Remembering Political Satirist P.J. O’Rourke

BroadandLiberty.com published my piece on the late P. J. O’Rourke, a clever conservative satirist.

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys,” the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote.

O’Rourke was a humorist, journalist and author who John Podhoretz at the New York Post called “America’s greatest satirist and coolest conservative.” He died on Feb. 15 at his home Sharon, New Hampshire. He was 74..

I’ve been reading and enjoying P. J. O’Rourke’s work since his days as a writer and editor for National Lampoon. He contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, and he wrote more than twenty books on a variety of subjects. I’ve liked all of his books, especially “Parliament of Whores” and “Give War a Chance.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Paul Davis: Remembering political satirist P.J. O’Rourke (broadandliberty.com) 

PJ O’Rourke: This Is Why Millennials Adore Socialism

The New York Post offers an excerpt from the funny and clever conservative writer P.J. O’Rourke’s new book, A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches From A Divided Land.  

America’s young people have veered to the left. Opinion pollsters tell us so. According to a November 2019 Gallup poll, “Since 2010, young adults’ positive ratings of socialism have hovered near 50 percent.” A March 2019 Axios poll concurs, saying that 49 percent of millennials would “Prefer living in a socialist country.” And The Hill puts it more strongly, citing an October 2019 YouGov Internet survey in a story headed, “7 in 10 Millennials Say They’d Vote for a Socialist.”

Traditional liberalism still exists. In a March 2018 Pew Research Center study of Americans aged 22–37, 57 percent called themselves “mostly” or “consistently” liberal.

But “mostly” or “consistently” liberal may not be enough for young voters. This was evident in the 2018 congressional elections. Ten-term incumbent congressmen Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) and Joe Crowley (D- NY) were as mostly consistently liberal as they come. And they were kicked to the curb in Democratic primaries by leftists Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

What’s the matter with kids today? Nothing new. A large portion of the brats, the squirts, the fuzz-faced, the moon calves, the sap-green, and the wet behind the ears have always been “Punks for Progressives.”

As soon as children discover that the world isn’t nice, they want to make it nicer. And wouldn’t a world where everybody shares everything be nice? Aw … kids are so tender-hearted.

But kids are broke — so they want to make the world nicer with your money. And kids don’t have much control over things — so they want to make the world nicer through your effort. And kids are very busy being young — so it’s your time that has to be spent making the world nicer.

Young Bernie Sanders fans think wealth is limited to what arrives at the 7-Eleven with the Hostess deliveryman.

For them. The greedy little bastards. Kids were thinking these exact same sweet-young-thing thoughts back in the 1960s, during my salad days (tossed green sensimilla buds). Young people probably have been thinking these same thoughts since the concept of being a “young person” was invented.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://nypost.com/2020/09/12/pj-orourke-this-is-why-millennials-adore-socialism/ 

P.J. O'Rourke: How I Killed 'National Lampoon'

Back in the day, I was a huge fan of the satiric magazine National Lampoon (see the great magazine cover above), and I also enjoyed the Lampoon films, such National Lampoon's Vacation and Animal House. 

I later enjoyed the satiric books and magazine pieces of former National Lampoon editor P.J. O'Rourke, who went on to become a conservative humorist.

O'Rourke offers a clever and amusing piece on National Lampoon history in the Hollywood Reporter. You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pj-o-rourke-how-i-809985?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_breakingnews&utm_campaign=THR%20Breaking%20News_2015-07-23%2009%3A00%3A00_nstone 

P.J. O'Rourke Rips 'Buckley And Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped The Sixties'

I was a teenager and a political conservative in the 1960s (although in other aspects I was far from conservative) and I read William F. Buckley's newspaper column and his political books. I also watched him on his PBS TV show, Firing Line. In later years I read and enjoyed his spy thrillers. He was a huge influence.

In the 1960s I also read Norman Mailer's novels and nonfiction work. I didn't agree with his worldview, but I thought he was an interesting writer. I also thought Mailer's The Executioner's Song  was an outstanding true crime book.

Having read both authors and having watched the two brilliant men debate on Firing Line, I was initially very interested in reading Kevin M. Schultz's Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties.

But having now read P.J. O'Rourke's book review in the Washington Post, I'm not so sure.

Kevin M. Schultz’s “Buckley and Mailer” would be fun without Kevin M. Schultz. He’s a third wheel. What he contributes to the chronicle of friendship between William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer is what an oversize carry-on bag contributes to an airplane flight. If “Buckley and Mailer” were a Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road movie, Kevin M. Schultz would be along instead of Dorothy Lamour. Athos, Porthos and . . . Schultz.

In fairness, telling the story of two men who liked each other is difficult if you don’t like one of them. Schultz detests Buckley.

“ . . . a salesman’s eyes, as though Buckley were trying to sell something he knew you didn’t really want to buy.”  

... Schultz’s subtitle says it all — wrong. “The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties.” The adjective, the verb and the nouns are incorrect.

Schultz is a historian of the ’60s. I was there. William F. Buckley did not shape the ’60s and would have been appalled to be accused of it. Buckley, who led conservatism’s long march from cocktail-hour mixed nuts to political main course, shaped the ’80s and, to an extent, the ever-since.

Norman Mailer did not shape the ’60s. Prosperity, pot, the pill and the draft did. Mailer was an artist; he shaped all of creation. But he had little direct influence on we who fancied ourselves members of the Armies of the Night. And Mailer considered us to be lost in the dark, anyway. Buckley and Mailer together can hardly be said to have done what Buckley and Mailer separately did not do.

... I met Buckley a number of times and owe him a boatload of praise. He was a mainmast of courtesy, an anchor of encouragement and a spinnaker of enthusiasm for whatever one had written. And he knew what it was. The man must have read everything, including National Lampoon. My first contact with Bill was in the mid-’70s, a personal note lauding something I’d done, maybe “Why Fluoride in Water Turns Kids Into Commies.” (Infrequent need to go to the dentist means fewer salutary waiting-room exposures to hard-line Cold War articles in Reader’s Digest.)

Only once did I get a chance to talk to Mailer at length. We were seated near each other at a dinner party. “The Executioner’s Song” had just been published. I asked Mailer if Gary Gilmore’s inamorata, Nicole Baker, had as much je ne sais quoi and you-know-what as it seemed. The answer was: did she ever.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/intellectual-frenemies-of-the-1960s/2015/05/29/bf7c5dd0-f285-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html?postshare=5721433079430125

The Land Of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin's Russia

P.J. O'Rourke offers his review of Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing is True and Everything is Possible for the World Affairs Journal.

This is the strangest book of note I have ever read. And that’s as it should be, since the subject is Russia, the strangest country of note I have ever visited.

Peter Pomerantsev has written the most bitter indictment of a nation’s politics and society going wrong since William Shirer’s 1941 Berlin Diary. Pomerantsev has also written a calm and incisive report on the current state of affairs in Russia. Yet it reads like a comedy of manners, a dark and grotesque comedy of manners, a State Department white paper co-authored by Evelyn Waugh and Franz Kafka. And not only that, but Nothing Is True is a bildungsroman, too. 

... Soviet stagnation led to perestroika, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal euphoria, economic disaster, oligarchy, and the mafia state. How can you believe in anything when everything around you is changing so fast?

Pomerantsev, however, is all too believable in the bad news he brings us from Russia. His reporter’s straightforward and unlimited curiosity, his willingness to plow and harrow the widest fields for facts, and his exacting descriptive details give him credibility. Plus, what he tells us is so incredible. As reporters say, “You just can’t make these things up.”
 
In Russia, “corrupt” is not an adjective. Corrupt is a noun, a proper noun, the word for the name and nature of the place.

Corrupt crony capitalism is familiar everywhere. But in Russia the corruption is so pervasive that even the cronies have to pay bribes, not just to the higher-ups but to the lower-downs.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/land-magical-thinking-inside-putin%E2%80%99s-russia

P.J. O'Rourke On Pot, Putin, And Polygamy

 

P.J. O'Rourke's humor column in the Daily Beast looks at the start of the year. 

 

The first full week of 2014 started on a high note, with Colorado and Washington freeing up the weed, Putin wielding a glue gun, and Utah saying no to one groom and yes to many wives.

 

How much damn pull does a guy have to have to get government bureaucracy off its ass and doing something right for a change? Christmas present from the Obama family to the children’s godmother was delivered to wrong address in Chicago by the U. S. Postal Service.

Otherwise the year began on a high note—in Colorado and Washington state. 

... Spoiler alert…

New season of Downton Abbey is set in 1924. That was 90 years ago. They’re all going to die.

SNL adds black female cast member. Considered adding black female Hispanic gay homeless disabled veteran special-needs cast member with gluten intolerance, but that wouldn’t be funny. 
You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/10/p-j-o-rourke-on-pot-putin-and-polygamy.html 

Up To A Point: Daily Beast Interview With Humorist P.J. O'Rourke

The Daily Beast offers an interview with one of my favorite writers, P.J. O'Rourke, and announced that the humorist will write a weekly column for the online publication.

The legendary libertarian humorist is joining The Daily Beast as a weekly columnist. Here, he riffs on his rapid-fire style, why politics is as funny as ever, and more.

 

So, what do you think makes a great column?

A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style—and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers. He had a weekly newspaper column called “Illiterate’s Digest,” and it was just him riffing off the events of the day. Many of the things we remember Will Rogers saying—like “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”—are right out of his column. And they didn’t need a lot of connective tissue because the connective tissue was really what had happened that last week and so there was no need for throat clearing at the beginning or summation at the end or bloviating in between.

... Has the humor gone out of politics?

Oh, no. It’s better than ever. Well, not better than ever—we can’t possibly top certain portions of the Clinton years. But politics is always hilarious because everybody’s mad at each other. I mean, go back to the Civil War. A man named David Ross Locke wrote these columns that Lincoln was crazy about and they were supposedly by a fellow named Petroleum V. Nasby, who was the world’s stupidest southern sympathizer. He was an Ohio Copperhead type who sympathized with the southern states in a way that was so blatantly stupid—lest we think we invented irony—that it was just hilarious. And people don’t get any madder at each other than they were during the Civil War. People say, oh, politics is so polarized today, and I’m thinking…1861, that was polarized.

Your column will be called “Up to a Point.” Why did you choose that name?

The most famous book among all foreign correspondents is Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. The newspaper in Scoop is, of course, The Daily Beast, which is owned by the moronic Lord Copper and run by the obsequious Mr. Salter. There’s a brief passage which I think all reporters know. “Whenever Lord Copper was right, Mr. Salter would say, ‘Definitely, Lord Copper,’ and whenever Lord Copper was wrong, Mr. Salter would way, ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’” Then follows a little snatch of dialogue where Lord Copper says, “Hong Kong—belongs to us, doesn’t it?” “Definitely, Lord Copper.” “Yokohama—capital of Japan, isn’t it?” “Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

You can read the rest of the interview via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/17/p-j-o-rourke-joins-the-daily-beast.html

Note: Evelyn Waugh's Scoop is a great novel and it is one of my favorites. I reread Scoop every couple of years.

Stupid: P.J. O'Rourke On President Obama's War On Terror Speech

P.J. O'Rourke at the Weekly Standard does not think much of President Obama's war on terror speech.

“You’re stupid,” is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama. But on Friday morning I picked up the Wall Street Journal and learned that the president had given a speech about the war on terror saying, “This war, like all wars, must end.”

That story was at the top of the front page. Immediately below was a photograph of flowers being laid at a makeshift memorial near the Woolwich Royal Arsenal where machine gunner Lee Rigby was hacked to death by terrorists.

This war, like all wars, must end when someone wins it.

The president—speaking at the National Defense University, of all places—said, “the core of al Qaeda . . . is on the path to defeat.” And so it may be. But meanwhile, the core of al Qaeda, its aims and its beliefs, is also on the path to Boston and London and any number of other places.

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/stupid_729235.html?page=1 

Former War Correspondent P.J. O'Rourke Braves Family Vacation

Conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke was interviewed on Fox News about his new book  Holidays in Heck.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1275799328001/pj-orourkes-holidays-in-heck/?playlist_id=163192

A Conversation with Conservative Author and Humorist P. J. O' Rourke

The New York Post has an interesting and amusing interview with conservative author and humorist P. J. O' Rourke.

O'Rourke has a new book coming out called Don't Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press).

I've been reading O'Rourke since his National Lampoon days and I truly enjoy his magazine piece and his books.

You can read the interview via the below link:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/conversation_with_rourke_5aLOK4Ts2lTfDAQX4z07OO/0
Below is the link to O' Rourke's page at the Cato Institute. (The above photo is from Cato.org)
http://www.cato.org/people/pj-orourke
Below is the link to P.J. O'Rourke's official website:
http://www.pjorourke.com/

P.J. O'Rourke is the 72-Hour Expert: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Afgahnistan

Humorist P.J. O'Rourke wrote an amusing and insightful piece on Afghanistan for The Weekly Standard.

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama. I called my wife. She said, no, she certainly is not vacationing at government expense in some jet-set hot spot with scads of her BFFs. Looks like I’m not President Obama. But I am a reporter, fresh from Kabul. What do you want to know about Afghanistan, past, present, or future? Ask me anything.

As all good reporters do, I prepared for my assignment with extensive research. I went to an Afghan restaurant in Prague. Getting a foretaste—as it were—of my subject, I asked the restaurant’s owner (an actual Afghan), “So what’s up with Afghanistan?”

You can read the rest of his piece via the below link:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/72-hour-expert