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Think Of What Big Governments Have Gotten Up To In This Century : Not One, But Two World Wars, The Gulag, The Holocaust, Aerial Bombing Of Civilian Population Centers, The Berlin Wall, Nuclear Explosions, The Post Office. A Wicked Individual Might Want These, But He Wouldn't Have The Cash And Connections To Get Them. A Villainous Corporation Could Afford Them But Has To Market The Products. The Vietnam Draft Would Be A Tough Sell For Even The Most Fiendish Businessmen. "get Shot! Get Killed! Get Diseases From Foreign Women Who Despise You In Their Hearts!"

-P. J. O'Rourke

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Think Of What Big

P. J. O'Rourke

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Think Of What Big Governments Have Gotten Up To In This Century : Not One, But Two World Wars, The Gulag, The Holocaust, Aerial Bombing Of Civilian Population Centers, The Berlin Wall, Nuclear Explosions, The Post Office. A Wicked Individual Might Want These, But He Wouldn't Have The Cash And Connections To Get Them. A Villainous Corporation Could Afford Them But Has To Market The Products. The Vietnam Draft Would Be A Tough Sell For Even The Most Fiendish Businessmen. "get Shot! Get Killed! Get Diseases From Foreign Women Who Despise You In Their Hearts!"

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Gambling Is So Pervasive In Nevada That Maybe The State Should Just Go The Whole Hog. There'd Be Gum Machines That Dispensed Chewing Tobacco If You Lost. You Could Gamble For The Toilet Paper In Public Bathroom Stalls. And Fill Out Keno Cards In An Attempt To Win Cancer Therapy At The Hospital.

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

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

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

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.

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.

After All, What Is Your Host's Purpose In Having A Party? Surely Not For You To Enjoy Yourself; If That Were Their Sole Purpose, They'd Have Simply Sent Champagne And Women Over To Your Place By Taxi.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Humorist Doesn't Really Do That Much Note-taking.

Nothing About Economic Growth In The United States Over The Course Of The Past 40, 50 Years, During Which Time This Has Been Continually Happening, Would Indicate That We Are Being Harmed In An Overall Sense By This.

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

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.

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.

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 Dugout Is Much Superior To A Conventional Manufactured Canoe Because You Can Get Soaking Wet Without Bothering To Capsize It.

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

I'm A Political Conservative.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To Grasp The True Meaning Of Socialism, Imagine A World Where Everything Is Designed By The Post Office, Even The Sleaze.

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.

A Politician Who Commends Himself As 'caring' And 'sensitive' Because He Wants To Expand The Government's Charitable Programs Is Merely Saying That He's Willing To Do Good With Other Peoples' Money.

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

Maybe A Vague President And An Incompetent And Somewhat Corrupt Administration Is What The Nation Needs.

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.

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

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.

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

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

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.

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

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

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

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Nuclear Disarmament

If You Say A Modern Celebrity Is An Adulterer, A Pervert And A Drug Addict, All It Means Is That You've Read His Autobiography.

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Satan Probably Wouldn't Have Talked So Big If God Had Been His Wife.

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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.

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

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Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy, The Whores Are Us.

Democracies Have

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Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

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

Idealism Is Based On Big Ideas. And, As Anybody Who Has Ever Been Asked "what's The Big Idea?" Knows, Most Big Ideas Are Bad Ones.

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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.

Summing It Up..."where's A Good Place For Dinner?" I Asked. "there's The Brasserie Lipp On The Avenue St. Germaine," She Said, "or La Coupole In Montmartre." "not La Coupole," I Said. "i've Been There Before. That's The Place That's Crowded And Noisy And Smells Bad And Everybody's Rude As Hell, Isn't It?" "i Think You Just Described France," She Said.

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Cleanliness Becomes More Important When Godliness Is Unlikely.

B Students Work For C Students - A Students Teach.

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.

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

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

We're Gonna Be In A World Of Hurt If We Don't Get It Fixed, Because There's Going To Be Billions Of People Out There - They're Hungry, They're Mad. One Thing That They Can Get Their Hands On Is Guns.

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

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

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

There Is A Fine Line In The Third World Between Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe And Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe So They Can Throw You In Jail.

Personally, I Believe A Rocking Hammock, A Good Cigar, And A Tall Gin-and-tonic Is The Way To Save The Planet.

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

No Government Proposal More Complicated Than "this Note Is Legal Tender For All Debts, Public And Private" Ever Works.

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!"

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

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

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 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.

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

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

I Am A Great Admirer Of Women.

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

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!

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

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?

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

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.

That Happy Sense Of Purpose People Have When Standing Up For A Principle They Haven't Really Been Knocked Down For Yet.

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

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.

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

We Need A Government, Alas, Because Of The Nature Of Humans.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I'd Like To End The Book A Lot Of Ways. Except I Don't Have Any Answers. Use Your Common Sense. Be Nice. This Is The Best I Can Do. All The Trouble In The World Is Human Trouble. Well, That's Not True. But When Cancer Cells Run Amok And Burst Out Of The Prostate And Take Over The Liver And Lymph Glands And End Up Killing Everything In The Body Including Themselves, They Certainly Are Acting Like Some Humans We Know.

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.

In The Third World, Honk Your Horn Only Under The Following Circumstances: 1. When Anything Blocks The Road. 2. When Anything Doesn't. 3. When Anything Might. 4. At Red Lights. 5. At Green Lights. 6. At All Other Times.

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

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.

One Of The Things That Makes Me A Conservative, Or A Libertarian, Or Whatever The Heck It Is That I Am - A Person Who Doesn't Much Like Big Government - Is That I Do Not Like The Concentration Of The Power.

The Constitution Is An Equally Forthright Piece Of Work And Quite Succinct ... Giving The Complete Operating Instructions For A Nation Of 250 Million People. The Manual For A Toyota Camry, Which Only Seats Five, Is Four Times As Long.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.'

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.

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

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'.

You'll Note That Politicians No Longer Spend Money, They Invest It. Don't Worry About Paying More To The [irs]. You Aren't Being Taxed; You're Taking A Plunge On A Fly-by-night Stock Issue.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

Stay Away From Girls Who Cry A Lot Or Who Look Like They Get Pregnant Easily Or Have Careers.

This Going On And On About How Terrible A Carbon-based Economy Is, These People Are Full Of Crap. They Don't Know What They're Talking About. Their Motives Are Not Necessarily Good Just Because They Say They Are Being Good. It's Peace, Love, And Understanding. To Which I Can Just Say, "shut Up." Human Liberty, Rule Of Law, And Free Markets Fix This Stuff. It Isn't Necessary To Go Around Being The Mia Farrow Of The Ecosphere.

I Buy A Tractor Two Years Ago, And Four-fifths Of The Tractor Manual Is About Not Tipping Over, Not Raising The Bucket High Enough To Hit High-tension Wire... Not Killing Yourself, Basically. And In That Manual, I Found Out - And It Cost Me A Thousand Dollars - That When The Tractor Is New, 10 Hours Into Use Of The Tractor, You Have To Re-torque The Lug Nuts. If You Don't, You Will Oval The Holes. This Is Buried Between The Moron Warnings. I Never Found It. I Take The Tractor In For Its Regular Servicing, And They Say My Wheels Are Gone. How Am I Supposed To Know That? "it's In The Manual."

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

Political Systems Must Love Poverty-they Produce So Much Of It. Poor People Make Easier Targets For A Demagogue. No Mao Or Even Jiang Zemin Is Likely To Arise On The New York Stock Exchange Floor. And Politicians In Democracies Benefit From Destitution, Too. The Us Has Had A Broad Range Of Poverty Programs For 30 Years. Those Programs Have Failed. Millions Of People Are Still Poor. And Those People Vote For Politicians Who Favor Keeping The Poverty Programs In Place. There's A Conspiracy Theory In There Somewhere.

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.

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.

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

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

People Shouldn't Be Treated Like Objects. They Aren't That Valuable.

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

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

A Careful Reading Of 50 Simple Things Leaves You Wondering Whether You're Going To Die From Environmental Disaster Or Intellectual Annoyance. Failing Either, You Can Worry Yourself To Death.

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.

I'm A Member Of The Working Press; You'd Think I'd Know Better Than To Listen To Journalists.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

Satire Doesn't Effect Change.

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 Only Really Good Vegetable Is Tabasco Sauce. Put Tabasco Sauce In Everything. Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin. The Next Best Vegetable Is The Jalapeno Pepper. It Has The Virtue Of Turning Salads Into Practical Jokes.

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

Then There Was Communism's Weak-tea Sister, Socialism. Socialists Maintained That We Shouldn't Take All The Money Away From All The People Since All The People Don't Have Money. We Should Take All The Money Away From Only The People Who Make Money. Then, When We Run Out Of That, We Could Take More Money From The People Who...hey, Wait! Where'd You People Go? What Do You Mean You're "tax Exiles In Monaco?"

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.

Long Conversations With Pals When Neither You Nor They Have Had A Drink Can Be A Test Of Palship.

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.

There's A Lot Of Debate On This Subject - About What Kind Of Car Handles Best. Some Say A A Front-engined Car, Some Say A Rear-engined Car. I Say A Rented Car. Nothing Handles Better Than A Rented Car. You Can Go Faster, Turn Corners Sharper, And Put The Transmission Into Reverse While Going Forward At A Higher Rate Of Speed In A Rented Car Than In Any Other Kind.

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

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

People Will Tell You Anything But What They Do Is Always The Truth.

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.

From National Lampoon, You Go Directly To Saturday Night Live, Because It's A Lot Of The Same People.

Politicians Are Always Interested In People. Not That This Is Always A Virtue. Fleas Are Interested In Dogs.

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

...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.

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

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.

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

Never Be Unfaithful To A Lover, Except With Your Wife.

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.

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

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

The American Political System Is Like Fast Food - Mushy, Insipid, Made Out Of Disgusting Parts Of Things And Everybody Wants Some.

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now. You've Probably Never Woken Up Early On A Winter Morning To The Acid Stink Of Coal Smoke In The Air, Which Was Everywhere When I Was A Little Kid. My Grade School Was Heated With Coal. Not Only Was Coal Used To Generate Electricity, It Was Without Any Scrubbers In The Stacks.

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

You Know Your Children Are Growing Up When They Stop Asking You Where They Came From And Refuse To Tell You Where They're Going.

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.

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.

One Thing Talk Can't Accomplish Is Communication. This Is Because Everybody's Talking Too Much To Pay Attention To What Anyone Is Saying

Politics Are For Foreigners With Their Endless Wrongs And Paltry Rights. Politics Are A Lousy Way To Get Things Done. Politics Are, Like God's Infinite Mercy, A Last Resort.

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