INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Telegram from Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, native son of Indianapolis, is not only one of America’s great gifts to the world of art and letters, he is also a brilliant provocateur in the tradition of certain Zen masters and the likes of Voltaire and Mark Twain. At 81, the man is still capable of poking a fingerful of horseradish up the nose of our imperial complacency. Last month he spoke at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. It is my pleasure to bring you highlights from that address … “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break! “If you keep up with current events in the supermarket tabloids, you know that a team of Martian anthropologists has been studying our culture for the past 10 years, since our culture is the only one worth a nickel on the whole damn planet … “Anyway: They went home last week, because they knew how terrible global warming was about to be. Their space vehicle wasn’t a flying saucer. It was more like a flying soup tureen. And they’re little all right, only 6 inches high. But they aren’t green. They’re mauve. “And their little mauve leader, by way of farewell, said in that teeny-weeny, tanny-wanny, toney-woney little voice of hers that there were two things about American culture no Martian would ever understand. “’What is it,’ she squeaked, ‘what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?’ “Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics where, thanks to TV, and for the convenience of TV, you can be only one of two kinds of human beings, either a Liberal or a Conservative. “If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut. “If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for you. “If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a Liberal. “If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a Conservative. “What could be simpler? “A show of hands, please: How many of you are Liberals? “In the meanwhile, though, I want to talk about our government’s war on drugs. It’s certainly a lot better than no drugs at all … “But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal. One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he as 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him, and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint. “Other drunks have seen pink elephants. “You want to know why I think he is so pissed off at the Arabs? They invented algebra. “Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever thought of before. “You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut … “My car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most addictive and destructive drugs of all, which are fossil fuels, so easy to set afire. “When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on crack. Well, we are all fossil fuel babies. “And here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. “And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on. “But hey, listen: I got a letter from a sappy woman a while back. She knew I was sappy, too, a Franklin Roosevelt Democrat, a friend of working stiffs. She was about to have a baby, not mine. She wanted to know if it was a mistake to bring an innocent little baby into a world as awful as this one is. I told her that what made life almost worth living for me was the saints I met. These were people who behaved compassionately and capably, no matter what, and they could be anywhere. “So maybe some of you tonight are or may become saints for her child to meet. Most of us are loaded with Original Sin. But a surprising number of us, not me, God knows, are loaded with Original Virtue. Ain’t that sweet?”