P.J. O’Rourke, the modern Mencken
The death of P.J. O’Rourke robs America of its most famous political humorist. O’Rourke was a funny Republican — a rare creature indeed, almost as rare as a funny Democrat.
In truth, he is better described as a Republican fellow traveller. He often called himself a Libertarian, until some Libertarians went off the rails (Rand Paul comes to mind).
He certainly never fell for Donald Trump, that most unconservative of figures. Ahead the 2016 election, O’Rourke — a strident critic of the Clintons in the 1990s — said: “I endorse Hillary Clinton for president. She is the second-worst thing that could happen to America.”
He was keen on certain ideas but never took parties seriously. He was above all an individualist, a latter-day Mencken.
Below are passages I’ve gleaned from his writings over the years, in chronological order. Those about the art of writing (n. 2 and n.10), rather than politics, are perhaps the most enduringly relevant:
- “We are in favor of: guns, drugs, fast cars, free love (if our wives don’t find out), a sound dollar, and a strong military with spiffy uniforms. There are thousands of people in America who feel this way, especially after three or four drinks. If all of us would unite and work together, we could give this country… well, a real bad hangover.”
(1988)
- “Usually, writers will do anything to avoid writing. For instance, the previous sentence was written at one o’clock this afternoon. It is now a quarter to four. I have spent the past two hours and forty-five minutes sorting my neckties by width, looking up the word paisley in three dictionaries, attempting to find the town of that name on The New York Times Atlas of the World map of Scotland, sorting my reference books by width, trying to get the bookcase to stop wobbling by stuffing a matchbook cover under its corner, dialing the telephone number on the matchbook cover to see if I should take computer courses at night, looking at the computer ads in the newspaper and deciding to buy a computer because writing seems to be so difficult on my old Remington, reading an interesting article on sorghum farming in Uruguay that was in the newspaper next to the computer ads, cutting that and other interesting articles out of the newspaper, sorting — by width — all the interesting articles I’ve cut out of newspapers recently, fastening them neatly together with paper clips and making a very attractive paper clip necklace and bracelet set, which I will present to my girlfriend as soon as she comes home from the three-hour low-impact aerobic workout that I made her go to so I could have some time alone to write.”
(1989)
- “I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.”
(1992)
- “Tragedy is better than comedy for self-dramatization, as every teenager knows… And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is expecially true if we’re careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
(1994)
- “The best thing about our [Cold War] victory is the way we did it — not just ICBMs ad Green Berets and aid to the Contras. Those things were important, but in the end we beat them with Levis jeans. Seventy-two years of communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system with all its tanks and guns, gulag camps and secret police has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.”
(1994)
- “The men are not actually unshaven but look as though they are nerving themselves not to shave.”
(About a group of Western eco-tourists spotted at a Peruvian airport, 1994)
- “We all know what happens when you stop the man in the street and ask him a question about anything other than elections . “How do I get to I-95 from the Lincoln Tunnel?” for instance. You wind up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But during political season this same randomly chosen schmo is supposed to possess the wisdom of Mary Matalin and James Carville combined.”
(1994)
- “There are certain Republicans who want to get rid of immigrants (these Republicans being under the impression that Pat Buchanan is a Cherokee name.)”
(1995)
- “Use of bilingual signage in English and French gives the corridors of the UN a sadly Canadian air. One widely posted warning reads, SMOKING DISCOURAGED/VEUILLEZ ÉVITER DE FUMER, and that says it all about the United Nations, its power and its might.”
(2000)
- “The Old Testament was recorded with a hammer and chisel on tablets of stone. The works of William Shakespeare were limned with goose quill. Henry James wielded a fountain pen. Jack Kerouac used a typewriter. I write on a computer. Or, rather, I don’t. Because you see the pattern. And I’m a bad enough writer in ballpoint. For millennia, the process of communication has been getting easier and more enjoyable. What a bad idea…
Computer writing is disorganized, parenthetical, digressive, prolix, and overcasual in tone. We need not alter Lincoln’s magisterial phrases to see how the Gettysburg Address would have turned out if Abe had been noodling on his iMac: “A great battlefield! Now we are engaged in a great civil war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field of that war we are met on as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives testing whether that nation… so dedicated (conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal), or any other nation our fathers brought forth on this continent, can long endure. Hey, 87 years and counting!”
(2001)
