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The Real Slums Are Another Matter. The Bad Parts Of Tondo Are As Bad As Any Place I've Seen, Ancient, Filthy Houses Swarmed With The Poor And Stinking Of Sewage And Trash. But There Are Worse Parts - Squatter Areas Where People Live Under Cardboard, In Shipping Crates, Behind Tacked-up Newspapers. Dad Would March You Straight To The Basement With A Hairbrush In His Hand If He Caught You Keeping Your Hamster Cage Like This.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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The Real Slums Are

P. J. O'Rourke

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The Real Slums Are Another Matter. The Bad Parts Of Tondo Are As Bad As Any Place I've Seen, Ancient, Filthy Houses Swarmed With The Poor And Stinking Of Sewage And Trash. But There Are Worse Parts - Squatter Areas Where People Live Under Cardboard, In Shipping Crates, Behind Tacked-up Newspapers. Dad Would March You Straight To The Basement With A Hairbrush In His Hand If He Caught You Keeping Your Hamster Cage Like This.

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

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

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

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

One Of The Annoying Things About Believing In Free Will And Individual Responsibility Is The Difficulty Of Finding Somebody To Blame Your Problems On. And When You Do Find Somebody, It's Remarkable How Often His Picture Turns Up On Your Driver's License.

Just As Some Things Are Too Strange For Fiction, Others Are Too True For Journalism.

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

I Bought My First House Because Of Animal House.

[t]he Clinton Administration Launched An Attack On People In Texas Because Those People Were Religious Nuts With Guns. Hell, This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns. Who Does Bill Clinton Think Stepped Ashore On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers? Or Maybe The People In Texas Were Attacked Because Of Child Abuse. But, If Child Abuse Was The Issue, Why Didn't Janet Reno Tear-gas Woody Allen?

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

A Very Quiet And Tasteful Way To Be Famous Is To Have A Famous Relative. Then You Can Not Only Be Nothing, You Can Do Nothing Too.

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

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

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.

In Theory, Taxes Should Be Like Shopping. What I Buy Is Government Services. What I Pay Are My Taxes.

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

War Will Exist As Long As There's A Food Chain.

It Was To Be A Short Visit For The G-shevs. More Than Four Days In The U.s. And Raisa's Visa Card Bill Would Shatter The Fragile Soviet Economy.

If You're Doing A Column, You Kind Of Have To. Like In The Back Of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly Has To Find Something To Be Mad About. It's Not Really The Way I Approach Things.

Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Wants To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

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

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.

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

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.

Pollution Is A Problem, And There's The Whole Problem Of The Spoiling Of The Commons, But We've Addressed The Pollution Problem On A Variety Of Different Levels In A Variety Of Ways, And It's Worked Pretty Well.

Satire Doesn't Effect Change.

We'll Run This Planet As We Please, And If You Don't Like It, Go Back Where We Came From.

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

World Government

In 1970 Or '71, Early In The Magazine, Michael O'donoghue Did Maybe Eight Pages Of A 1958 Yearbook, From Ezra Taft Benson High School. But By The Time The [book-length] High-school Yearbook Came Around, He Didn't Want To Be Involved.

Neither Conservatives Nor Humorists Believe Man Is Good. But Left-wingers Do.

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.

I Am A Journalist And, Under The Modern Journalist's Code Of Olympian Objectivity (and Total Purity Of Motive), I Am Absolved Of Responsibility. We Journalists Don't Have To Step On Roaches. All We Have To Do Is Turn On The Kitchen Light And Watch The Critters Scurry.

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 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.

There Are Plenty Of Problems In The World, And Doubtless Climate Change - Or Whatever The Currently Voguish Phrase For It All Is - Certainly Is One Of Them. But It's Low On My List.

Worshiping The Earth Is More Fun Than Going To Church. It's Also Closer.

Going To Church

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

God Has No Role To Play In Politics Except To Make Sure Politicians Go Where They Belong. To Hell.

I Don't Even Know Which End Of A Computer One Is Supposed To Gaze Into. I've Never Used A Computer.

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

[friedrich] Hayek Is Not Protesting That Things Like Child Labor And Stuff Are Good. He's Just Trying To Show That When Government Undertakes To Make Everything Good For Everybody, This Is What Happens. And He Addresses It To Socialists Of All Parties.

There Are Artists With Palettes And Easels Selling The Kind Of Modern Art That Soviet Art Critics Used To Critique With Bulldozers. Judging By The Paintings I Saw, The Soviets Were Right The First Time.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Mind Your Own Business

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Problem Isn't A Congress That Won't Cut Spending Or A President Who Won't Raise Taxes. The Problem Is An American Public With A Bottomless Sense Of Entitlement To Federal Money.

Fish Is The Only Food That Is Considered Spoiled Once It Smells Like What It Is.

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

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.

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

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

Now Majority Rule Is A Precious, Sacred Thing Worth Dying For. But Like Other Precious, Sacred Things .... It's Not Only Worth Dying For; It Can Make You Wish You Were Dead. Imagine If All Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza.

If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal.

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.

The Republican Convention, An Event With The Intellectual Content Of A Guns'n'roses Lyric Attended By Every Ofay Insurance Brokerin America Who Owns A Pair Of White Shoes.

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.

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.

Violence Is Interesting. This Is A Great Obstacle To World Peace And Also To More Thoughtful Television Programming.

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

Mysterious Things

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.

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.

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.

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

The Political Process Consists Entirely Of Politicians Talking Out Of Their Butts.

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

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.

The Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By The 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.

Feminism Is The Result Of A Few Ignorant And Literal-minded Women Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag About Which Is The Superior Sex. Once Women Made It Public That They Could Do Things Better Than Men, They Were, Of Course, Forced To Do Them.

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

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

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.

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

Any Trade That Is Voluntarily Made Is Mutually Beneficial, By Definition, And, Indeed, Is Balanced, By Definition.

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.

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 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.

Germans Respond Well To Lies. At Least, They Always Have Historically.

Fishing... Is A Sport Invented By Insects And You Are The Bait.

There's Something About Marxism That Brings Out Warts; The Only Kind Of Growth This Economic System Encourages.

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.

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.

...let's Talk About Soccer Scores. There Are A Few Things That People All Around The World Need To Admit To Themselves. Trade Restraints Slow Economic Growth, The Euro Is Not A Reserve Currency And Scoreless Sports Ties Are Boring.

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

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

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 Had Grown Up As A Feature Writer, And Basically My Career Had Been In The National Lampoon And As A Magazine Editor, And I'd Never Been A Reporter.

There Is No Virtue In Compulsory Government Charity, And There Is No Virtue In Advocating It. A Politician Who Portrays Himself As "caring" And "sensitive" Because He Wants To Expand The Government's Charitable Programs Is Merely Saying That He's Willing To Try To Do Good With Other People's Money. Well, Who Isn't? And A Voter Who Takes Pride In Supporting Such Programs Is Telling Us That He'll Do Good With His Own Money - If A Gun Is Held To His Head.

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

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.

Hunter S. Thompson And I Are Old Friends, But What We Do Is So Different. There Are Surface Similarities That Really Have To Do With Us Being Frustrated Poets.

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.

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

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.

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!"

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.

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

Armenians And Azerbaijanis In Stepanakert, Capital Of The Nagorno-karabakh Autonomous Region, Rioted Over Much Needed Spelling Reform In The Soviet Union.

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.

First And Foremost: Feed People.

Ever Read Any [friedrich] Hayek? He's Great. The Road To Serfdom Is Like... I'm Not A Big Political-science Reader, But I Actually Dog-eared My Copy. I Ended Up Going Back Through It And Writing A Précis, I Was So Impressed By This Book. It's All About What Happens When Government Tries To Make Everything Right.

Passover Is My Idea Of A Perfect Holiday. Dear God, When You're Handing Out Plagues Of Darkness, Locusts, Hail, Boils, Flies, Lice, Frogs, And Cattle Murrain, And Turning The Nile To Blood, And Smiting Firstborn, Give Me A Pass, And Tell Me When It's Over.

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

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

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

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.

Politics Doesn't Work. Look At The Parts Of America Where Government Has Had The Most Power, Where Government Has Spent The Most Money. Look At The Housing Projects We've Got The Poor People In.

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

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

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

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.

Mankind Has Invested More Than Four Million Years Of Evolution In The Attempt To Avoid Physical Exertion. Now A Group Of Backward-thinking Atavists Mounted On Foot-powered Pairs Of Hula-hoops Would Have Us Pumping Our Legs, Gritting Our Teeth, And Searing Our Lungs As Though We Were Being Chased Across The Pleistocene Savanna By Saber-toothed Tigers. Think Of The Hopes, The Dreams, The Effort, The Brilliance, The Pure Force Of Will That, Over The Eons, Has Gone Into The Creation Of The Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Bicycle Riders Would Have Us Throw All This On The Ash Heap Of History.

The Australian Language Is Easier To Learn Than Boat Talk. It Has A Vocabulary Of About Six Words.

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.

Government Subsidies Can Be Critically Analyzed According To A Simple Principle: You Are Smarter Than The Government, So When The Government Pays You To Do Something You Wouldn't Do On Your Own, It Is Almost Always Paying You To Do Something Stupid.

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

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

You Start Out With Mad Magazine, And You Go Right Through The Sort Of Black Humor Of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner... If You Put Lenny Together With Mad Magazine And Run It Through The Brain Of A College Student, You Get National Lampoon.

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.

Men Generally Pay For All Expenses On A Date ... Either Sex, However, May Bring A Little Gift, Its Value To Be Determined By The Bizarrness Of The Sexual Request To Be Made Later That Evening.

Liberals Have A Quaint And Touching Faith That Truth Is On Their Side And An Even Quainter Faith That Journalists Are On The Side Of Truth.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

B Students Work For C Students - A Students Teach.

You Read [bill ] Maher's Book, And He Didn't Take Econ 101. All His Arguments About Gasoline, It's Not That They're Right Or Wrong - They're Just Not Informed.

There's No Such Thing As A Trade Deficit.

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.

Coffee And Cigarettes Are Much Better If You Want An Instant Breakfast.

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

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.

Fretting About Overpopulation, Is A Perfect Guilt-free - Indeed, Sanctimonious - Way For "progressives" To Be Racists.

Wherever There's Injustice, Oppression, And Suffering, America Will Show Up Six Months Late And Bomb The Country Next To Where It's Happening.

Watching Republicans In Washington Is Like Watching Lemmings, If Lemmings Jumped Into Cesspools Instead Of Off Cliffs. Splash! There Goes Mark Foley!

The Three Branches Of Government: Money, Television, And Bullshit

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'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.

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

I'm 61 Years Old. I'm Not That Fearful Of The Future, Period. I'm Not Going To See That Much Of It.

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

All Change Is Bad. But Sometimes It Has To Be Done.

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

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

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

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.

In Case We Have To Shoot Democrats. It Happened During The Civil War, And It Could Happen Again.

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

[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.

People Have A Right To My Food, A Right To My Housing, And A Right To My Good Job For My Decent Pay.

Gay Marriage Acceptance Is Happening In The Blink Of An Eye.

Actually, There Is No Way Of Making Vomiting Courteous. You Have To Do The Next Best Thing, Which Is To Vomit In Such A Way That The Story You Tell About It Later Will Be Amusing.

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 Do Have To Travel A Lot For Speaking Engagements.

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.

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."

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

[al] Franken Is Left-wing And Funny. He's A Pretty Good Political Humorist.

It Is Important To Remember When Making Jokes About Women, That They Are Not A Minority. They Weren't Captured On Another Continent And Brought Here In Leg-irons (funny Shoes, Yes, But Not Leg-irons) And Hitler Didn't Blame Them For Germany's Loss In Wwi. Therefore, You Can Make Any Kind Of Fun Of Them You Want.

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

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

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.

A U.s. Dollar Is An Iou From The Federal Reserve Bank. It's A Promissory Note That Doesn't Actually Promise Anything. It's Not Backed By Gold Or Silver.

Drugs Have Taught An Entire Generation Of Kids The Metric System

A Lot Of Things Work Better In A Locomotive.

Bill Maher Can Be Pretty Good, Except When He Gets "important." Maher's All Over The Place Politically.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Suspect The Soviets Never Did Want To Use Those Bombs. The Most Stalinist Of Soviet Hard-liners - Stalin, For Example - Must Have Realized A Nuclear War Would Be A Hard Thing To Clean Up After.

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

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.

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.

The Vietnamese Hoa Were Merchants And Manufacturers. They Were Very Successful And Thus, According To The Logic Of Marxism, Responsible For Society's Failures. The Hoa Suffered The Same Fate As The Pizza Parlour In Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing Except At The Hands Of The World's Fourth Largest Army Instead Of A Small, Petulant Movie Director.

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.

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

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.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

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.

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