Hollywood shows its stripes

Opinion: June 19, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By John Kass

Chicago Tribune

HBO was still apologizing for putting a rubberized President George W. Bush head on a pike in the medieval fantasy show “Game of Thrones” when President Barack Obama put his predecessor’s head on a pike again, blaming Bush for all our problems.

“We can’t afford to jeopardize our future by repeating the mistakes of the past,” Obama said in a speech Thursday. “Not now, not when there is so much at stake. ... Of course, the economy isn’t where it needs to be.”

But the Bush heads were where they needed to be. The HBO version was a rubber one with a wig, and the version used by Obama was purely rhetorical and political.

The “Game of Thrones” controversy started when the show’s creators pointed out that a scene included Bush’s head on a pike — but only because “we just had to use whatever heads we had around.” David Axelrod must have written that on a napkin.

If you really want to see Hollywood and liberal Democrats team up, just wait until Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel runs for the White House. His brother Ari is a top agent to the stars. So you’ll see Matt Damon and George Clooney and the Devil who wears Prada carrying the Rahmfather to the Oval Office, oiled up like the slaves who carried Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra.”

High unemployment

Heads notwithstanding, Obama is in trouble. Unemployment remains high, he’s spent money like a fleet of drunken sailors with no result, trillions and trillions of dollars gone, and voters are upset. The guy just has to blame somebody, and by blaming Bush, we might forget that we’re now just a debt-ridden suburb of China.

But that’s politics. What interests me today are showbiz and Republican rubberized heads on pikes.

Obviously, the Hollywood political left is angry. But why? What the heck do they have to be angry about?

They’re paid outrageous fortunes to work in make-believe, wearing costumes, playing superheroes and robots and politicians who really care about the people. They enjoy great weather, gorgeous cars, superb sushi, swimming pools in which to bathe their guilt, and beautiful surgically enhanced starlets who are really, like really, interested in like wanting to know all the cool secrets of filmmaking as high art. And most of them are blonde.

So what’s with the anger, dudes?

“Game of Thrones” wouldn’t dare use an Obama head. If it did, the Secret Service would be upset. But the Hollywood types could handle that. On the other hand, they couldn’t handle the fact that if they used an Obama head, they’d never work again.

Using the head of Bush, rubber and bewigged as it was — and, I must admit, somewhat deserving of being put on a pike, given his “big government conservatism” nonsense — suggests seething hatred. Why only Republican rubberized heads? Isn’t that partisan?

What upset me is that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is my favorite program, and no, not for all the naked breasts and wanton sex, but because of the cool dragons.

At the end of last year’s season, when the lovely princess walks from the raging funeral fire in nothing but her birthday suit, festooned with small yet fierce multicolored dragons, I was almost speechless.

But it was the Bush head that lit up the Internet last week, when someone discovered the creators of the show talking on a DVD boxed set, explaining how Bush 43 ended up on the castle wall.

New child king

It was the fault of the new king, a child, really, and an evil child at that, completely inexperienced, terrified, dangerously narcissistic and obviously out of his depth. He lopped off the heads of those who disagreed with him and stuck them on the wall. In the show. In the show.

Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, in a DVD collection of the first season, said they had that Bush head lying around.

“The last head on the left is George Bush,” they were quoted as saying. “George Bush’s head appears in a couple of beheading scenes. It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. We just had to use whatever heads we had lying around.”

Since then, HBO has apologized profusely and sent its press agents to applaud the HBO documentary “41,” glorifying Bush’s dad, President George Herbert Walker Bush.

John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Distributed by MCT Information Services.