THE NECESSITY OF MAKING YOURSELF THE BUTT OF THE JOKE (via Robert Schwartz):

EXCERPT: from 'Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy' by Tony Kushner (NY Times, September 5, 2004)

In the play's second scene, Laura Bush discusses the first scene with the playwright. This excerpt is from that discussion.

TONY KUSHNER: I just don't think you can say Dostoyevsky isn't political.

LAURA BUSH: Oh you'd definitely say Dostoyevsky's political, though I think you wouldn't even want to know who he'd vote for! If he'd vote at all, because his vision and his art transcend politics, he attains spiritual realms undreamt of by you political squabbly type guys, and, and it's, I mean what would Chekhov think? Using the stage, the theater, ART! For, for tawdry propagandizing? You oughta be ashamed of yourself.

TONY KUSHNER: I always am.

LAURA BUSH: And that explains your political affiliations! You guys are just a bunch of mopes, y'all are all just sorrowful types who haven't figured out which sock drawer you oughta shove all your personal misery and disappointment and, and guilt in. It's like a mental condition is what it is. . . . I mean it's not like there's anyone who isn't sorrowful or guilty, it's just some people don't fall back on that as the basis of a whole droopy dreary you know Weltanschauung, pardon my French — and I know, skipper, you don't think people from East Texas know big German words like Weltanschauung, but we do. You're a snob, is another thing.

TONY KUSHNER: Maybe all liberalism and progressivism and left-leaning politics are pathological but I would argue less maladaptive and delusional than, say, well, your politics, or rather your husband's — since no one knows what yours really are, which is why I find you so fascinating, it's——

LAURA BUSH: Oh you know what mine are, don't be so fascinated, you snoop, mine are just a whole lot like his are, maybe not so, not so, well that's none of your business.

TONY KUSHNER: But like I think all conservative thought is sort of a product of thought disorder, like a mild thought disorder, an inability to follow an idea or an action through to its actual consequences, or, or it's a morbid obsessional terror and the sourness and viciousness that accompanies such——

LAURA BUSH: What I think is you people are afraid of my husband, is what I

think——

TONY KUSHNER: Oh no argument about that, I mean——

LAURA BUSH: You're afraid of George because, because, well first off you hate him because he does things, I mean actually likely to act, to act on his convictions — it's not his convictions, it's that he does stuff about it.

TONY KUSHNER: Well, no, it's that he does stuff about it and also his convictions are really, really hideous, his ideological—

LAURA BUSH: Y'all can't stand his, well let's call it vividness. For people like you, a bookish pallor is a precious badge of distinction, "I have read enough to be muddleheaded enough to be 100 percent entirely immobilized!" I mean look at that gloomy old banana-face you just nominated, and sorry to be name-calling but really, take a good look! Does anyone think he's likely to do anything other than marvel at the complexity of everything and hire people who are similarly awe-struck and flabbergasted at the, at the whole magical mystery tour incomprehensibility of it all, and so you'll, you'll all get together in Washington like last time and you'll, you'll what? You'll ban snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park and then everyone in the Sierra Club'll take everyone in P.E.T.A. out for a Sunday night pizza!

TONY KUSHNER: Banning snowmobiles is better than drilling for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge — and you have to be honest and admit that Clinton faced a Republican Congress for most of his administration that was astonishingly hostile and——

LAURA BUSH: Whee-hooh, action! Snowmobiles! Head Start! Don't-ask-don't-tell, and and lookie here, three whole forklifts full of wasted paper and — Listen, you want to talk about hostile?

TONY KUSHNER: Negotiations for peace in Ireland, in the Mideast

and——

LAURA BUSH: Just wait till you see Tom Delay if Kerry beats George! Hostile? Listen! Hark! That's the sound of Richard Mellon Scaife a-sharpening his — And, oh yeah, negotiations, like that amounted to spit!

TONY KUSHNER: And, and at least we didn't attack another country, at least with a Democrat in the White House there's less chance of——

LAURA BUSH: You go on and on about Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, Halliburton and the Carlyle Group — and no, you didn't attack another country, not like you meant it, you all just fire a missile here and a missile there and look like you are thinking real hard about the meaning of missiles!

Can there be any better proof that all humor is conservative than that even in Mr. Kushner's own anti-Bush play the First Lady hilariously wipes the floor with him?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 7, 2004 7:09 PM