Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Slate, where WaPo authors go to die, has an advice column: "Dear Prudence." Today, a doozy:

Dear Prudence,
I am a twentysomething American musician living in Europe. Part of my job is meeting new people—musicians with whom I play, sponsors, and the audience after a concert. I've been here about a year, and I repeatedly run into the same situation. I'll meet a group of people, we'll chat about two minutes, and someone will make some comment about how my president should be killed (really!) and seems to want to know how much I agree. I don't bring up politics before this happens. Regardless of my political views, I find it offensive to have anyone bring up the subject of how someone else should be killed. I'm still not sure what the best response is to this statement. I don't want to share my politics with a complete stranger, and I don't want to do anything to further any American stereotypes they already have. However, I want to convey how this statement is inappropriate and makes me uncomfortable.

—Speechless in Europe

Prudence goes all you-could-point-out-that-Cheney-is-next-in-line, but that's thin gruel indeed. She also says with an embarrassing lack of tongue in cheek:

One discouraging feature of today's political discourse is the assumption that if you and someone else share particular characteristics (a love of music), then you certainly must be like-minded on all things (the desirability of killing the president).

Vraiment ?

I frankly doubt that SiE is truly beset on a regular, or even semi-regular basis, by homicidal flautists dreaming blood, but then it is also true that European artists, in my experience, self-evince more self-regard and less self-satire than their American counterparts, so perhaps there really is a vast, orchestral conspiracy to undo and unmake the American president. Were I SiE, I'd aver to my would-be assassin colleagues that the best way to deal with his problem and ours would be to lock Merkel, Chirac, and Bush in a room with a single television camera. They'd tear each other to shreds as they each tried desperately to center themselves in the viewfinder.