It was a long time ago. I had just moved to Quebec, on avenue Myrand, at the corner of chemin Sainte-Foy. I occupied student accommodation opposite the radio station where, behind his microphone, André Arthur belched out his wildest curses day after day.
I had barely had time to settle in when a policeman rang at my door. He warned us not to go out, not to move, to hide. There was on the other side of the street, he told us, hidden behind a container, an armed man. In the crosshairs of his murderous desires, he intended to take aim at this strange game that was André Arthur. Was he reproaching him for words that had hurt him? The man ends up lowering his arms and surrendering. André Arthur never surrendered. To his death.
André Arthur was the son of René Arthur, a radio host and then, with the Liberals, a chief of staff. He had, it seems, a reputation of great distinction. The characters in the story, it is said, always occur twice. The first under serious features and the second, under those of a sordid farce.
Testimonies that followed the announcement of the death of André Arthur, many blew hot and cold. On the one hand, we were asked to believe that he had been a great communicator, a staunch defender of the downtrodden and outcasts, a sleuth even when he launched into the wildest theories, even if it means inventing them as they go along, in the course of his words. On the other hand, we were on the contrary placed before the evidence of a barker of the worst kind, of a storyteller without morals, without scruple, without shame, a coarse being capable, through his logorrhea, of saying one thing and its opposite, as if nothing but flies were buzzing in his head.
In 1984, René Lévesque did not mince his words about him. The Prime Minister claimed that Arthur’s show was a “constant appeal to stupidity and the spirit of the jungle”. In the opinion of the Prime Minister, it was necessary to democratically eradicate such quackgrass. It was enough, he asserted, to boycott the advertisers who gave his station the food capable of sustaining such verbal diarrhea. Was René Lévesque, before the letter, a dangerous woke ?
“If there were a certain number of people, simply for the very dignity of Quebec and its region, who began to say: ‘if you continue to advertise in this armhole, we will find other […]”. It is very democratically legitimate to boycott something that is unhealthy,” explained Lévesque. The Prime Minister had even considered taking Arthur to court, after Corporal Denis Lortie entered the National Assembly, submachine gun in hand, firing everywhere, killing three and wounding several. Lortie had never concealed being an admirer of the so-called “King Arthur”.
Attracted by politics, Arthur succeeded in being elected as a federal deputy, with the tacit blessing of conservative circles. He received an elected official’s salary, nearly $160,000, not counting expense allowances, but was conspicuous by his absence from Ottawa, preferring to sit behind the wheel of the bus he had never stopped driving. to have fun. At the same time, without embarrassment, he monetized his fame by lending his voice to advertisements, unconcerned that this might place him at odds with his duties.
About André Arthur, René Lévesque was wrong about at least two things. The first: to believe that a simple advertising boycott is enough to bend the media wind that carries such irrationalities. Basically, Lévesque was proposing to use the old tactic of the 1930s of buying from us as a barrier against cheesy ideas. Legault’s Blue Basket, if you will, but in this case applied to the world of ideas: only buy what is deemed suitable. The idea that an effective barrier, other than that of education, can be erected against stupidity is wishful thinking. When one day someone close to General de Gaulle had launched a sonorous “death to idiots”, the latter had replied: “Vaste program. »
Lévesque’s second mistake about Arthur was more consequential. The Prime Minister believed that this willingly devious radio man represented a phenomenon specific to Quebec, to his region. Many consider today that King Arthur anticipated, in the Old Capital, the empire of garbage radios, that he was in some way its putative father. However, did this sad sire have to exist for closed minds to come to unbutton at open microphones? After all, much of America has long flirted with irrationality. Big mouths full of drool can be heard everywhere. The hatred of immigrants, Muslims, public transport, women, gays, cyclists, artists, young people, blacks, yellows, blues, peckish people, in short, everything that stands out from the mass , in a thinly veiled eulogy of the herd spirit, is not the prerogative of a single corner of the country.
In Quebec, what is paradoxical with such a goodwill is to have come to believe in its originality. It is true that serious efforts are being made to add to it. Showing up in everything, for example, in favor of extreme budgetary rigour, but building a new Colosseum around the hollow dream of an invisible hockey team or even campaigning in favor of a tunnel at a pharaonic price without the not a single study can justify even the first sod of the earth. Do we really have to go down to André Arthur to explain such heights of political alienation in America?
One thing is certain, it is clear that André Arthur is far from dead. Alas.