Some things just weren't meant to be turned into interactive entertainment.

I can't imagine what Edward Kennedy must feel.

I mean, I know it's traumatic to see your brother shot in the head and killed. But what must it add to your pain to see that tragedy become a video game?

The game, available online, is called "JFK Reloaded," and it was released last month to coincide with the 41st anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination. Download "JFK" at a cost of $9.99 and you find yourself on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. It is Nov. 22, 1963, your name is Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Kennedy is riding in the motorcade passing below your window. Your mission is to kill him.

Indeed, you are awarded points for accurately recreating the shots that, according to the official account, were fired at Kennedy that day. The Web site promises prizes of up to $100,000 for those who match Oswald. Points are deducted for mistakes, like shooting the first lady.

A spokesman for the president's brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy, called the game "despicable." That is a statement of admirable restraint. Truth is, you could burn out your thesaurus on this thing and never scratch the surface. "JFK" is reprehensible, abominable, detestable, adjectives I would also apply to Traffic, the Glasgow, Scotland, company that is releasing it.

What troubles me most is the simple question of what the president's family must think. While that may strike you as a strange thing to wonder (Edward Kennedy and his kin are public figures and after years of tell-all books and general bad taste, aren't they inured to this kind of thing?)

But then I think of my wife, whose brother was shot in the head and killed 11 years ago. And I try to imagine how she might feel about a video game recreating that moment. I think she would be stunned and angry that someone could so callously trivialize tragedy.

For the record, Traffic would dispute that characterization. The company would also want you to know it doesn't consider "JFK" a game. No, says Traffic, this is a "documentary" promoted "respectfully" with the noble aim of interesting young people in history and proving that Oswald was the lone gunman.

All of which adds up to a magnificent pile of equine excreta. How many documentaries have you ever seen that offered points? So call this thing what it is: a tasteless entertainment for those who wouldn't have their entertainment any other way. It is an artifact well suited to these reverence-challenged times, this attitudinal era when people simply do not know how to respect, how to venerate, how to stand silent in the face of awesome things. I'm sure a 9/11 video game is in production even as we speak. Somebody get me a new thesaurus, please.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.