Morongate, or the Emperor's New Clothes

I assume all of you know about the Canadian minister -- now ex-minister -- Francoise Ducros who was overheard by reporters referring to George W. Bush as a "moron". Of course, this gave great offense to Canada's American allies and after some resistance Prime Minister Chretien was today forced to fire Ducros for her indiscretion. Ms Ducros ought to thank her lucky stars because under the USA Patriot Act she might be charged with the crime of making fun of our President who is not, I hasten assure you, a moron. In fact, to read the American press after the November election he is, if not a genius, a man of great intellect, a superb thinker, a brilliant tactician.

A couple of other troublemakers have assaulted the intellectual reputation of our President: one is Fortney "Pete" Stark, my Congressman, who was strongly reprimanded by Speaker Hastert for suggesting that Bush was an idiot and the other was a British MP who said that Bush was intellectually deficient and unfit to lead the free world in the great crusade against terror. It ought to be noted that Tony Blair failed to dissociate himself and the Labour Party from these sentiments.

Now, all of this will remind you of the well-known Han Christian Andersen story about the Emperor's New Clothes. This story, which suggests that telling the truth in the face of a consensus is a virtue, has been, I can reliably report, noted by the FBI and all those who borrow it from a library will have their names reported as potential subversives. I confess I have trouble remembering the ending of the story: was the boy punished for saying the emperor was naked? Well, in the new reliable version that will replace the old one in collections of Hans Christian Anderson ( if you have this book you will be given the new version to paste in) he is thrown into prison without trial and forced to watch George W Bush's press conferences and to write 500 times a day that George is a genius, an inspiration to the American people, to every small child, to every true patriot. I think too we well might consider taking a leaf out of Stalin's book -- and Hitler's too -- in which anyone telling a joke about the great man was thrown into the Gulag or even executed. Well, I'm on the edge of getting myself in trouble in what some people say is an emerging police state. So let me say once again, George W. is the smartest man who ever led this country. The sun shines out of his a . . . If Shostakovic could be ressurected we would have him write an symphony to George W. And, oh yes, we have got to get rid of that subversive book, 1984. No sir, George is not, however much his parents worried and whatever anyone else says, a moron. Definitely not.

Arthur Lipow