The sequel to last year’s mini-scandal over Game of Thrones using a mock George W. Bush head on a pike came on Sunday night in the History Channel’s documentary The Bible, where the character of Satan bears a striking resemblance to a certain sitting president. The image of actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni looking like Barack Obama has actually been floating around for a few days, helped along by a tweet from Glenn Beck. But it wasn’t until the show aired on Sunday that people really took notice.
Mediaite points out that unlike HBO, which immediately apologized and scrubbed the scene from Game of Thrones, the History Channel hasn’t said anything. There’s a good reason for that: While HBO used an actual dummy Bush head, rented along with a bulk load of special-effects prosthetics, the resemblance between Ouazanni and Obama is a coincidence. Even if the conspiracy theorists are right and filmmakers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey purposefully cast the actor because of his resemblance to the president, that resemblance is purely a coincidence. And unlike the severed head, which showed up briefly in one shot, Satan is a fairly integral character in the Bible, so if History was to agree to alter future episodes or the DVD, as HBO did, it would be a much bigger undertaking.
