FROM THE ARCHIVES: PJ O'Rourke's 1991 Interview with Hot Press' Liam Fay

Can a man be very funny and a committed Republican at the same time?

LIAM FAY puts these and other tricky questions to American humourist, P.J. O’ROURKE.

“SINEAD O’CONNOR, yikes! I love the idea of getting moral and intellectual guidance from pop stars. We are facing a world of really serious problems and really serious moral, political, philosophical decisions need to be made. And you know, we could ask some scientists what to do. Or we could ask scholars, people who've delved into history. We could even go talk to our religious leaders. But no, there’s this bald girl in Ireland, she knows the answers (laughs). Why anybody listens to that woman, about anything, is beyond me...

“And farmers, I hate those guys too. Like most Americans, my only first hand experience of agriculture is pretty much limited to a couple of experiments in trying to cultivate marijuana plants under a glow-light in the closet of my campus apartment. But I know enough to realise that farmers are the single greatest extortionists of State money. The definition of a farmer is in fact, that he’s the guy who digs the hole in the ground into which we pour our tax dollars (laughs)...

“The big thing in America right now is for politicians to blather on about family-values. I find this intriguing because whoever started this family-values stuff obviously never met my family (laughs). My family had values like secret daytime drinking, beating the step-kids and wrecking the car and saying my sister did it."

Hot Press Volume 15 Number 19 - when the PJ O'Rourke interview was originally published in Hot Press.

It's 5pm in the Shelbourne bar and P.J. O ’Rourke is being everything I'd hoped he would be: voluble, acerbic, smart-arsed and very, very funny. He's every inch the droll lounge lizard of his own creation, reclining in a comfy armchair, drink in hand, with a cigarillo dangling from one side of his mouth and an endless string of quips dangling from the other.

All this affability and wit is only an illusion however, and one that is quickly shattered. The truth is that P.J. O'Rourke is a man with a problem. Call him what you will: he's a lush,a junkie, a dipso and his habit is a vile, lethal and peculiarly American brew called “Republicanism.” Even a slight whiff of the stuff will have his hands shaking and his pupils dilating and he'll start blabbering on about “the beauty of the free market,” “the necessity of defence spending” or how "there really is no such thing as poverty in the U.S.”

That’s the odd thing about “Republicanism,” it doesn't harm your liver but it really screws up other vital organs, like your brain.

P.J. O’Rourke is in Ireland on a promotional puff for his latest book, “Parliament Of Whores" which is subtitled “A Lone Humorist Attempts To Explain The Entire U.S. Government.” It's vintage O'Rourke, wadded with finely turned jokes and scalpel-sharp satires. Few people in contemporary journalism can pull a pen from its scabbard with such deftness and then hit so many targets with so few words.

Unfortunately, too much of the tome is given over to P.J.’s Mr. Hyde, that arrogant bore drunk on “Republicanism” who stumbles out to bully and tease the softest targets in sight. His central premise is that people like him can look after themselves so why can’t everybody else do the same and, even if they can't, how dare they expect the government to help. Drug addicts, the deprived, the elderly, the homeless, social welfare recipients, all of these are red rags to his bull.

If any of this were funny there might possibly be some excuse, but it isn’t even remotely humorous. It’s just stupid and very tedious. For example, in a lengthy chapter whining about how much the U.S. state coffers dispenses in the form of social security, P.J. sets out to prove mathematically (ho, ho, ho!) that there is no poverty in America. He pulls all sorts of figures out of the air (the book’s foreword admits that all statistics quoted are “possibly disputable"), jiggles them about for several pages and then, hey presto — sort of, reaches his conclusion. Now, this sort of chicanery we expect from F.F./P.D. coalitions but not from someone as intelligent as O ’Rourke. So is it just a joke that forgot to be humorous?

“Not entirely,” he drawls laconically. “One hundred years ago, most of the American population was poor but most of the population was also virtuous, by which I mean they didn't turn to crime and they actively sought honest means of improving their lot."

And the modern day poor aren’t “virtuous”?

“Look at it this way,” he says. “During the past hundred years, through various means such as industrial expansion and social services, the poor have been given money, lots of it. The poor aren’t poor anymore. There really is no excuse for long-term poverty in the U.S. anymore..."

Reality would suggest otherwise. And do you seriously believe that meagre weekly handouts can actually solve a problem like poverty?

“Not anymore it can’t,” says O’Rourke. “And the problem isn't just welfare itself though I do so love blaming welfare for things (laughs). But the real problem is more complex. Welfare does help people, it does enable the helpless but it’s very hard to discern between the deserving and the undeserving poor when you’re passing out the cheques. So the same dole dollar that goes to an honest working family who’ve had a turn of bad luck to help them get back on their feet, also goes to subsidise lager louts or, more commonly in the U.S., crack thugs. There are large numbers of people in society who aren't easily helped and throwing welfare at them can only make matters worse, and it bleeds rich folk like me (laughs).”

At this stage, the “Republicanism” isn’t just talking, it’s shouting.

“There's no comparison between so-called poverty nowadays and the real poverty of one hundred years ago,” says O’Rourke. “Many of the people in the U.S. who would currently be regarded as living below the poverty line own their own homes, for example. Most of them possess telephones and Reeboks and colour televisions, not to mention large, amazingly loud portable tape players. Some even have cars. And, don’t forget, that an American poor person has twice as much housing space as an average Japanese.”

You’re talking through your arse now, P.J.

“Of course I am,” he says with a grin,“but it's a free country (laughs). And it’s not just poverty that ain’t what it used to be. Wealth has changed too. Your average old lord living out in the west of Ireland a hundred years ago probably had more people bowing and scraping to him than Donald Trump ever had. He may have been a little short on jet planes, but that’s life."

P.J. O’Rourke’s many political and social blindspots could probably be dismissed as mere middle-class American ignorance if he weren’t also so goggle-eyed in his praise for some of the other, more objectionable facets of U.S. government and society. Anyone who has read earlier collections such as “Republican Party Reptile” or “Holidays In Hell” will already be acquainted with O’Rourke’s pig-headed insistence on justifying that most fetid and malevolent science which ought to be called “Imperialist Aggression” but instead is mysteriously labelled “U.S. Foreign Policy”. ("Democracies cannot be preserved by democratic means alone” is one of his favourite dictums). In “Parliament Of Whores,” his warped enthusiasms are more home-based and this somehow conspires to make them even more embarrassing.

There’s a particularly dewy-eyed account of George Bush’s presidential inauguration party which featured ol’ Georgie, a host of White House flunkies and some brown-nosing rock celebs engaging in a communal blues jam. Now, to you or I, this would be nothing more than proof positive of the old adage that some people have no shame but to P.J. it was "part of what America should be all about '' and “a perfect argument against those who say that Republicans have no soul.”
“What can I tell you, I was drunk,” he laughs.“It was an enjoyable night, though. The concert sounded like Jesse Jackson had been elected, except the music was better. Jackson would’ve had people like boring Sting there and some Suzanne Vega and Tracy Chapman depressive types (laughs). The Republicans were under no such constraints. We had Sam Moore, Percy Sledge, Bo Diddley and ‘High Heel Sneakers’. Anyway, Bush does the duck-walk when he moves about normally so he was a natural.”

Elsewhere in “Parliament Of Whores,” there’s a chapter almost exclusively devoted to a tour of a U.S. guided-missile cruiser in which every nook, cranny and gun-sight is described in mind-numbing detail. “I’m just a sucker for those gadgets,” is the only personal defence policy O’Rourke can come up with when I ask him about this.
For me though, one of the most disconcerting aspects of “Parliament Of Whores” is the author’s fervent paean to The Guardian Angels, the military-style vigilantes who take it upon themselves to “police'' New York subways and to “clean up” some the city's high-crime slums. To O'Rourke, these amateur tin soldiers are latter day heroes, urban saviours and beacons of enlightenment on a desolate landscape. To those of a more sensible tendency, they’re a bunch of dingbats who like khaki and kicking the shit out of people.

"I certainly would’ve viewed them like that initially,” admits O’Rourke. “I knew that they were not Brownshirts but I did feel that they were a little boyscoutish. However, having spent time with them, I found them to be more earnest and disciplined than I expected. I began to realise that in order for poor kids in very bad neighbourhoods to go out and be publicly virtuous, they needed role models with a little panache and a sense of style. And also, The Guardian Angels get results. They’re mostly just decent people who are sick of the extreme lawlessness that pervades many American inner cities so they do something about it. For various reasons, the cops aren’t effective in these areas but The Angels are.”

I think you’ve been watching too many Charles Bronson movies.

"Well,” says O ’Rourke, "what keeps order in a society is peer pressure and that has broken down in much of our society so it needs to be built up again. And don’t think this is only an American Phenomenon. When you see riots in Oxford of all places, you see that nowhere is safe. It may even happen in Dublin. And Charles Bronson wouldn't stand a chance anymore,you're gonna need a Terminator (laughs)."

Coming soon to a cinema near you: Robogarda!

Unlike his contemporaries in much of Europe, P.J. O'Rourke's brand of right-wingery doesn't encompass any form of religious fundamentalism. He claims to be deeply embarrassed by his beloved Republican Party’s cosy relationship with much of America’s Christian space cadet fraternity .

“As I spend most of my time pointing out, the left has got plenty of embarrassing allies,” he says. “But the right has got them too. Racial bigotry, homophobia, anti-semitism and an excess of social snobbery would definitely have been part of the make-up of most traditional conservatives. As would Christian fundamentalism . However, that’s no longer the case, especially not among young, modern conservatives. It really is time that conservatives quit being buttinskis or nosey-parkers about people’s lives. It goes against all the individual freedom principles that they claim to uphold.”

But isn’t the reality that right-wing politics and Christian fundamentalism are inextricably intertwined?

“It would appear that way,” O’Rourke concedes. “But in my experience, fundamentalists don’t really care about the free market or individual freedom. They want as controlling a government as any leftie does. And sometimes the Christians and the leftists come embarrassingly close together. You have these frenzied feminists who are really sexually discrimatory and the behaviour they want for society comes very close to what puritanical Christians want. It’s not that I’ve anything against feminists, it’s just that under our system of civil rights and liberties, a person can do what they want, regardless of gender.”

For much of the eighties, P.J. O’Rourke has been International Affairs Desk Chief at Rolling Stone. So how does the inveterate Republican Party Reptile fit into an organisation that one would imagine represents a lot of what he despises?

“That’s where you’re wrong,” smirks O'Rourke. "Some people probably think that Rolling Stone is run by a group of aging hippies. Rolling Stone is an industry and like most industries, it’s run by men in suits. Jann Wenner, the guy who runs the whole thing is no middle-aged hippy, he’s a middle- aged rich guy! Jann was always too hard-working, ambitious and savvy ever to be a hippy. He might have tried it but it never really took. We probably have a few middle-aged hippy readers though. But I think, the average Rolling Stone reader is supposed to be a twenty-five-year-old with 5 BMWs who works as a bank manager. Or at least that’s what we tell the advertisers.”

P.J.’s immediate predecessor at Rolling Stone was the great Hunter S. Thompson, a man unlikely to ever be described as “a middle-aged rich guy” or “a hippy” for that matter. So how well do P.J. and Hunter get on?

“Very well actually," says O’Rourke. “I really like Hunter and I respect him. I haven’t seen him for a while though. He's livin’ in his little cabin out in Colorado. He hasn’t given up writing but it seems that he’s given up caring. He’s kinda messed up at the moment. He’s been drinking too much too long. He’s painfully shy, you know, and that’s one of the reasons why he drinks so much. And he agonises terribly over his work, and the more insecure he becomes the worse that gets. He’s not lazy, it's just that he finds it difficult to buckle down.

“This job we do is hard work. Apart From the writing, what Hunter did was hard work. People think he just got stoned and wrote about it. Hunter says he just got stoned and wrote about it. He’s lying. Hunter’s had to work very hard, sometimes too hard. Maybe he should’ve just walked away from it all a lot earlier.”

It’s at moments like this that you can sense a more reflective P.J. O’Rourke beneath the flip, glib, rabid right-wing facade. I'm firmly convinced that the guy is too intelligent (and witty) to really believe in even half the guff that he spouts. It all comes down to the “Republicanism" dependency that I mentioned earlier. He can’t just take a sip, he has to swallow it whole and is then forced to justify everything about it, including the hangover.

The result is that even his most elegant political writing is just like pretty nouvelle cuisine food served on badly chipped plates. It looks nice, it smells nice but it’s only when you pick it up to eat it that you can see the hideous cracks beneath.

"I’m relatively rich, white, privileged and happy,” says O’Rourke. “All of those things obviously inform the way I think. And I’m constantly changing. You can’t make any pretense to having knowledge based on experience if it doesn’t change. But I can’t help feeling that I’m on the right side. The leftists say that you have to be able to say and think anything you want. People can always think anything they want and, frankly, even in the Soviet Union at its worst, you could probably say anything you want, especially among friends. So what? That doesn’t mean much. A free market economy based on basic right-wing principles is the only way to ensure that at least some people get to have a good time.”

Let them eat national cake, eh P.J.? But before you can take issue with him, O’Rourke the humourist goes some way toward redeeming himself with a joke.

“Of course, the Soviet Union does have something to teach the U.S. about politics. I think it’s an excellent idea the way all those disgraced KGB officials and Commies decided to kill themselves rather than carry on. Disgraced western politicians should do the same. Or at least they should sign a pledge saying that after their resignation they will never, ever go on television chat shows. That'd be the western equivalent.”

P.J. O'Rourke, a funny guy. Now, if only he could kick his habit. ■