of A President which depicts President Bush being assassinated as he leaves Chicago's Sheraton Hotel in October 2007.

Death Of A President is the latest fake documentary offering from Range, and that is his own description.  Discussing the making of another 'fake—umentary,' he said

'The other huge constraint of the fake documentary is justifying the source of what is dramatized.  In our film we relied on specially created news archives, amateur video and documentary evocation.'  

Range is referring here to The Man Who Broke Britain, which, as reported by the BBC's own Radio Times, was commissioned by the BBC's Public Affairs Unit, which declared its goal was to 'reveal the fragility of financial trading systems' and how 'one man could sabotage the world financial system.'   Britain's libertarian Social Affairs Unit has a critique of the fake—umentary which can be read here.   In her December 2004 article, Elaine Sternberg wrote, 

'Finance is a favoured target of those who dislike or distrust business. The Man Who Broke Britain, a 90 minute drama documentary screened by BBC2 on 9th December 2004, displayed the fantasies of one such group — the BBC — about another... Islamic terrorists. Ostensibly about the dangers of financial terrorism, this meretricious programme ignored risks that are real and dangerous, to focus instead on less plausible but ideologically—defined perils.' 

All of these paranoid, fear—mongering efforts are brought to us by Britain's Wall To Wall Productions, and most of them end up being broadcast by Peter Dale's More4, the digital channel extension of ITNs Channel 4.  Over the recent past, More4 has aired all of Michael Moore's crap—umentaries and will soon reprise the anti—Vietnam war film Hearts And Minds.  If you are sensing there might be an agenda here, you are correct.   And it will be Dale's More4 that will air Death Of A President after it debuts at the Toronto Film Festival in September.  Of Gabriel Range's latest fake documentary, Dale said it is a 'thought provoking critique of American society,' a 'pointed political examination of what the war on terror did to the American body politic.' 

Give me a break!   Angry and frustrated at the real world, the left has to resort to generating bogus pseudo—serious films, brimful with paranoia, that depict their ideological fantasies which in themselves are powerful illustrations of the bleak fantasy world they inhabit, fantasies which in themselves are powerful illustrations of the bleak fantasy world they inhabit.

Range's other fake documentary was The Day Britain Stopped which featured a nightmare scenario combining monstrous traffic jams and a mid—air crash.  Of the latter, the British Guild Of Air Traffic Controllers published a scathing critique which stated, in part, that the film was 'inaccurate, over dramatic and simplistic,' adding that it was highly insensitive to 'those killed in 9/11 and subsequent air disasters.'

Look for the assassin in Death Of A President to be someone like a fired Karl Rove staffer, a right—wing nut who listens to Rush Limbaugh, or a rogue special ops vet terminally disenchanted with Bush's Iraq policy.

John B. Dwyer   9 1 06