Sheila observes that today is PJ O’Rourke’s birthday.

O’Rourke is, of course, one of the short list of writers who started me on the road from left to right, twenty-odd years ago (the others being Dostoevskii, Paul Johnson and Solzhenitzyn).

Red’s favorite O’Rourke quotes:

— A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

— Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

— With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn’t think possible in today’s world. They have created a land of make-believe that’s worse than regular life.

— In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that’s fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn’t fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.

— There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.

— To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.

— The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.

— Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, “You’re a disgusting, drunken mess.” And that’s a good description of a party, if it’s done right.

— Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don’t know much. Say it’s ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn’t ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids’ families? And what is tonight’s pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.

— Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.

— It’s hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.

— People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don’t need politics, they have jobs.

— Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college.

And the one I’ve, perhaps predictably, loved since I saw it in Parliament of Whores: “I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about”. But the best O’Rourke of all – and perhaps the one still most applicable in this day of demands for multilateralism – is O’Rourke’s ringing defense of the cowboy diplomat, fifteen years before anyone called them that (below the fold).

“Back in London, I was having dinner in the Groucho Club . . . when one more person started in on the Stars and Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about ‘Your country’s never been invaded.’ . . . ‘You don’t know the horror, the suffering. You think war is . . .’

I snapped.
‘A John Wayne movie,’ I said. ‘Thats what you were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think *life* is a John Wayne movie–with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something Mr. Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re *us*. WE BE BAD.

‘We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant
metric numbers go.

‘You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and mugging is our way of saying “Cheerio.” Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.

I may yet memorize the whole thing.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 8:27 am and is filed under A 'n E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.