Okay, I see your point.  I just tested it in 2k5 and got the same result when using a real Create Table / Update Table statement.  Which doesn't make sense when BOL says:

"The string expression to be searched. The string_expression1 argument can be of data types that are implicitly convertible to nvarchar or ntext."

Hrm.  You're right.  There has to be a better way to do this.  I wonder if Full Text Indexing makes these harder, different or no different.