If you’re like me—and with a little luck, one day you will be— you’ve noticed a pronounced paradigm shift regarding the recent content of the literary institution we call “Postscript.” Well, actually I haven’t really noticed anything. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even read a complete “Postscript” article in my three years here, not even the big one written last year by guest contributor Saul Bellow decrying the deleterious effect of Fran Drescher on post-war American youth, or whatever it was.
In any regard, my charming editor Alison Lang has assured me that this page is more amorphous in its content than one might originally think. This particular article is about politics.
Specifically, the last few weeks saw me canvass for a certain political party here in Kingston. I will not say which party received my so-called ‘help,’ but I will say that I think it’s high time that Canada had another Prime Minister with a moustache.
Mustachioed politicians have become rather anomalous in the past century, possibly because the voters of today associate moustaches with evil villains who rub their palms gleefully whilst roping damsels to train tracks. A few seconds of backbreaking internet research revealed that Canada’s first leader to sport a “stache” was a Mackenzie Bowell, who grew a full beard in order to distract schoolyard bullies from his hilariously scatological name. Nevertheless, the name has apparently outlived the face and I, for one, was so mirthed by uncovering his name that I would like to see it in print again: Bowell. Bowell, Bowell.
Actually, with Queen’s being the way it is—sort of lukewarm and gooey—there’s probably some poor alumnus crying now as he/she reads my jabs at poor Mr. Bowell. So I’ll quickly move on to former PM Robert Borden, who invented the reversible moccasin, but was forced to resign when an alert reporter from the Queen’s Journal back in 1920 caught him trussing up Princess Margaret along the Canadian Pacific Railway. No wonder he’s on the $100 bill.
So, armed with these facts, several pamphlets and the sunny disposition with which I have set off several metal detectors, I set off to interrupt a couple hundred persons’ dinner in order to engage them in small talk about an election most of them didn’t care about.
I should indicate that small talk is not particularly my forte, as evidenced by my aversion for barbershops, an act that many mistakenly attribute to a need to flaunt my effervescent youth and brashness. While such inferences are not altogether inaccurate, I honestly blame my head’s disarray on my utter loathing for discussing mundane issues with the fellow who trims my hair.
But I endured metaphorical three-and-a-half-hour haircuts on consecutive evenings the other week in order to give you these election predictions which will be published just in time to appear soon after said election: •A lot of people will go to the polls and yell “I’m in the middle of dinner, just leave us alone” at the people manning the polls.
•There was a woman who informed me that she doesn’t vote because no one represents the only true government and that the “Kingdom of God” will probably not vote.
•The “Kingdom of God” Party will, in fact, fare incredibly poorly in this riding because not only do they not exist, but they don’t even have pretty signs, and only parties with pretty signs can win.
•When—or if—I go back to the campaign office, there will be refreshments waiting for me.
What then, if anything, is to be learned from this experience?
I believe it was my mother who, while campaigning for Barry Goldwater in his unsuccessful bid to oust the incumbent Mackenzie Bowell in some year which I won’t reveal because my mom doesn’t want anybody to know how old she is, said: “Politics is like skin; sometimes it’s clean and sometimes it’s dirty, and some parts of it are hairy, but underneath it is a whole whack of disgusting body parts that nobody should ever be forced to look at. Not even Yoko Ono.” My mom really doesn’t like Yoko Ono.
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