Background Image

...

Name Me, If You Can, A Better Feeling Than The One You Get When You've Half A Bottle Of Chivas In The Bag With A Gram Of Coke Up Your Nose And A Teenage Lovely Pulling Off Her Tube Top In The Next Seat Over While You're Doing A Hundred Miles An Hour In A Suburban Side Street.

-P. J. O'Rourke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Name Me, If You

P. J. O'Rourke

...

Name Me, If You Can, A Better Feeling Than The One You Get When You've Half A Bottle Of Chivas In The Bag With A Gram Of Coke Up Your Nose And A Teenage Lovely Pulling Off Her Tube Top In The Next Seat Over While You're Doing A Hundred Miles An Hour In A Suburban Side Street.

Views: 19

Topic

More From P. J. O'Rourke

When I Left The Lampoon, I Went West To Try That Out, And Discovered That I Hated It.they Were Awful People Turning Out Awful Product .

If The Japanese Want To Be Taken Seriously As World Financial Powers, They'd Better Quit Using The Same Tailor As Variety Show Chimps.

Whatever The Occasion, Do Not Neglect Alcohol. No Other Refreshment Will Do. Yes, Alcohol Kills Brain Cells, But It's Very Selective. It Only Kills The Brain Cells That Contain Good Sense, Shame, Embarrassment, And Restraint.

The Greenpeace Booth At All The Rock And Roll Shows Nowadays Are Akin To The Old Sorcerers Who Used To Stand In The Middle Of Villages Warning Of Danger, 'when Night Wolf Swallows Mother Moon, There Will Be Great Famine.'

Imagine A Weight-loss Program At The End Of Which, Instead Of Better Health, Good Looks, And Hot Romantic Prospects, You Die. Somalia Had Become Just This Kind Of Spa.

One Nice Thing About The Third World, You Don't Have To Fasten Your Seat Belt. (or Stop Smoking. Or Cut Down On Saturated Fats.) It Takes A Lot Off Your Mind When Average Life Expectancy Is Forty-five Minutes.

The Middle Eastern States Aren't Nations; They're Quarrels With Borders.

The Interesting Thing About Staring Down A Gun Barrel Is How Small The Hole Is Where The Bullet Comes Out, Yet What A Big Difference It Would Make In Your Social Schedule.

Mercedes Benz : A Mechanical Device That Increases Sexual Arousal In Women.

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 Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look.

Good Manners Can Replace Morals. It May Be Years Before Anyone Knows If What You Are Doing Is Right. But If What You Are Doing Is Nice, It Will Be Immediately Evident.

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

Government Conspiracy? They Can't Even Deliver Our Mail And It's Got Our Address On It And Everything!

Russian Cars Are Silly. They Look Like Imports Drawn By A Cartoonist For A Uaw Newsletter.

Then There Was Lsd, Which Was Supposed To Make You Think You Could Fly. I Remember It Made You Think You Couldn't Stand Up, And Mostly It Was Right.

When [george W.] Bush Was Elected, I Think They Thought I Would Have Some Sort Of Special "in" With That Administration, To Provide Some Sort Of Inside Poop. Which Is Not Something I'd Be Interested In Doing, And Anyway, I Didn't. I Actually Knew More People In His Dad's Administration. So It Was Obviously Winding Down At Rolling Stone, And They Were Having Financial Troubles, Too. They Weren't Getting The Advertising, And The Issues Were Getting Thin. They Fired Bob Love, Who'd Been My Editor There For A Long Time.

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Collectivists, To People Who Believe That Wealth Is Best Obtained By Redistribution, And That Message Is Clear And Concise . . . Egalitarianism Is Sinful; It's Also Cowardly.

A Pleasant Natural Environment Is A Good - A Luxury Good, Philosophical Good, A Moral Goody-good, A Good Time For All. Whatever, We Want It. If We Want Something, We Should Pay For It, With Our Labor Or Our Cash. We Shouldn't Beg It, Steal It, Sit Around Wishing For It, Or Euchre The Government Into Taking It By Force.

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

Remember, Fda Employees Are Serious About Fear. We Pay These People To Panic About An Iota Of Rodent Hair In Our Chili, Even When The Recipe Calls For It. Fda Employees Are First-class Agonizers, World Champions At Losing Sleep. When Meryl Streep Got Hysterical About Alar, They Actually Checked The Apples Instead Of Meryl's Head.

Children From The Age Of Five To Ten Should Watch More Television. Television Depicts Adults As Rotten Sob's Given To Fistfights, Gunplay, And Other Mayhem. Kids Who Believe This About Grownups Aren't Likely To Argue About Bedtime.

The Young Are Adept At Learning, But Even More Adept At Avoiding It.

Zero-sum Thinking Is An Obsession Of Mine, But Mostly In Economics.

In The Past A Man Was Expected To Give His Seat On A Bus To A Woman. Today It Would Be Much More Courteous For That Man To Give Her His Job.

If We're Free To Do What We Want, Why Does Government Always Have A Plan For Us?

Rich White Protestant Men Have Held On To Some Measure Of Power In America Almost Solely By Getting Women, Blacks, And Other Disadvantaged Groups To Wear Crippling Foot Fashions. This Keeps Them Too Busy With Corns And Bunions To Compete In The Job Market.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Longa As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

On Michael Moore Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

Southern California Is A Nice Place, If You Could Cut Out The Show-business Cancer. It Just Keeps Spreading.

And Worrying Is Less Work Than Doing Something To Fix The Worry. This Is Especially True If We're Careful To Pick The Biggest Possible Problems To Worry About. Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Want To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

Any Person Who Has Spent Time Outdoors Actually Doing Something, Such As Hunting And Fishing As Opposed To Standing There With A Doobie In His Mouth, Knows Nature Is Not Intrinsically Healthy.

Most Of The People Who Have Grabbed Hold Of Climate Change And Greenhouse Gases, Pollution, Oil Dependency - They Have Another Motive, And Their Motive Is To Attain The Appearance Of Virtue Without Having Actually Done Anything Virtuous.

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.

There's A Whiff Of The Lynch Mob Or The Lemming Migration About Any Overlarge Concentration Of Like-thinking Individuals, No Matter How Virtuous Their Cause.

Happy Hour Is Slightly Different In The Soviet Union. There Are No Ice Cubes Or Orange-peel Twists In The Vodka. Also, It Lasts All Day.

Imagine If All Of Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza. Every Pair Of Pants, Even Those In A Brooks Brothers Suit, Would Be Stone-washed Denim. Celebrity Diet And Exercise Books Would Be The Only Thing On The Shelves At The Library. And - Since Women Are A Majority Of The Population - We'd All Be Married To Mel Gibson.

The Inherent Purpose Of American Government Is Let People Seek Their Own Goals And To Encourage Them To Be Responsible On The Various Adventures They Have On Their Way To Those Goals, Good, Bad, And Otherwise.

In The Wake Of Animal House, All Of Us At The Lampoon Had A Lot Of Hollywood Opportunities. We Could Definitely Get People To Return Phone Calls.

The Real Truth About Children Is They Don't Speak The Language Very Well. They're Physically Uncoordinated. And They Are Ignorant Of Our Elaborate Ideas About Right And Wrong.

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

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

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.

Government Isn't A Good Way To Solve Problems ... [g]overnment Is Concerned Mostly With Self-perpetuation And Is Subject To Fantastic Ideas About Its Own Capabilities. ... [g]overnment Is Wasteful Of The Nation's Resources, Immune To Common Sense And Subject To Pressure From Every Half-organized Bouquet Of Assholes. ... [g]overnment Is Distrustful Of And Disrespectful Toward Average Americans While Being Easily Gulled By Americans With Money, Influence Or Fame.

Last Year, On A Long Car Trip, I Was Listening To Rush Limbaugh Shout. I Usually Agree With Rush Limbaugh; Therefore I Usually Don't Listen To Him. I Listen To Npr: "world To End-poor And Minorities Hardest Hit." I Like To Argue With The Radio.

Now For Good Or Ill, California Is The Place Where Trends Tend To Be Set In Western Civilization - If Civilization Indeed It Is. California, For Several Generations Now, Has Been The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Place In The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Part Of Liberal Western Capitalism - Which Is Itself A New Experiment For Mankind.

Visiting Future World Is Like Opening A Chinese Fortune Cookie To Read, "soon You'll Be Finished With Dinner."

One Of The Reporters Must Have Flunked Journalism School Because He Asked A Question That Went Straight To The Point.

Whereas Rolling Stone, I Just Never Had Anything To Do With Them. I'd Stop By The Office Maybe Twice A Year.

It Is A Popular Delusion That The Government Wastes Vast Amounts Of Money Through Inefficiency And Sloth. Enormous Effort And Elaborate Planning Are Required To Waste This Much Money.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

In Washington Journalists Can Afford To Live Almost As Well As People Who Work For A Living.

You Can Smoke Or Drink On A Golf Course Without Interrupting The Game, And You Can Take A Leak - Something You Can't Do On A Squash Court And Shouldn't Do In A Swimming Pool.

Fashionably Amusing Table Manners Are A Matter Of Breaking The Right Rule At The Right Time.

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

There's A Current Notion That You Should "take Charge Of Your Disease." No Thanks. I'm Busy. I've Got Cancer. I'm Willing To Face Having Cancer. I'm Not Willing To Face Having Cancer With Homework. I Promised Dr. Pipas And Dr. Zaki That I Wouldn't Show Up With Sheaves Of Printouts From The Internet Containing Everything On Wikipedia On Malignancies. They Each Laughed With Detectable Notes Of Relief. Although I Suspect My Wife Has Made Her Way Into The Health Blog Ether. Fish Oil Pills, Raw Kelp, And Other Untoward Substances Started Showing Up On Dinner Plates After I Was Diagnosed.

This Country Is So Urbanized We Think Low-fat Milk Comes From Cows On Nutri/system Weight-loss Plans.

The America's Cup Is Like Driving Your Lamborgini To The Gran Prix Track To Watch The Charter Buses Race.

The Morning Meal Was Served In Traditional Socialist Fashion - Very Slowly, With The Courses Out Of Order So That The Jelly Arrived Half An Hour After The Toast And The Coffee Didn't Come Until We'd Called For The Check. However, It Was Hard To Be Angry At A Place That Had Ice Cream, Beer, And Cigarettes On Its Breakfast Menu.

Republicans Are The Party That Says Government Doesn't Work, And Then They Get Elected And Prove It.

Government Usually Doesn't Work. It Doesn't Work Because It Is Political. People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs. The Difference Between The Political Process And An Honest Life Is The Difference Between Parading Around Waving Picket Signs While Hollering Catcalls In Front Of The White House And Getting Up In The Morning To Go Make A Living.

It Was Ronald Reagan Who Used To Say That The 10 Most Frightening Words In The English Language Are, "i'm From The Federal Government, And I'm Here To Help."

Greatest Generation Came Through Some Stuff That We Can't Even Imagine - The Depression, World War I - And All They Wanted After That Was A Breather And A Calm And A Quiet Life, And They Get Us.

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

You Know, If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal. ... Government Contains Impure Ingredients - As Anybody Who's Looked At Congress Can Tell You. ... Government Practices Deceptive Advertising. And The Merest Glance At The Federal Budget Is Enough To Convict The Government Of Perjury, Extortion, And Fraud. ... In A Nutshell: Government Should Be Against The Law. Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

One Of The Problems With Being A Writer Is That All Of Your Idiocies Are Still In Print Somewhere. I Strongly Support Paper Recycling.

I Rarely Meet A Politician That I Don't Like Personally. They Are Generally Well Endowed With Charm. Therein Lies The Danger.

I Have Three Children And Three Dogs. You Put Them In A Prius, You Know? People Who Have A Prius Obviously Have No Life! No Wife, No Kids, No Pets - There's No Room In There For Anything!

The Idea Of A News Broadcast Once Was To Find Someone With Information And Broadcast It. The Idea Now Is To Find Someone With Ignorance And Spread It Around.

France In August When You Can Travel Through The Entire Country Without Encountering A Single Pesky Frenchman Or Being Bothered With Anything That's Open For Business.

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

I'll Be 56 This Year, I've Got Two Kids, And I Think It's Probably Time To Go Back To Writing One-glove Jokes.

Finally, One Night We Were Smoking Pot [with Michael O'donoghue] And Talking About The People That Are Invariably In High School, Whether You Go To Prep School Or Public School Or Ghetto School Or Rich Suburban School. And Actually, It Spun Off From A Kurt Vonnegut Quote.

Mike Had Called Me And Said He Could Offer Me Less, And I Said, "you're On!" Because I Was Really Excited With What Mike Kelly Was Doing, And Now What Cullen Murphy Is Doing With Atlantic. It's A Really Cool Magazine.

Some Women Want The Strong Silent Type, So They Can Tell Him To Shut Up And Rearrange The Furniture.

The Number Of American Presidential Candidates Varies With The Sunspot Cycle And The Phases Of The Moon. Being A Republican, I'm Backing Hillary Clinton. Because She Could Lose. The Reason Is Not That She's A Woman. The Reason Is That She's The Particular Woman Who Taught The 4th Grade Class That Every Man In America Wished He Were Dead In. Hillary Clinton Is Lucy Holding The Football For Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton Is "america's Ex-wife."

There's Nothing Inherently Lame About Electricity. I've Got A Basement Full Of Power Tools That All Operate With Electricity, And They're Manly Items. And When You See A Great Big Locomotive Hauling A Mile Of Freight Cars, That's A Hybrid. A Lot Of People Don't Understand That.

I Think In The [bill] Clinton Era, If People Hadn't Been Spending Vast Amounts Of Time Attacking Clinton, They Would Have Found That They Had Essentially The Same Problems As They Do Now.

A Woman Should Dress To Attract Attention. To Attract The Most Attention, A Woman Should Be Either Nude, Or Wearing Something As Expensive As Getting Her Nude Is Going To Be.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

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?

I Was Told To Hand Over My Disposable Lighter, To Prevent, I Suppose, Any Threat Of "do What I Say Or I'll Light This Marlboro And You'll All Die - In Thirty Years Due To Inhalation Of Secondhand Smoke."

Humans Are The Only Animals That Have Children On Purpose With The Exception Of Guppies, Who Like To Eat Theirs.

At The Core Of Liberalism Is The Spoiled Child — Miserable, As All Spoiled Children Are, Unsatisfied, Demanding, Ill-disciplined, Despotic And Useless. Liberalism Is A Philosophy Of Sniveling Brats.

Most Of Us Had Never Seen A Sober Redneck Before, And We Have The Reagan Landslide To Testify That None Of Us Ever Wants To See One Again. It Was A Horrifying Apparition. And Ever Since Jimmy Carter, All Of Us Rednecks Have Had To Be Very Careful To Be Drunk Rednecks Lest We Turn Into Some Kind Of Awful Creature With Big Buck Teeth And A State Department Full Of Human-rights Yahoos.

Health Care Is Too Expensive, So The Clinton Administration Is Putting A High-powered Coporate Lawyer - Hillary - In Charge Of Making It Cheaper. (this Is What I Always Do When I Want To Spend Less Money - Hire A Lawyer From Yale.) If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

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

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.

Jewishness Cropped Up And Has Never Successfully Been Put Down Since.

Modern Air Travel Means Less Time Spent In Transit. That Time Is Now Spent In Transit Lounges.

When Adam Smith Was Being Incomprehensible, He Didn't Have The Luxury Of Brief, Snappy Technical Terms As A Shorthand For Incoherence.

I'm A Registered Republican And Consider Socialism A Violation Of The American Principle That You Shouldn't Stick Your Nose In Other People's Business Except To Make A Buck.

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.

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.

I Like To Do My Principal Research In Bars, Where People Are More Likely To Tell The Truth Or, At Least, Lie Less Convincingly Than They Do In Briefings And Books.

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

There Is A Remarkable Breakdown Of Taste And Intelligence At Christmastime. Mature, Responsible Grown Men Wear Neckties Made Of Holly Leaves And Drink Alcoholic Beverages With Raw Egg Yolks And Cottage Cheese In Them.

Mankind Is Supposed To Have Evolved In The Treetops. But I Have Examined My Sense Of Balance, The Prehensility Of My Various Appendages, And My Attitude Toward Standing On Anything Higher Than, Say, Political Principles, And I Have Concluded That, Personally, I Evolved In The Backseat Of A Car.

The Key Ingredient Of Politics Is The Idea That All Of Society's Ills Can Be Cured Politically. It's Like A Cookbook Where The Recipe For Everything Is To Fry It. The Fruit Cocktail Is Fried.

It's Better To Spend Money Like There's No Tomorrow Than To Spend Tonight Like There's No Money.

Ireland And The Irish

When Government Does, Occasionally, Work, It Works In An Elitist Fashion. That Is, Government Is Most Easily Manipulated By People Who Have Money And Power Already. This Is Why Government Benefits Usually Go To People Who Don't Need Benefits From Government. Government May Make Some Environmental Improvements, But These Will Be Improvements For Rich Bird-watchers. And No One In Government Will Remember That When Poor People Go Bird-watching They Do It At Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That Doesn't Mean That You Should Just Sit Back And Just Let Accidents Happen To You. No, You Have To Go Out And Cause Them Yourself. That Way You're In Control Of The Situation.

Don't Send Funny Greeting Cards On Birthdays Or At Christmas. Save Them For Funerals When Their Cheery Effect Is Needed.

I'm A Political Conservative.

Family Love Is Messy, Clinging, And Of An Annoying And Repetitive Pattern, Like Bad Wallpaper.

Never Wear Anything That Panics The Cat.

Giving Money And Power To Government Is Like Giving Whiskey And Car Keys To Teenage Boys.

Good Manners Consist Of Doing Precisely What Everyone Thinks Should Be Done, Especially When No One Knows Quite What That Is.

I'll Pick "i'm Kidding" Anytime Over "i'm Lying."

We Had A Choice Between Democrats Who Couldn't Learn From The Past And Republicans Who Couldn't Stop Living In It.

You Can Keep The Dining Room Clean By Eating In The Kitchen.

The Lampoon Started In 1970, And I Began Writing Freelance For Them Around The End Of 1971, And Then All Through '72. They Hired Me In '73, And I Left Early In '81. I Did Everything From Low Puns To Being Editor-in-chief.

I Think It's Been Hard For People To Understand How Islam Can Be A Good Religion, And Yet The Islamists Are Evil. Those Of Us Who Have Had Experience With Islam Understand This, Just As We Understand The Difference Between Snake Handlers And People Going To Church On Sunday Morning.

I Spent Almost 25 Years As A Foreign Correspondent, And The World's Primary Problem Is Poverty.

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.

As I Get Older, All Sorts Of Things Become Less Funny. Once One Has Children, Any Cruelty Involving Children Becomes Far Less Amusing Than When One Was At The Mercy Of One's Friends' And Relatives' Children.

People Think The Free Market Is A Philosophy, They Think That It Is A Creed. It Is None Of Those Things. Free Market Is A Bathroom Scale, It Is A Measuring Tape, It's Simply A Measurement.

One Of The Enduring Problems With Certain Societies In The World - And This Is Certainly True Of A Lot Of Places In The Middle East - Is That The Capacity For Self-governance And Self-organizing Just Isn't There. It Has To Do With History.

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

The Motorcycle Is A Device Created By The Team Of God And Darwin To Rid The World Of Useless Young Males.

The French Are Sawed-off Sissies Who Eat Snails And Slugs And Cheese That Smells Like People's Feet. Utter Cowards Who Force Their Own Children To Drink Wine, They Gibber Like Baboons Even When You Try To Speak To Them In Their Own Wimpy Language.

I Didn't See Any Nra Officials Killing Babies In Waco.

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

Off They Go On This Sort Of Camping Trip To Iwo Jima, Where They're Taken Around And Shown Where All The Battles Took Place. It's Very Moving. Disgusting Little Island, Though. Still An Active Volcano. Stinks Of Sulfur. There Are Dead Japanese Everywhere Under That Island. It's Icky. But I Knew I Would Never Have Another Chance To Go, So I Took The Job.

Iraq's Invasion Of Kuwait Is A Case Of Bad Men Doing Wrong Things For Wicked Reasons. This Is The Full-sized Or Standard Purebred Evil And Is Easily Recognized Even By Moral Neophytes. Other Malignities-drugs In America, Famine In Africa And Everything In The Middle East-are More Complex. When Combating Those Evils People Sometimes Have Trouble Deciding Whom To Shoot.

It's The Squares Who Know How To Fly The Fighter Planes And Operate The Missiles And The Bombs And Work The M-16s. Liberals Would Still Be Fumbling With The Federally Mandated Trigger Locks.

Because Of Their Cuisine, Germans Don't Consider Farting Rude. They'd Certainly Be Out Of Luck If They Did.

Lampoon Was A Very Collegial Operation, Though "collegial" Usually Means "friendly" And It Wasn't That Friendly. But We Were Tight, Like A Family.

Only One Way To Cover A Story Like This, And Make That A Double, Bartender, Please.

The Neo-hippie-dips, The Sentimentality-crazed Iguana Anthropomorphizers, The Chicken Littles, The Three-bong-hit William Blakes- Thank God These People Don't Actually Go Outdoors Much, Or The Environment Would Be Even Worse Than It Is Already.

There Was Also A Hunger Strike In Front Of The National Press Club, Which Seemed An Odd Place To Have A Hunger Strike (a Cocktail Fast, Maybe). Although The Bangladeshis Were Savvy Enough To Know To Know That If You're Going To Pester Journalists, Don't Go To Where They Work: You'll Never Find Them There.

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Wealth Is, For Most People, The Only Honest And Likely Path To Liberty. With Money Comes Power Over The World. Men Are Freed From Drudgery, Women From Exploitation. Businesses Can Be Started, Homes Built, Communities Formed, Religions Practiced, Educations Pursued. But Liberals Aren't Very Interested In Such Real And Material Freedoms. They Have A More Innocent - Not To Say Toddlerlike - Idea Of Freedom. Liberals Want The Freedom To Put Anything Into Their Mouths, To Say Bad Words And To Expose Their Private Parts In Art Museums.

In The American Political System, You're Only Allowed To Have Real Ideas If It's Absolutely Guaranteed That You Can't Win An Election

Never Strike Anyone So Old, Small Or Weak That Verbal Abuse Would Have Sufficed.

Distracting A Politician From Governing Is Like Distracting A Bear From Eating Your Baby.

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.

Politics Is The Business Of Getting Power And Privilege Without Possessing Merit. A Politician Is Anyone Who Asks Individuals To Surrender Part Of Their Liberty - Their Power And Privilege - To State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, Or Whatever. This State, Those Masses, That Mankind, And The Planet Will Then Be Run By ... Politicians.

Lampoon Was Exactly The Opposite. The Work Was A Lot Of Fun, But The Office Environment Was Hell. You Cannot Put 20 Humorists Together.

You Can't Get Rid Of Poverty By Giving People Money.

Each Child Is Biologically Required To Have A Mother. Fatherhood Is A Well-regarded Theory, But Motherhood Is A Fact.

I Figured If I Could Put Together Being Funny About Stuff And Actual Events, Maybe I Could Do Something That Wasn't Being Done Much. Because The Reporters That I Met Out There Were Funny, And They Had Hilarious Stories That Just Didn't Fit In The Ap/upi/new York Times Foreign-correspondent Style. They Couldn't Use The Things They Had. But I Could.

Then Basically What Was Happening Was That It Was The Middle '80s, And Rolling Stone Realized That A Lot Of Their Readers Had Voted For [ronald] Reagan, And They Were Going, "gosh! We Need A Republican! Does Anybody Know A Republican? Wait A Minute! I Think P.j.'s A Republican!"

There Is Parody, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Smarter Than You; Satire, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Richer Than You; And Burlesque, When You Make Fun Of Both While Taking Your Clothes Off.

Of Course, The Humans In Haiti Have Hope. They Hope To Leave.

The Democrats Are The Party That Says Government Will Make You Smarter, Taller, Richer, And Remove The Crabgrass On Your Lawn. The Republicans Are The Party That Says Government Doesn't Work And Then They Get Elected And Prove It.

Political Stuff Is All About His [hunter S. Thompson] Reaction To A Situation. And My Stuff Is Much More Externally Driven.

Ideology, Politics And Journalism, Which Luxuriate In Failure, Are Impotent In The Face Of Hope And Joy.

Normally, The Job Sucks But Work Is Kinda Fun, Because You See Your Friends And Flirt With Girls And Stuff.

The Free Market Is Ugly And Stupid, Like Going To The Mall; The Unfree Market Is Just As Ugly And Just As Stupid, Except There Is Nothing In The Mall And If You Don't Go There They Shoot You.

I Started Reading Hunter S. Thompson When I Was In College.

I Suppose I Should Get A Vcr, But The Only Thing I Like About Television Is Its Ephemerality.

Positive Rights Are The Right To Shelter, The Right To Education, The Right To Health Care, The Right To A Living Wage. These Things Are - These Are, I Would Call Them, More Properly, Political Rights Rather Than Positive Rights. And They Are Extremely Tricky, Because Now We Are Dealing With Things That Are Zero Sum.

Especially With A Magazine Like Lampoon, Which Was Very Dependent On Newsstand Sales. Our Readers Didn't Usually Occupy The Same Address Long Enough To Get A Subscription, Because They Were In College, Or They Were Hippies. So It Was Very Up-and-down, And We Had To Calculate How Many To Print, Which Was Always Sort Of A Headache From A Business Point Of View.

When A Private Entity Does Not Produce The Desired Results, It Is (certain Body Parts Excepted) Done Away With. But A Public Entity Gets Bigger.

Journalists Aren't Supposed To Praise Things. It's A Violation Of Work Rules Almost As Serious As Buying Drinks With Our Own Money Or Absolving The Cia Of Something.

In General, Life Is Better Than It Has Ever Been, And If You Think That, In The Past, There Was Some Golden Age Of Pleasure And Plenty To Which You Would, If You Were Able, Transport Yourself, Let Me Say One Single Word : Dentistry.

What Use Is It To Endure The Dutch Rubs And Indian Rope Burns That Are Politics If You Can't Obtain Mastery Over People And Give Them Noogies Back?

I'm Really Tired Of Virtue.

That Is The Really Great Thing About Being An Adult Male, Once You Get Married And Have Children The Whole Decision-making Process Is Taken Out Of Your Hands, And I For One Am Extremely Grateful.

The Principal Feature Of American Liberalism Is Sanctimoniousness. By Loudly Denouncing All Bad Things — War And Hunger And Date Rape — Liberals Testify To Their Own Terrific Goodness. More Important, They Promote Themselves To Membership In A Self-selecting Elite Of Those Who Care Deeply About Such Things.... It's A Kind Of Natural Aristocracy, And The Wonderful Thing About This Aristocracy Is That You Don't Have To Be Brave, Smart, Strong Or Even Lucky To Join It, You Just Have To Be Liberal.

The Only Really Firm Rule Of Taste About Cross Dressing Is That Neither Sex Should Ever Wear Anything They Haven't Yet Figured Out How To Go To The Bathroom In.

A Charity Ball Is Like A Dance Except It's Tax Deductible.

I'm A Rather Decisive Type.

In The Wake Of Animal House, The Stock Briefly And Quite Wrongly Shot Up. So I Love That Movie.

I'd Known The People At Rolling Stone For A While. I'd Gone To Them With A Piece I'd Done On Beirut For Vanity Fair That Vanity Fair Didn't Want To Publish, Because They Said I Was Making Fun Of Death... This Was Tina Brown.but They Paid Me For It. So I've Got This Big Chunk Of A Piece, And Rolling Stone Liked It, But They Thought It Was A Little Dated. But Then They Called Me Back And Asked Me To Do A Similar Piece About The Turks And Caicos Islands, Where The Whole Government Had Been Arrested For Dope Smuggling. That Was Fun.

Detroits Industrial Ruins Are Picturesque, Like Crumbling Rome In An 18th-century Etching.

Humor Is A Terrific Tool For Explaining Things, Especially When What You're Explaining Is Frightening Or Dull And Complicated.

Once We Realized That There Were These 25 Invariable Types - The Class Politician, The Frigid Popular Girl, The Kid Who Tags Along Behind The Jocks - Once We Came Up With These Key Characters In A Cloud Of Marijuana, The Whole Thing Just Came Together. One Of The Things I'm Really Proud Of Is How Much Of A High-school Yearbook It Is In Its Look, So Much So That Hunter Publishing Had The Art Director, David Kaestle, And I Come For Years To Their Annual Convention And Do A Little Talk On How Not To Do A Yearbook.

Apparently Bolivia Is The Key Source Of Lithium In The World. So We're Gonna Trade The Saudis For The Bolivians.

If We Do Our Deficit Spending On Weapons, At Least We Get Weapons. Then If We Need Weapons, We Have Them. If We Don't Need Them, No Harm Is Done.

Each American Embassy Comes With Two Permanent Features - A Giant Anti-american Demonstration And A Giant Line For American Visas. Most Demonstrators Spend Half Their Time Burning Old Glory And The Other Half Waiting For Green Cards.

Vegetables Are Something God Invented To Let Women Get Even With Their Children.

I Think Michael O'donoghue Felt He'd Said What He Wanted To Say. In Fact, Nobody Thought We Could Spin It Out Long Enough To Make A Book.

If You Get Outside The World Of Show Business And Its Satellites, There's A Whole World Of Car Nuts In The Los Angeles Area.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

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?

America Is Not A Wily, Sneaky Nation. We Don't Think That Way. We Don't Think Much At All, Thank God. Start Thinking And Pretty Soon You Get Ideas, And Then You Get Idealism, And The Next Thing You Know You've Got Ideology, With Millions Dead In Concentration Camps And Gulags.

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

.......the Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By Redistribution Of Wealth. Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty, Taking Their Money And Giving It As A Reward To People Who Have Failed To Escape. Economic Leveling Doesn't Work. Whether We Call It Marxism, Progressive Reform, Or Clintonomics, The Result Is The Same Slide Into The Stygian Pit. Communists Worship Satan; Socialists Think Perdition Is A Good System Run By Bad Men; And Liberals Want Us To Go To Hell Because It's Warm There In The Winter.

The Commies Are The Only People On Earth Who Think Star Wars Will Work. If They're That Gullible, Maybe We Should Have Held The Summit At Atlantic City And Let Them Lose All Their Missiles Playing Keno.

I Try To Only Ridicule People Who's Efforts Are Sincere. Very Little Trouble Has Been Caused In The World By Insincere Efforts. An Occasional Seduction Maybe. There Were Very Few Insincere Stalinists Or Nazis.

First And Foremost: Feed People.

Imagine Having Journalists In Your Own Home And Not Even Covering The Furniture With Plastic Sheets First.

We Are A Nation That Worships Speed And Power. And For Good Reason. Without Power We Would Still Be Part Of England And Everybody Would Be Out Of Work... Bicycles Are Too Slow And Impuissant For A Nation Like Ours. They Belong In Czechoslovakia.

Something Is Worth What Somebody Will Pay For It. Nothing Else, Nothing More, Nothing Less.

Government Proposes, Bureaucracy Disposes. And The Bureaucracy Must Dispose Of Government Proposals By Dumping Them On Us.

Children Must Be Considered In A Divorce Considered Valuable Pawns In The Nasty Legal And Financial Contest That Is About To Ensue.

A Good Bachelor Drinks His Dessert (and Sometimes The Rest Of His Meals). A Sweet Tooth Is A Danger Signal That You're Getting Too Much Exercise And Not Enough Cocktails.

It Had Never Occurred To Us That The Kremlin's New Anti-booze Campaign Would Apply To Journalists. Now, That's A Human-rights Violation.

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.

The Whole Idea Of Our Government Is This: If Enough People Get Together And Act In Concert, They Can Take Something And Not Pay For It.

Anyone Who Thinks He Has A Better Idea Of What's Good For People Than People Do Is A Swine.

Adam Smith's Huge Failure Was The Fact That He Did Not Foresee The Industrial Revolution.

I've Always Figured That If God Wanted Us To Go To Church A Lot He'd Have Given Us Bigger Behinds To Sit On And Smaller Heads To Think With.

You Can't Get Something For Nothing. Everybody Remembers This Except Politicians.

There Are No Kinder Or Better People In The World Than Those Who Listen To You When You Are 18.

When I Get In Deep Water, I Prefer To Announce That I'm In Over My Head.

Masochists Are People That Have Pleasure Confused With Pain. In A World That Has Television Confused With Entertainment, Doritoes Confused With Food, And Dan Quayle Confused With A National Political Leader, Masochists Are Clearly Less Mixed-up Than The Rest Of Us.

People Love To Be Told What They Know Already. It's Not So Much That What They Say Is Wrong, Though Ann Coulter Does Seem To Be Completely Crazy.

Trending Author

Category