t came as no surprise to this reporter when I heard that Jesse Ventura was coming to speak today at Harvard's Kennedy School, because he is the governor of Minnesota, and the K-School takes on all comers (and many of what can be called goers).
Nor was it unusual when I heard that Governor Ventura requested a special audience with one segment of the Harvard community. Maybe he'll want to chat up the Business School profs, I mused, those pricey consultants who spray capitalist nostrums over any willing (and paying) audience.
Or perhaps he'll seek out some of those ubiquitous Law School boffins who spend so much time on cable television talk shows, mouthing learned discourses on topics ranging from Monica to Joey Buttafuoco and every topic in between. Or perhaps an economics expert, a Ken Galbraith or a younger bird, for some high-level macro-vs.-micro chitchat on developing jobs to keep the kids in Hibbing from having to move off the Iron Range.
Maybe he's seeking advice from a K-School spin-meister, one of the many alums of the political system, retired involuntarily or otherwise, in Cambridge to reflect on the meaning of it all. Or perhaps an expert at Jerry Murphy's Graduate School of Education to jazz up Minnesota's school schemes, or a theologican from the Divinity School, where the new dean, the Rev. Brian Hehir, is drawing raves.
None of the above, it turns out. Let others come to Harvard to schmooze with philosophers, physicists, poets, play writers. Jesse The Body is into the body thing. And it works for him. As a professional wrestler and now a professional interview-giver, the Reform Party's titular leader has asked to meet with: ... the Harvard football team.
Why am I not surprised?
Governor Ventura does it his way, and his free-wheeling, shoot-from-the-lip style has made him the darling of the media, the young, the uncultured, and the tired-of-the-same-old-same-old, a cobbled-together coalition that elbows its way to the forefront of national debate now and then with refreshing vigor.
The balding wrestler who fancies casual clothes for the governor's job and eye makeup and feather boas for ring work represents the marriage of wrestlemania and politics, and he's darn good at it. His popularity back home is being tested by his recent interview in Playboy Magazine. Not since a lay preacher (no, that is not a sly pun about a skin book) named Jimmy Carter confessed to ''lust in my heart'' has Playboy got so much out of a politician.
Ventura said a number of quotable things, chief among them:
''Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business.''
This was a bit of a hand grenade of an offhand comment, it turns out. But before Ventura becomes the Salmon Rushdie of the Land of Lakes, fricasseed in his own frisson of fatwah, let us stop and think about this, which is what the governor probably should have done before he spake thus.
First, consider the source. Peeking through the prurience of Playboy is not the place for exalted ecclesiastical explanations, can we agree on that? Second, it's a free country last time I checked. Why can't politicians say some outrageous things and live to muse upon their folly?
I like the way Ventura refused to grovel and groan and sweat and sway. He didn't try to weasel out of it. Yeah, I said it, he shrugged. While he's getting booed and jeered for that, and ancillary comments, like the one suggesting the Tailhook scandal was hyped way out of proportion, can I suggest that the Irish confetti aimed at Ventura's hairless pate is a bit excessive?
Organized religion has been around for eons and can survive an offhanded jibe from a generally well-meaning fellow. As a talk-radio ratings hound before beguiling Minnesota voters, Jesse knows how to get attention. He has to be a lot smarter than he sometimes appears; aren't we all? And don't we all say or do bone-headed things from time to time? Admit it.
Surely a man clever enough to get elected and charismatic enough to have a national following comprehends the role of religion beyond the narrow parameters he sketched in Playboy. It would be tragic if his world view is as coarse as his more outrageous sound bites. It would be a lot more savage world without churchgoing's pacific influences, would it not?
There are heroic religious figures from every epoch and culture. The Catholic Church's various health organizations, for example, provide medical care for one American out of five, I just read. What would Minnesota state government do if every religious outfit packed up its operations of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc., and left it to Ventura's imagination to fund and run all manner of social services? Punt, that's what.
It was just a bozo statement by an exuberant politician trying to be provocative for a girlie mag. No real harm done. I think a politician can say something dumb and not have to be boiled in rhetorical oil. Pat Buchanan is a yobbo, by my lights, but I don't think he's an anti-Semite just because he voices goofy theories about Hitler. And I think Jesse is right when he says the politically correct went overboard on the Tailhook punishments after some licentious groping by boozed-up carrier pilots letting off steam. How about we all lighten up?
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
