HBO Apologizes for Putting George Bush's Head on a Pike in 'Game of Thrones': 'Bad Taste

HBO has issued an apology for using a severed head with the likeness of George W. Bush in a scene for its hit show "Game of Thrones" after a day of controversy rocked the network.

The show's producers originally pointed it out in the DVD commentary for season one, saying, "The last head on the left is George Bush," before clarifying: "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 head we had around."

Though, as the Blaze pointed out yesterday, why HBO had a severed head of George W. Bush "around" is anybody's guess.

(Related: George W. Bush's Severed Head Appears on a Spike in Scene From HBO's 'Game of Thrones')

The producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explained in a statement today:

What happened was this: we use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can't afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk.  After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush

In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have.  We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.

Though the two statements are somewhat contradictory -- either they had an extra head of George W. Bush laying around and used it, or they rented a head that just so happened to look like George W. Bush -- HBO issued a blanket apology:

We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste.  We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake.  We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.

With HBO's apology, The Los Angeles Times points out that this particular version of the "Game of Thrones" DVD set will likely be a collector's item soon.

But Craig Eaton, the chairman of the Brooklyn Republican Party, was disgusted by the whole charade.

"Whether you like him or dislike him, whether you're of the same political persuasion or not, we still have to respect the office of the presidency and all of those who hold that presidency."