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I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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I Don't See Evidence

P. J. O'Rourke

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I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

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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.

The U.s. Tax Code Was Written By A Students. Every April 15 We Have To Pay Somebody Who Got An A In Accounting To Keep Ourselves From Being Sent To Jail.

Our Democracy, Our Culture, Our Whole Way Of Life Is A Spectacular Triumph Of The Blah. Why Not Have A Political Convention Without Politics To Nominate A Leader Who's Out In Front Of Nobody? Maybe Our National Mindlessness Is The Very Thing That Keeps Us From Turning Into One Of Those Smelly European Countries Full Of Pseudo-reds And Crypto-fascists And Greens Who Dress Like Forest Elves.

I Have A 10 Year Old At Home, And She Is Always Saying, 'that's Not Fair.' When She Says That, I Say, "honey, You're Cute; That's Not Fair. Your Family Is Pretty Well Off; That's Not Fair. You Were Born In America; That's Not Fair. Honey, You Had Better Pray To God That Things Don't Start Getting Fair For You.

A World Government Run By The Un Will Be Like Getting An Old, Purblind, Half-deaf Substitute Teacher.

World Government

Humor Is, By Its Nature, More Truthful Than Factual.

Government Does Not Cause Affluence. Citizens Of Totalitarian Countries Have Plenty Of Government And Nothing Of Anything Else.

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At Epcot Center The Disney Corporation Has Focused Its Attention On Two Things Greatly In Need Of Disneyfication: The Tedious Future And The Annoying Whole Wide World.

The U.s. Constitution Is Less Than A Quarter The Length Of The Owner's Manual For A 1998 Toyota Camry, And Yet It Has Managed To Keep 300 Million Of The World's Most Unruly, Passionate And Energetic People Safe, Prosperous And Free.

The Chinese Had Gunpowder, But It Didn't Occur To Them To Put It In A Gun. They Possessed The Compass But Didn't Go Anywhere. They Invented Paper, Printing, And A Written Form Of Their Language, But Hardly Anyone In China Was Taught To Read.

I Arrived In The Middle Of A Press Conference - As Boring A Thing To Sit Through If You Don't Know The Language As It Is If You Do.

Smoking Is Very Bad For You And Should Only Be Done Because It Looks So Good. People Who Don't Smoke Have A Terrible Time Finding Something Polite To Do With Their Lips.

In The End We Beat Them With Levi's 501 Jeans. Seventy-two Years Of Communist Indoctrination And Propaganda Was Drowned Out By A Three-ounce Sony Walkman. A Huge Totalitarian System...has Been Brought To Its Knees Because Nobody Wants To Wear Bulgarian Shoes. Now They're Lunch, And We're Number One On The Planet.

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Who, Other Than A Crazy Person, Does Anything Besides Hang Up On A Robo-call? Any Call, Any Person, Anywhere, Under Any Circumstances.

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If The Wind Is Blowing Like Stink And Everything Is Working Right, A Twelve-meter Sailboat Can Go Eleven And A Half Or Twelve Miles An Hour, The Same Speed At Which A Bond Lawyer Runs Around The Cental Park Reservoir.

Some Jobs Are Worse Than Actual Wives. Ad Agency Vs. Matrimony, For Instance: Even The Most Capricious And Demanding Spouse Is Not Going To Divorce You For Refusing To Spend Forty Hours A Week Making Up Lies About Toilet Paper.

Everything On A Boat Has A Different Name Than It Would Have If It Weren't On A Boat. Either This Is Ancient Seafaring Tradition Or It's How People Who Mess Around With Boats Try To Impress The Rest Of Us Who Actually Finished College.

In Western Australia They Don't Even Know How To Make That Vital Piece Of Sailboating Equipment, The Gin And Tonic.

It Takes A Lot Of Weapons To Do Good Works (as Richard The Lionhearted Could Have Told Us). And This Is Not Just A Somali Problem. We Have Poverty And Deprivation In Our Own Country. Try Standing Unarmed On A Street Corner In Compton Handing Out Twenty-dollar Bills And See How Long You Last.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race. All Through History, Mankind Has Been Bullied By Scum. Those Who Lord It Over Their Fellows And Toss Commands In Every Direction And Would Boss The Grass In The Meadow About Which Way To Bend In The Wind Are The Most Depraved Kind Of Prostitutes. They Will Submit To Any Indignity, Perform Any Vile Act, Do Anything To Achieve Power. The Worst Off-sloughings Of The Planet Are The Ingredients Of Sovereignty. Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy The Whores Are Us.

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What About Snipers?" I Once Asked Someone. He Said, "oh, Most Of The Snipers Have Automatic Weapon. They Arent Very Accurate.

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Democracies Have

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Black And White

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First And Foremost: Feed People.

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Democracies Have

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Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

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Those Who Do Not Know History Are Probably Also Not Doing Well In English Or Math. P.j. O'rourke

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We're Told Cars Cause Pollution. A Hundred Years Ago City Streets Were Ankle Deep In Horse Excrement. What Kind Of Pollution Do You Want? Would You Rather Die Of Cancer At Eighty Or Typhoid Fever At Nine?

Some People Are Better Imagined In One's Bed Than Found There In The Morning.

Everybody In 15th Century Spain Was Wrong About Where China Was And As A Result, Columbus Discovered Caribbean Vacations.

The Wonder Is That Communism Lasted So Long. But Then Again, Modern Poetry Lasted A Long Time, Too.

Farm Policy, Although It's Complex, Can Be Explained. What It Can't Be Is Believed. No Cheating Spouse, No Teen With A Wrecked Family Car, No Mayor Of Washington, D.c., Videotaped In Flagrante Delicto Has Ever Come Up With Anything As Farfetched As U.s. Farm Policy.

Zen Martini: A Martini With No Vermouth At All. And No Gin, Either.

Gossip Is What You Say About The Objects Of Flattery When They Aren't Present.

The Body Is Forever Teaching Us Lessons. There Are All Sorts Of Things That We Can't Do, Shouldn't Do, Had Better Not Do Very Often Or Do For Too Long As We Get Older. The Body Makes Its Presence Known.

To Really Enjoy Drugs You've Got To Want To Get Out Of Where You Are. But There Are Some Wheres That Are Harder To Get Out Of Than Others. This Is The Drug-taking Problem For Adults. Teenage Weltscbmerz Is Easy To Escape. But What Drug Will Get A Grown-up Out Of, For Instance, Debt?

The Harvard Lampoon Itself, Which Had A Pretty Stellar Run In The '60s.

Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As Some Poeple That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

The Complexity Of Economics Can Be Calculated Mathematically. Write Out The Algebraic Equation That Is The Human Heart And Multiply Each Unknown By The Population Of The World.

Nobody Likes Insurance Companies, Especially Health Insurance Companies.

Insurance Companies

I Bought My First House Because Of Animal House.

Veal Is A Very Young Beef And, Like A Very Young Girlfriend, It's Cute But Boring And Expensive.

I Don't Watch Much Television. Yeah, That's Pretty Funny. I Don't Know Where The Daily Show Stand Politically, Do You?

Any Random Group Of Thirty Vietnamese Women Will Contain A Dozen Who Make Julia Roberts Look Like Lyle Lovett.

The Main Reason To Be Opposed To Political Control Of Smoking Is To Keep Power -even The Smallest And Silliest Kind Of Power - Out Of The Hands Of ... Members Of A Dangerous Class -the Class That Knows What's Good For Us Better Than We Do.

Marijuana Is Self-punishing. It Makes You Acutely Sensitive, And In This World, What Worse Punishment Could There Be?

People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs.

You Can't Shame Or Humiliate Modern Celebrities. What Used To Be Called Shame And Humiliation Is Now Called Publicity.

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I Like The Fact That They Still Run Substantive Pieces. I'm Not Sure I Like The Pieces, But It's Nice That They Do That. Anyway, It Was Always Sort Of Ridiculous, Me Having Anything To Do With The Youth Culture, But Now That I'm In My 50s, It's Extra-double-ridiculous. They Were Losing Interest In Me, And I Was Losing Interest In Them. When I Went To Renegotiate My Contract At Rolling Stone, I Kind Of Halfheartedly Asked If I Could Do Half The Work For Half The Money, And They Asked If I Could Do Two-thirds Of The Work For Half The Money. I Ran That By My Agent, Since He Can Do Math.

Cats Are To Dogs What Modern People Are To The People We Used To Have. Cats Are Slimmer, Cleaner, More Attractive, Disloyal, And Lazy. It's Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Poet. People Like Poets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do.

The Mystery Of Government Is Not How Washington Works But How To Make It Stop.

Rich Parents Are Famous Both For Miserliness And Astonishing Longevity. And, When They Finally Do Die, You'll Find They've Left Their Estate In Inviolate Trust To The Golden Retrievers.

Golden Retrievers

I Like Michael Moore, But I Think Of Him More As A Rabble-rouser.

I Always Thought There Was Some Romance To That '30s Leftist Stuff, Even Though I'm A Republican.

If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

Taxi Drivers All Over The World, By The Way, Are Under Newspaper Guild Contract To Give Easy Quotes To Foreign Correspondents.

Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin.

If You Spend Seventy-two 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.

Creative Writing Teachers Should Be Purged Until Every Last Instructor Who Has Uttered The Words 'write What You Know' Is Confined To A Labor Camp. Please, Talented Scribblers, Write What You Don't. The Blind Guy With The Funny Little Harp Who Composed The Iliad, How Much Combat Do You Think He Saw?

And, By The Way, How Come All The People Who Were So In Favor Of Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Are So Opposed To Unilateral Protection Against Nukes?

Nuclear Disarmament

Politics Is The Business Of Getting Power And Privilege Without Possessing Merit

I've Been A New Yorker For Ten Years, And The Only People Who Are Nice To Us Turn Out To Be Moonies.

Smoking Cigarettes Seems To Alarm Peace Activists Much More Than Voting For Reagan Does.

You Don't Despair About Something Like The Middle East, You Just Do The Best You Can.

The Typical Old-fashioned Diet (in The Nineteenth Century) Was So Bad It Almost Assembled Modern Dieting.

Nothing Bad Is Going To Happen To Us. If We Get Fired, It's Not Failure; Its A Midlife Vocational Reassessment.

I Can Understand Why Mankind Hasn't Given Up War. During A War You Get To Drive Tanks Through The Sides Of Buildings And Shoot Foreigners - Two Things That Are Usually Frowned On During Peacetime.

The Old Woman Was Not Only Ugly With The Ugliness Age Brings Us All But Showed Signs Of Formidable Ugliness By Birth - Pickle-jar Chin, Mainsail Ears And A Nose Like A Trigonometry Problem. What's More, She Had The Deep Frown And Snit Wrinkles That Come From A Lifetime Of Bad Character.

With The War In Iraq, I Had The Cooperation Of The Department Of Defense. Kuwait Was Pretty Eager To Get American Journalists In There, To Show Us What A Wonderful Place They Are, And What Great Allies They Are To America, Even Though They Didn't Actually Fight In The War.

One Of These Suburbs Is Actually Named Stalingrad, Which Goes To Show That The French Have Learned Nothing About Politics Since They Guillotined All The Smart People In 1793.

I'm Here As A Radio Journalist But Am Not Even Sure Which Part Of A Tape Recorder Takes The Pictures.

Finland Is A Rich Country. What Have They Got? They Got Nokia Phones And Plywood. How'd They Get So Rich? Because They're Free.

[ I'm] Humorist, I Guess. Or Really More Of A Reporter. A Reporter Who Reports On Funny Things.

The Three Branches Of Government Number Considerably More Than Three And Are Not, In Any Sense, 'branches' Since That Would Imply That There Is Something They Are All Attached To Besides Self-aggrandizement And Our Pocketbooks. ... Government Is Not A Machine With Parts; It's An Organism. When Does An Intestine Quit Being An Intestine And Start Becoming An Asshole?

There Are A Lot Of Mysterious Things About Boats, Such As Why Anyone Would Get On One Voluntarily.

Mysterious Things

There Is Only One Basic Human Right: The Right To Do As You Please, Without Causing Others Harm. With It Comes Our Only Basic Human Duty: The Duty To Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

Never Steal Anything So Small That You'll Have To Go To An Unpleasant City Jail For It Instead Of A Minimum-security Federal Tennis Prison.

It Is Very Hard Now To Shock People Into Thinking About Government Regulation And The Extent Of Government Involvement In Life.

Moscow Has Changed. I Was Here In 1982, During The Brezhnev Twilight, And Things Are Better Now. For Instance, They've Got Litter. In 1982 There Was Nothing To Litter With.

There Isn't Much Room For An Outsider Point Of View In Print Any More.

Oh, God. The Sixties Are Coming Back. Well I've Got A 12-gauge Double-barreled Duck Gun Chambered For Three-inch Magnum Shells. And - Speaking Strictly For This Retired Hippie And Former Pinko Beatnik - If The Sixties Head My Way, They Won't Get Past The Porch Steps. They Will Be History. Which, For Chrissakes, Is What They're Supposed To Be.

Political Systems Are Run By Self-selecting Politicians. We Don't Draft People; It's Not Jury Duty.

Whenever People Tell You They Are Going To Wipe The Slate Clean, It's Your Slate They Mean To Wipe.

These Were People Who Believed Everything About The Soviet Union Was Perfect, But They Were Bringing Their Own Toilet Paper.

Some People Are Worried About The Difference Between Right And Wrong. I'm Worried About The Difference Between Wrong And Fun.

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