WHY I DON'T LIKE GEORGE W.

I was watching the president meet with the queen this week, and like most people, I thought it was funny to see how uncomfortable he looked around her. I think it's because he's used to approaching international diplomacy in a kind of "down home folks" kind of a way--you know, taking the world leaders aside and saying, "You know, why don't we just put aside all of this pomp and ceremony, and just talk like regular folks." Have some barbecue. Be plain folks just talking plainly.

This approach would not exactly fly with the Queen of England.

I was thinking about how, in a lot of circumstances, I'd find that discomfort in a person endearing, and I don't find it even remotely that way when it comes to Mr. Bush. And I realised why.

I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere. For the most part, that town is populated by "down home" "just plain" or "simple" folks, depending on whom you ask.

I remember, a few years after having moved to "the big city," thousands of miles away, going home to see my dad, and he took me to see the fancy new Sears store that had opened. And I promised myself that I would never become so cosmopolitan, citified, worldly--so un-"just plain" folks that I wouldn't be able to appreciate it when my Dad took me to see the new Sears store. Not to see it as "quaint" or "sweet," but to appreciate that bloody new Sears store.

The thing is, when I think about who in this world I would most want to be like, there are two people I think of. One is Lydia M. She probably barely remembers me, other than "the one who looks just like her mother." She's a friend of the family that I spent a lot of time around growing up. She's also one of the just plain kindest and loving people I've ever met.

Yes, I'm sure she has her faults. But I knew her as someone who lived with a nasty husband who chased every underage thing in a skirt, and yet she still managed somehow to be just a kind and steady person and a good mother.

There were times growing up when I thought what I wanted to be was someone who saved the world in some spectacular way. I was going to find a cure for cancer. Or be a diplomat who finally brought peace to the Middle East. Whatever it was, it was going to be a big, dramatic life that changed things.

I'm trying to think of the one thing that turned my eyes and heart from living the aching, dramatic life, and toward something else. If I had to choose only one, it would probably be reading the Tao te Ching.

I know you're probably going to say that I read it and thought that it was the most wonderful thing in the world, and that I follow it now. What's funny is that it had the exact opposite effect. I was horrified.

I'm not saying that there aren't some wonderful things you can glean from the book, and that it probably hasn't had a positive effect on some people's lives. But it seemed to me to be saying that the only way to be holy was to sit on your ass in some cave somewhere, BEING holy, seeking enlightenment, and then you'd be superior to the poor farmers who worked every day to provide for their families, and then brought you food--the fruit of their labour--so that you could have the luxury of continuing to sit on your ass being holy while they never, themselves, achieved that same level of godliness.

What a load of crap.

When I think about how to describe living a simple life, not thinking you're so special, and working really, really bloody hard to take care of your family, to be honest with you, "holy" wouldn't be too far off.

I guess after that I started thinking about who I'd really want to be, and it seemed to me that I should try a little bit harder to be like the farmer, and maybe a little less the saint on her ass. Lydia just seemed to me to be the embodiment of that ethic.

So that, to me, is what is beautiful about being "just folks."

But the thing is, when you live in a small town, not everyone takes that concept of "simplicity" as an ideal of human kindness and maybe a bit of sweat and leaves it at that. There are people who use the words "just plain folks" or "simple people" or whatever version of the phrase they like as a weapon.

They use them as their excuse to poke fun at the kid who likes classical violin music, or who excels at physics. Just plain folks don't go in for any of that fancy-schmancy Mozart. They use them to beat up the homosexual, the intelligent, the artistic, the anyone you care to mention who excels or stands out or doesn't conform. They don't want to recognise the difference between simply being exceptional and putting on airs.

But people aren't intelligent because they think they're so much better than people who were born with less of an IQ, and people aren't gay because they are trying to prove something or be more cosmopolitan. People just are who they are, and people like what they like. Being a person who embodies being simple and kind doesn't exclude you from standing out, winning the Nobel Prize, or just being a bit Goth. Being simple isn't the same thing as being mediocre, or lazy, or uninspired.

The only thing I've ever been able to figure is that people who use those things as weapons are aware that they weren't born with any talents or abilities that make them stand out, and they don't want to have to work hard to be good at anything, so they figure they'll just join the fraternity and beat up everyone else until they convince themselves that being mediocre is holy.

I saw those faces every day growing up, and I know what they look like. And now I see one every time I turn on the news.