Angry in the Great White North
But if George W Bush said the same thing...
Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 07:36 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
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OK, quick test. I'm going to name two presidents. Which one would you associate with venereal disease?

If you are honest, you will say Bill Clinton, whatever your political leanings. The facts of the Lewinski scandal are beyond dispute. His reputation as a rake precedes him. I'm not saying he actually has a disease, but if you were going to reference that condition with any president, past or present...

And yet if Anne Coulter said Bill Clinton was a syphilitic president, she'd be excoriated. Even if it was a metaphor.

So why does Kurt Vonnegut get away with it?

On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these "apathetic" heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in to the Ohio Union. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.

"Well," says Vonnegut, "I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president."

The students seem to agree.

Apparently it was a metaphor. One that required no explanation, though no one quite understands what Vonnegut meant. I suppose it was supposed to sound like a clever insult, without actually being clever. A multisyllabic version of "You're stupid!"

But Vonnegut said it, so it must be genius.

Here's another example.

George W Bush stands up and says that when a young person declares that he or she is a homosexual, the parents are inevitably hurt by the news.

Did he say that? No, but if he did, the hue and cry would be deafening. Bush and his social conservative cabal hate homosexuals and assume that a declaration of homosexuality can only be met with pain and not with love and acceptance. Maybe that's the way things are in Jesusland, but not in enlightened places of America (who voted for John Kerry, by the way).

But guess what? Kurt Vonnegut said exactly that in the same speech:

"If you really want to hurt your parents and don't want to be gay, go into the arts," he says.

Then he breaks into song, doing a tender, loving rendition of "Stardust Memories."

By now the packed hall has grown reverential. The sound system is appropriately tenuous. Straining to hear every word is both an effort and a meditation.

Meditation? Reverential? He likens homosexuality to something universally repellant, and the crowd reveres him? He was making a joke, of course. Fine. But I thought we weren't allowed to make jokes like that. Imagine Stephen Harper or Jason Kenney saying something like that in Canada, or George W Bush or John Ashcroft in the US, even in jest.

As he accepts the students' standing ovation with characteristic dignity and grace, not a few tears come from young people who are wise enough to appreciate what they are seeing. "If this isn't great," they seem to say, "what is?"

How can a crowd of university students be so bereft of the gift of critical thinking?

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