Politics & Power Quote by Scott Thompson

Thompson’s joke weaponizes a double analogy: ignorance about Canada gets mapped onto straight people’s cluelessness about queer life, then both get punctured with a vivid, dumb detail. “Skis in July” is the kind of tourist-brain stereotype that’s so wrong it becomes diagnostic. It’s not just that Americans don’t know Canada; they default to a cartoon of it (snow, winter, whiteness) and show up prepared for the fantasy, not the place. That’s the punchline’s first sting: confidence without curiosity.

Then he slides that same mechanism onto sexuality. The “just a phase” line isn’t merely a dated homophobic trope; it’s a whole worldview where straightness is treated as the stable, adult default and queerness as a temporary detour, a youthful experiment, a costume you’ll eventually take off. Thompson’s “A very long phase” is doing two things at once: it mocks the condescension of the phrase while quietly asserting the durability of queer identity. The rhythm matters, too. The short sentence lands like a shrug, the kind comedians use to turn frustration into control.

Context sharpens it. Thompson came up as an openly gay comic in an era when mainstream culture still framed gayness as trend, pathology, or punchline. He flips the script: the butt of the joke isn’t the marginalized group; it’s the majority’s lazy certainty. National ignorance becomes a safe entry point, then he uses it to smuggle in a sharper critique of heteronormativity, making the audience laugh first and realize second.