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044cb32
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You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; 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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P.J. O'Rourke |
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70d34bf
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Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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fdf0fb3
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The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That's all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can't pass a law making ourselves weigh 165.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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460b3d3
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Anybody who's having fun at an Elk Lodge meeting has the fun thing figured out.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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a757a65
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Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
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government
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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bc78487
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solipsism of adolescence with its wild enthusiasms,
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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471e309
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Capitalism, so called, is when free people accumulate capital of their own free will for use on freely determined projects. The fact of the matter is that most of these projects flop. Donald Trump, for example. Every property he touches seems to go to hell. "Fat Cat" would be the wrong epithet for Trump. If someone other than paroled former Enron accountants were keeping his books, he'd probably be shown to have a net worth less than that o..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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1d6b1c0
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I endorse Hillary Clinton for president. She is the second-worst thing that could happen to America. Dorothy and Toto's house fell on Hillary. I endorse her. Munchkins endorse her. Donald Trump is a flying monkey. Except that what the flying monkeys have to say--"oreoreoreo"--makes more sense than Trump's pronouncements."
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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472aae4
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I was talking to syndicated newspaper columnist and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer just after Clinton's final e-mail scandal broke. I said, "The secretary of state uses her personal e-mail to send top-secret State Department documents to her weird personal assistant who is married to Anthony Weiner who is so crazy that he's destroyed his political career twice by sending lewd Tweets and Instagram photos to random women and who is ..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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95d3378
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And if there's a libertarian moment in the future it won't be while moderates are in charge. Because there are three basic tenets to libertarianism: Liberty of the individual Dignity of the individual Responsibility of the individual And everybody hates at least one of them. This year everybody hated all of them. Liberty
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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fb6bc41
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Cherubim perhaps, take practice shots with the Big Bang. I would have preferred to write a book about the course of actions taken during this election campaign and how that course of actions led to certain results. But there was no discernable course. The course might as well have been at Trump University. And the results might as well have been determined by a pair of twelve-sided dice used by stoned Bernie Sanders supporters in a game of ..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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421f735
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Mao asks Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, "How do you get a cat to bite a hot pepper?" Zhou says, "You hold him down, pry his jaws open, and shove the pepper into his mouth." Mao says, "No, that's force. We want the cat to bite the pepper of his own free will." Deng says, "You take the pepper, wrap it in a delicious piece of fish, and, before he knows it, the cat has bitten the pepper." Mao says, "No, that's trickery. We want the cat to know h..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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ad98a3a
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According to the magazine there are currently 1,810 billionaires. Their combined net worth is $6.5 trillion. The proposed 2017 U.S. federal budget is $4.2 trillion. All the billionaires on earth put together could--if Washington is careful not to have any budget overruns--keep America going for eighteen months.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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59a74cc
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If we take all the money away from every billionaire and divide that $6.5 trillion by the world's population of 7.125 billion, we each get a check for $912.28. I just searched auto.com. You can get a 1998 Chevy Lumina with 180,000 miles for $999 in beige (although the door color does not seem to match the fender). But everybody knows that all the money in the world
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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b355976
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The world's richest man pulled Microsoft out of his butt. All Bill Gates exploited was a line of 0s and 1s as long as a piece of string. Now Microsoft employs 118,000 people. Number six on the rich list, Mark Zuckerberg, created Facebook out of less than that. All Mark had was a dumb idea that all the stupid people want to tell every stupid thing about their lives to all the other stupid people. Current net worth of the person with that dum..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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1c90d79
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Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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d3c8891
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President Clinton commenced the blathering with orotund
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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2b0c65c
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There is no virtue in compulsory government charity. And no virtue in advocating it. 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 try to do good with other people's money. Who isn't? 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."
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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a44e1f8
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The free market is the greatest repository of our freedoms. Economic freedom is the freedom we exercise most often and to the greatest extent.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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2143310
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The best way to have a good political system is to avoid politics. But political disengagement deprives us of opportunities for bitching at politicians and pushing them around. This is occasionally useful and always a pleasure. In our democracy we don't get in trouble by trying to make politicians mad. We get in trouble by trying to make them like us. Our political system goes to hell when we want it to give us things.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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9c9b655
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If there's something we want, politics shouldn't be our first resort. Politics is all taking, no making. Whatever politics provides for us will be obtained from other people. Those people won't love us.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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b96abed
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And, Donald, the end of your necktie belongs up around your belt buckle, not between your knees and your nuts. Trump's haircut makes Kim Jong Un laugh.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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528863a
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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."
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politics
humor
government
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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f5e1e96
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being specific is the essence of lawmaking and the whole difference between having a Congress and having a mom.
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lawmaking
nanny-state
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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41d0ccd
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And crazy old people will be to blame for whichever spawn of Satan slithers its way into the Oval Office.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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50b0268
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Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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30ccda3
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These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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ad29c30
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The American Rebellion," about our founding fathers. Not till their foes were driven forth By England o'er the main-- Not till the Frenchman from the North Had gone with shattered Spain; Not till the clean-swept oceans showed No hostile flag unrolled, Did they remember that they owed To Freedom--and were bold!"
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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cfd5016
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You know the Fun-Suckers. You may be married to one. The Fun-Suckers go around saying how unsafe this fun thing is and how unhealthy that fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring, insensitive, divisive, contagious, and fattening every other thing that's fun is. The Fun-Suckers are a bit too careful, a bit too concerned, a bit too scrupulous.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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a3ed7ee
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Bahala na," as the Filipinos say, which is an untranslatable phrase containing the same germ of philosophy as the Arabic "inshalla" or the Spanish "manana" or the English "you must have me mixed up with somebody who gives a shit"."
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languages
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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8f0a2c6
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If Melania had come out and said, "According to my husband, I should be very pretty to get what I want in life," that would have been news. Well, not news exactly, but candid enough to be newsworthy."
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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3e0fa98
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It is astonishing that Donald Trump managed to eke out a victory over Donald Trump at the polls. It is amazing how narrow the margin was by which Hillary Clinton defeated Hillary Clinton.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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4215cba
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A road trip with Richard Nixon would seem like gum surgery on wheels. But Hunter S. Thompson actually went on a road trip with Nixon--or, anyway, on a car ride--in New Hampshire during the 1968 presidential campaign. Hunter described it in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72: There were only two of us in the back: just me and Richard Nixon, and we were talking football in a serious way. . . . It was a very weird trip; probably one o..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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5f0f7f9
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Fretting makes us important. Say you're an adult male and you're skipping down the street whistling "Last Train to Clarksville." People will call you a fool. But lean over to the person next to you on a subway and say, "How can you smile when innocents are dying in Tibet?" You'll acquire a reputation for great seriousness and also more room to sit down. ...Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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a7069ab
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There isn't, incidentally, any such thing as an ancient Chinese curse saying, "May you live in interesting times." The phrase seems to be a piece of invented Orientalist folklore coined in the 1930s by First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Austen Chamberlain, half-brother of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who went off to Munich to appease Hitler. And let's not be silly and forget that the Chamberlain brothers lived in much more accursedly int..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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5cb209b
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Clinton was an ancient monument of liberalism. If Washington were Pharaonic Egypt--and sometimes it is--Hillary would be the Sphinx. With the exception that she never shuts up. And she's hardly immobile. For the past quarter of a century she's been everywhere we looked. So there was the monumental Hillary out in the American electoral desert surrounded by a Republican horde of . . . of whatever small, feckless, puny fauna Egypt has. I've Go..
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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7434bde
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We common folk may not be able to match Trump's piggy bank, but even the most high-minded and charitable among us can match his piggishness.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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8eadc19
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The Hollywooden heads would buy a car for almost any purpose except a worthy one. Many automobiles were purchased to attract members of LA's eight or ten opposite sexes. Since the denizens of America's Gomorrah, were incapable of verbalizing any idea more complex than "box office gross," the expensive car served as a substitute for witty come-on and seductive chat."
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sex
humor
hollywood
los-angeles
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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8f87126
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PJ's suggested chant, for pointless protest marches: "Five, four, three, two. We don't have a doggone clue!"
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humor
pointless
protest
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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b8cef88
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Trump's grandfather, a German immigrant, changed the family name from Drumpf to Trump.
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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37f4bb3
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For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven: and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble. --Malachi 4:1
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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fc62d1b
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Indeed, it costs more. CNN reports that Hillary and Bill collected $153 million in speaking fees between 2001 and 2015. Ken Starr, according to the Government Accounting Office, spent only $6.2 million preparing his case for the impeachment of the adulterous then-president. But
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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c75324d
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Considering what a hot, wed dog smells like, dog stew has a surprisingly savory odor To tell the truth, it tastes pretty good, like oxtail. To be perfectly honest, it's delicious. (Anything about this to my golden retriever, and I'll punch your lights out.)
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funny
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P.J. O'Rourke |
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b9d9b7c
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We're coming to the end of the long, dark modern age. Slaughters of unnumbered human beings continue, but not among people who knew Spencer Tracy. Warfare persists, but the scale of battle is returning to something that the author of the Illiad would recognize. Maybe someday each combat casualty will rate the kind of mourning that Achilles did for Patroclus, except on television, and the saga of every Jessica Lynch will be an Odyssey or, an..
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P.J. O'Rourke |