'Bald-Faced Lie'

On Simple Human Decency (Harpers)

From the article,

...I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question. I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency:

Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?

Let me be clear that I have no wish to perform such a deed in fact, nor do I want anyone else to destroy bodily what is, at least in the technical sense, a fellow human being....

...

At this point I should probably reiterate that I (that is, the corporeal, arrestable “I” that the initial “I” above will predictably be mistaken for) am a peaceful man, with no actual wish to exact payment for anyone's continued debasement of humanity by feeling the life drain out of him, slowly, through the inordinately sensitive nerves in my fingers and palms.

...

I sincerely mean none of the violence contained in my paragraphs to be translated into those abhorrent expressions of hatred that pertain in the world beyond the page, and as long as that holds true I have neither committed an offense nor allowed the threat of unjust law to create a policeman of my own thoughts where once stood, or sat, a citizen.

As long as I (that is, the corporeal, arrestable “I”) wish no real damage upon the president, I (the other “I”) should theoretically be free even to enhance the scenario at hand for the enjoyment of my public. In place of the initial question I might ask instead, “Am I allowed to write that I would like to kidnap George W. Bush and fly him to a prison in some faraway land where his ‘rights’ are no longer an issue, there to put a bag over his head and make him stand for hours on one leg while I defecate on his New Testament before chaining his arms to the ceiling until he dies of a heart attack, after which I will claim that he never existed?” Here, though, taste, if not simple human decency, again rears its delicate head: I doubt that I could bring myself to read such a thing, let alone write it.

...

Satire, I fear, may be too ambitious for my craft, but anyone who has listened to our current president knows at least how to tell a bald-faced lie:

I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands.

Yikes... I mean... if he were serious, those would be some pretty heavy words, no?.