Background Image

...

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.

-P. J. O'Rourke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Commies Are The

P. J. O'Rourke

...

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.

Views: 22

Topic

More From P. J. O'Rourke

There Is That Kind Of Happiness. There Is The Love And Marriage And Family Kind Of Happiness, Which Is Exceedingly Boring To Describe But Nonetheless Is Important To Have And Dreadful Not To Have.

Love And Marriage

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.

There Was An Austerely Dignified Award Ceremony. By That I Mean We Had To Buy Our Own Drinks - In Clear Violation Of The International Journalists'code Of Truth, Fairness And An Open Bar.

Asia Is The Continent Rhythm Forgot. At Best Asian Music Is Off-brand American Pop, Like Sonny Bono In A Karaoke Bar. At Worst Asian Music Sounds As If A Truck Full Of Wind Chimes Collided With A Stack Of Empty Oil Drums During A Birdcall Contest.

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.

Iran And Iraq Have Been At War For Five Years Now. The Traditional Present For A Fifth Anniversary Is Wood. Here's A Gift Suggestion: A Big Stick To Beat Some Goddamned Sense Into Their Heads.

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

I Have, Of All The Inglorious Things, A Malignant Hemorrhoid. What Color Bracelet Does One Wear For That? And Where Does One Wear It? And What Slogan Is Apropos? Perhaps That Slogan Can Be Sewn In Needlepoint Around The Ruffle On A Cover For My Embarrassing Little Doughnut Buttocks Pillow.

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

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

I Didn't Realize What Fun It Was [ Been A Reporter].

So-called Western Civilization, As Practised In Half Of Europe, Some Of Asia And A Few Parts Of North America, Is Better Than Anything Else Available. Western Civilization Not Only Provides A Bit Of Life, A Pinch Of Liberty And The Occasional Pursuance Of Happiness, It's Also The Only Thing That's Ever Tried To. Our Civilization Is The First In History To Show Even The Slightest Concern For Average, Undistinguished, None-too-commendable People Like Us.

Guns Are Always The Best Method For A Private Suicide. They Are More Stylish Looking Than Single-edged Razor Blades And Natural Gas Has Got So Expensive. Drugs Are Too Chancy. You Might Miscalculate The Dosage And Just Have A Good Time.

We Like To Pile Language On Language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] Was An Influence On Me, No Doubt About It.

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.

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.

Predicting Innovation Is Something Of A Self-canceling Exercise: The Most Probable Innovations Are Probably The Least Innovative.

During The Mid-1980s Dairy Farmers Decided There Was Too Much Cheap Milk At The Supermarket. So The Government Bought And Slaughtered 1.6 Million Dairy Cows. How Come The Government Never Does Anything Like This With Lawyers?

Who Does Bill Clinton Think Got Off The Boat And Stepped On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers?

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

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.

Even A Band Of Angels Can Turn Ugly And Start Looting If Enough Angels Are Unemployed And Hanging Around The Pearly Gates Convinced That All The Succubi Own All The Liquor Stores In Heaven.

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.

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

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.

I Don't Think I'll Ever Be A Real Boat Reporter. My Rolex Isn't Big Enough.

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.

Soldiers Are Not Policemen, And It's Very Unfair, Even For Those Soldiers Who Have Some Police Training, To Burden Them With Police Duties. It's Not What They're Trained For, Or Equipped For.

Dating Is The Social Engagement With The Threat Of Sex At Its Conclusion.

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

We Also Have A Lot Of The Same Influences - We Both Read A Lot Of The Beatniks. And Yet What We Actually Do Is Almost Exactly The Opposite. His [ Hunter S. Thompson] Political Stuff Is Just Wonderful, But Basically Nothing Happens.

As Long As We Are On Firm Moral Ground, As Long As We're Caring About Other People, These Are Legitimate Worries. The Minute That We Start Protecting Our Own Interests In The Name Of These Worries And Saying, "oh, We Have To Make Sure That Only Ford Motor Company Manufactures Cars, Because We Can't Be Sure That The Cars In Other Countries Are Being Made Quite Up To Our Point Of View," We're Economically Off Base, And, Of Course, We're Moral Hypocrites, Too.

Your Money Does Not Cause My Poverty. Refusal To Believe This Is At The Bottom Of Most Bad Economic Thinking.

You May Be Surprised To Discover You're Rich, Especially If You're Broke.

There Are Twenty-seven Specific Complaints Against The British Crown Set Forth In The Declaration Of Independence. To Modern Ears They Still Sound Reasonable. They Still Sound Reasonable, In Large Part, Because So Many Of Them Can Be Leveled Against The Federal Government Of The United States.

There Are A Number Of Mechanical Devices Which Increase Sexual Arousal, Particularly In Women. Chief Among These Is The Mercedes-benz 380sl Convertible.

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.

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.

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.

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

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

Getting Down On All Fours And Imitating A Rhinoceros Stops Babies From Crying. (put An Empty Cigarette Pack On Your Nose For A Horn And Make Loud "snort" Noises.) I Don't Know Why Parents Don't Do This More Often. Usually It Makes The Kid Laugh. Sometimes It Sends Him Into Shock. Either Way It Quiets Him Down. If You're A Parent, Acting Like A Rhino Has Another Advantage. Keep It Up Until The Kid Is A Teenager And He Definitely Won't Have His Friends Hanging Around Your House All The Time.

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 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.

Anyway, No Drug, Not Even Alcohol, Causes The Fundamental Ills Of Society. If We're Looking For The Source Of Our Troubles, We Shouldn't Test People For Drugs, We Should Test Them For Stupidity, Ignorance, Greed And Love Of Power.

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

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.

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.

People Are Always Angry At America. They're Absolutely Certain That America Either Caused Their Problems Or Is Deliberately Not Fixing Their Problems. But The Anger Is Always Directed At America And Never At Americans.

Lampoon Ran Out Of Steam In The Early '80s, And Wasn't Able To Reinvent Itself Because It Ran Out Of Talent. People Who Wanted To Do This Kind Of Stuff Could Suddenly Make $100,000 In Hollywood Right Out Of College.

There's No Telling What Might Have Happened To Our Defense Budget If Saddam Hussein Hadn't Invaded Kuwait That August And Set Everyone Gearing Up For World War Ii. Can We Count On Saddam Hussein To Come Along Every Year And Resolve Our Defense-policy Debates? Given The History Of The Middle East, It's Possible.

Journalists Are Notoriously Easy To Kid. All You Have To Do Is Speak To A Journalist In A Very Serious Tone Of Voice, And He Will Be Certain That You Are Either Telling The Truth Or A Big, Important Lie.

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.

We Won't Dispassionately Investigate Or Rationally Debate Which Drugs Do What Damage And Whether Or How Much Of That Damage Is The Result Of Criminalization. We'd Rather Work Ourselves Into A Screaming Fit Of Puritanism And Then Go Home And Take A Pill.

A Nation With A Goofy Foreign Policy Needs A Very Serious Policy Of Defense.

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

Like Rick In Casablanca: "we'll Always Have Paris." When What We'll Always Have Is, Like, Brooklyn And Arguments About [lev] Trotsky.

Well The Planet I've Got A Chance To Visit Is Earth, And Earth's Principal Features Are Chaos And War. I Think I'd Be A Fool To Spend Years Here And Never Have A Look.

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.

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.

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

Italy Is Not Technically Part Of The Third World, But No One Has Told The Italians.

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

Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty.

When A Government Controls Both The Economic Power Of Individuals And The Coercive Power Of The State ... This Violates A Fundamental Rule Of Happy Living: Never Let The People With All The Money And The People With All The Guns Be The Same People.

When A Couple Decides To Divorce, They Should Inform Both Sets Of Parents Before Having A Party And Telling All Their Friends. This Is Not Only Courteous But Practical. Parents May Be Very Willing To Pitch In With Comments, Criticism, And Malicious Gossip Of Their Own To Help The Divorce Along.

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.

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.

In Our Brief National History We Have Shot Four Of Our Presidents, Worried Five Of Them To Death, Impeached One And Hounded Another Out Of Office. And When All Else Fails, We Hold An Election And Assassinate Their Character.

Fortunately, I'm Married To Someone Who's A Pretty Excellent Parent!

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.

The Arab Peoples Possess An Ancient And Highly Developed Civilization That Is In Many Ways More Sophisticated Than Our Own. For Instance, They Invented Algebra. And This Is Why We Have To Go To War With Saddam Hussein This Minute And Bomb The Shish Kebab Out Of Him Before He Invents Trig And Chemistry And The Whole Of America Flunks High School.

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

When A Thing Defies Physical Law, There's Usually Politics Involved.

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.

Golf Combines Two Favorite American Pastimes: Taking Long Walks And Hitting Things With A Stick.

[wave Of Bestselling Conservative Commentators] It's Kind Of Like Reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, Or Any Other Advice Or How-to Book. All They Do Is Reassure People Of Their Basic Opinions, And Then They Can Continue To Act Like They've Always Acted. I'd Say It's Time To Move On To Something Else, But I Don't Know What It Would Be.

There Are Just Two Rules Of Governance In A Free Society: Mind Your Own Business. Keep Your Hands To Yourself.

Mind Your Own Business

I Like To Think Of My Behavior In The Sixties As A 'learning Experience.' Then Again, I Like To Think Of Anything Stupid I've Done As A 'learning Experience.' It Makes Me Feel Less Stupid.

There Is One Thing Women Can Never Take Away From Men. We Die Sooner.

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.

Mike Kelly [from The Atlantic] Called Me Up And Said He Could Pay Me Less Money.

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.

The Democrats Planned To Fiddle While Rome Burned. The Republicans Were Going To Burn Rome, Then Fiddle.

Bob Wallace Was My Editor At Rolling Stone When I First Started Writing There, And He's A Wonderful Editor. I Was In The Philippines During The Marcos Overthrow, And I Was Up On What Was Called Smokey Mountain. I Think It's Gone Now, But It Was A Garbage Dump With A Bunch Of People Living On It. I Was Talking To Bob On The Phone, And I Told Him, "i'm A Humorist. I Can't Write About This." And Bob Told Me To Let My Style Be Dictated By The Subject, To Take What I Saw And Write About It In The Tone That It Requires.

If I Bring Anything To The Table, It's The Fact That Not Everybody Realizes They're Funny. So I Just Point A Finger.

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.

So What If I Don't Agree With The Democrats? What's To Disagree With? They Believe Everything. And What They Don't Believe, The Republicans Do. Neither Of Them Stands For Anything They Believe In, Anyway.

The People I See On Bicycles Look Like Organic-gardening Zealots Who Advocate Federal Regulation Of Bedtime And Want American Foreign Policy To Be Dictated By Unicef. These People Should Be Confined.

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now.

Microeconomics Is About Money You Don't Have, And Macroeconomics Is About Money The Government Is Out Of.

Even Very Young Children Need To Be Informed About Dying. Explain The Concept Of Death Very Carefully To Your Child. This Will Make Threatening Him With It Much More Effective.

We're Told Cars Are Wasteful. Wasteful Of What? Oil Did A Lot Of Good Sitting In The Ground For Millions Of Years. We're Told Cars Should Be Replaced With Mass Transportation. But It's Hard To Reach The Drive-through Window At Mcdonald's From A Speeding Train. And 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?

Nobody Likes Insurance Companies, Especially Health Insurance Companies.

Insurance Companies

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

I Live In New Hampshire. We're In Favor Of Global Warming. Eleven Hundred More Feet Of Sea-level Rises? I've Got Beachfront Property. You Tell Us Up There, "by The End Of The Century, New York City Could Be Underwater," And We Say, "your Point Is?"

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

There's One More Terrifying Fact About Old People: I'm Going To Be One Soon.

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.

.......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.

Walt Is Dead. And, After A Couple Of Hours At Epcot, You'll Wish You Were, Too.

Cockfighting Has Always Been My Idea Of A Great Sport -- Two Armed Entrées Battling To See Who'll Be Dinner.

Self-interest Leads To Honing Your Skills, The Better To Trade With.

My Wife And I Both Come From Irish Families. There Are Two Kinds Of Irish Families: The Hitting Kind And The Kidding Kind. If You're Fortunate - And Both Of Us Are - You Come From The Kidding Kind Of Irish Family.

Sometimes You Need A B-2 Bomber And Sometimes You Need Your Mother.

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.

The Idea Of Capitalism Is Not Just Success But Also The Failure That Allows Success To Happen.

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.

If We're Going To Improve The Environment, The First Thing We Should Do Is Duck The Government. The Second Thing We Should Do Is Quit Being Moral. Screw The Rights Of Nature. Nature Will Have Rights As Soon As It Get Duties. The Minute We See Birds, Trees, Bugs, And Squirrels Picking Up Litter, Giving Money To Charity, And Keeping An Eye On Our Kids At The Park, We'll Let Them Vote.

Never Do Anything To A Clitoris With Your Teeth That You Wouldn't Do To An Expensive Waterproof Wristwatch.

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

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.

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

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

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

Mysterious Things

Globalization Is Simply Opening The Free Marketplace To Encompass The Entire World.

For Toddlers I Suggest Leaving Their Mittens On Year-round, Indoors And Out. That Way They Can't Get Into Aspirin Bottles, Liquor Cabinets, Or Boxes Of Kitchen Matches.

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.

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.

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

When I Became A Man, I Put Away Childish Things And Got More Elaborate And Expensive Childish Things From France And Japan.

There's Such A Self-conscious Balance That Goes Into Television. Also, These Are Not People That Think Things Through.

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

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

Everybody Knows How To Raise Children, Except The People Who Have Them.

The Dominant Type Of Humor In The '60s Was Essentially Defensive And Self-deprecating, Using Humor As A Shield.

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

In Japan People Drive On The Left. In China People Drive On The Right. In Vietnam It Doesn't Matter.

Whatever It Is That The Government Does, Sensible Americans Would Prefer That The Government Does It To Somebody Else. This Is The Idea Behind Foreign Policy.

West Germans Are Tall, Pink, Pert And Orthodontically Corrected, With Hands, Teeth And Hair As Clean As Their Clothes And Clothes As Sharp As Their Looks. Except For The Fact That They All Speak English Pretty Well, They're Indistinguishable From Americans.

They Don't Like Anyone Who Isn't Korean, And They Don't Like Each Other All That Much, Either. They're Hardheaded, Hard-drinking, Tough Little Bastards, 'the Irish Of Asia'.

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.

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.

Not Being A Liberal, I Have Very Little Grasp Of Things That I Know Nothing About.

Everything That's Fun In Life Is Dangerous. And Everything That Isn't Fun Is Dangerous Too. It's Impossible To Be Alive And Safe.

How A Peaceful, Uncrowded Place With Ample Wherewithal Stays Poor Is Hard To Explain. How A Conflict-ridden, Grossly Over-populated Place With No Resources Whatsoever Gets Rich Is Simple. The British Colonial Government Turned Hong Kong Into An Economic Miracle By Doing Nothing.

If I Do, I Say So. That's The Only Way Out Of That. If There Are Three Words That Need To Be Used More In American Journalism, Commentary, Politics, Personal Life... It's The Magic Words "i Don't Know." I Mean, There Are Certain Basic Principles, Like The Dignity Of The Individual And The Individual's Responsibility, And Certain Basic Economic Principles, Like How When Something Costs Less, More Of It Will Be Consumed... There Are Certain Things That I Feel Pretty Confident About.

I Like To Take Things That Are Boring-but-important And Try To Make Them Interesting. That Was Definitely What I Was After With Eat The Rich.

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

The Very Existence Of The Bicycle Is An Offense To Reason And Wisdom.

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

Remember, Your Body Needs 6 To 8 Glasses Of Fluid Daily. Straight Up Or On The Rocks.

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

I Was Never In The Office [of Rolling Stone]. It Was Very Different From Lampoon, Where We Spent A Lot Of Time Together Socially, Which Is To Say "drunk."

In England, All The English Car Companies Were Beginning To Circle The Drain In A Series Of Well-deserved Failures And Bankruptcies, Earned By Making Lousy Products With Very Poor Production At High Prices. So, The Government, Back In The '70s, Nationalized All The British Car Companies. The Result Was British Leyland, A Name That Perhaps Doesn't Resonate Much With You.

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

I Was Managing Editor For A While [in National Lampoon ], And It Does Cause Business Problems When Your Circulation Goes Up.

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.

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.

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.

No Humorist Is Under Any Obligation To Provide Answers And Probably If You Were To Delve Into The Literary History Of Humour It's Probably All About Not Providing Answers Because The Humorist Essentially Says: This Is The Way Things Are.

The Proper Behavior All Through The Holiday Season Is To Be Drunk. This Drunkenness Culminates On New Year's Eve, When You Get So Drunk You Kiss The Person You're Married To.

Haitians Weren't Screwed-up, But Everything Political, Intellectual, And Material Around Them Is.

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

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.

Money Is Preferable To Politics. It Is The Difference Between Being Free To Be Anybody You Want And To Vote For Anybody You Want. And Money Is More Effective Than Politics Both In Solving Problems And In Providing Individual Independence. To Rid Ourselves Of All The Trouble In The World, We Need To Make Money. And To Make Money, We Need To Be Free.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look. It Works In Reverse, Too. When I See A Kid With Three Or Four Rings In His Nose, I Know There Is Absolutely Nothing Extraordinary About That Person.

Australia Is Not Very Exclusive. On The Visa Application They Still Ask If You've Been Convicted Of A Felony - Although They Are Willing To Give You A Visa Even If You Haven't Been.

A Firm, Hearty Handshake Gives A Good First Impression, And You'll Never Be Forgiven If You Don't Live Up To It.

First Impression

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I Like Making Things. I Have A Wood Shop At Home. I Am A Terrible Carpenter But I Love Doing It.

El Salvador Has The Scenery Of Northern California And The Climate Of Southern California Plus - And This Was A Relief - No Californians.

Collectivism Doesn't Work Because It's Based On A Faulty Economic Premise. There Is No Such Thing As A Person's "fair Share" Of Wealth. The Gross National Product Is Not A Pizza That Must Be Carefully Divided Because If I Get Too Many Slices, You Have To Eat The Box. The Economy Is Expandable And, In Any Practical Sense, Limitless.

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.

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.

It Is Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Pet. People Like Pets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do. Cats Are Irresponsible And Recognize No Authority, Yet Are Completely Dependent On Others For Their Material Needs. Cats Cannot Be Made To Do Anything Useful. Cats Are Mean For The Fun Of It. In Fact, Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As People That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

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.

Dates Used To Be Made Days Or Even Weeks In Advance. Now Dates Tend To Be Made The Day After. That Is, You Get A Phone Call From Someone Who Says, "if Anyone Asks, I Was Out To Dinner With You Last Night, Okay?"

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.

There's A Very Good Reason That Governments Aren't Supposed To Compete With Private-enterprise Companies. Governments Have Monopolies On Certain Things, Like Eminent Domain And Deadly Force.

The Forces Of Safety Are Afoot In The Land. I, For One, Believe It Is A Conspiracy - A Conspiracy Of Safety Nazis Shouting "sieg Health" And Seeking To Trammel Freedom, Liberty, And Large Noisy Parties. The Safety Nazis Advocate Gun Control, Vigorous Exercise, And Health Foods. The Result Can Only Be A Disarmed, Exhausted, And Half-starved Population Ready To Acquiesce To Dictatorship Of Some Kind.

Then There's Politics. Just Imagine Politics With Its Dumbbell Element Subtracted. There Would Be No Republican Candidates. There Would Be No Democratic Voters. The Whole System Would Collapse.

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."

Politics Should Be Limited In Scope To Ware, Protection Of Property, And The Occasional Precautionary Beheading Of A Member Of The Ruling Class.

The Sport Of Skiing Consists Of Wearing Three Thousand Dollars Worth Of Clothes And Equipment And Driving Two Hundred Miles In The Snow In Order To Stand Around At A Bar And Get Drunk.

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

Cleanliness Becomes More Important When Godliness Is Unlikely.

I Had Really Not Been Out Of The United States Much, Except For Mexico. I Thought, "jesus Christ, This [russia] Is Like A Whole New World." Instead Of Writing Michael Jackson One-glove Jokes, All I Had To Do Was Go To These Weird Places And Keep My Eyes And Ears Open.

Intelligence Collection Has Been Given An Additional Bureaucracy To Correct The Problems Created By Too Much Bureaucracy In Intelligence Collection.

The Road To Serfdom Was Written During Wwii, And Basically It's An Anti-nazi, Anti-communist Thing, But Also It's An Anti-conservative And Anti-labor-party Thing Aimed At The British. He Was An Austrian, Writing In Britain. And I Feel Like Now, I Guess, Everybody Pays Lip Service To Libertarian - And, Indeed, Many Conservative - Ideas, And Yet They Keep Moving Forward With An Increasingly Bureaucratic State. It Shows Itself In All Sorts Of Little Ways.

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

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

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.

Making Fun Of Born-again Christians Is Like Hunting Dairy Cows With A High Powered Rifle And Scope.

How Did An Allegedly Free People Spawn A Vast, Rampant Cuttlefish Of Dominion With Its Tentacles In Every Orifice Of The Body Politic?

Good Manners Are A Combination Of Intelligence, Education, Taste And Style Mixed Together So That You Don't Need Any Of Those Things.

The Day Was Warm And Clear. Kids Were Playing Soccer In The Parking Lots And Women Were Sunning Their Babies And Having Their Tea All Over The Lawns. The Scene Was Entirely Too Cheery For Journalism.

I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

The Founding Fathers, In Their Wisdom, Devised A Method By Which Our Republic Can Take One Hundred Of Its Most Prominent Numbskulls And Keep Them Out Of The Private Sector Where They Might Do Actual Harm.

I Wonder If It Changes The Nature Of A Society For Beauty To Be So Common. Maybe In Vietnam "she Has A Wonderful Personality" Really Means Something. But I Couldnt Figure Out A Polite Way To Ask.

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.

Seriously. It Was Running Out At Rolling Stone. First Of All, They Didn't Feel The Need For A Dissident Conservative Voice In A World Where Certain Conservative Aspects Had Become Intellectually Dominant. I Would Actually Argue Against That, But On The Surface Of It, In The [bill] Clinton Years The Market Economy Triumphed, Certain Libertarian Ideas Became Ordinary, And Certain Early-20th-century Ideas About Centralization Of Government And Economic Planning And Socialism With A Small "s" Had Obviously Gone Out The Window. The Cold War Was Over, Blah Blah Blah.

You Can't Get Good Chinese Takeout In China And Cuban Cigars Are Rationed In Cuba. That's All You Need To Know About Communism.

Christmas Begins About The First Of December With An Office Party And Ends When You Finally Realize What You Spent, Around April Fifteenth Of The Next Year.

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.

Trending Author

Jean Baudrillard

Princess Margaret

Mikhail Kalashnikov

Karl Liebknecht

Category