Republican Party Reptile
O'Rourke, P. J.
Radicals and liberals and such want all jokes to have a "meaning," to "make a point." But laughter is involuntary and points are not. A conservative may tell you that you shouldn't make fun of...
...tagonist, seriousness...
...Furniture is quiet...
...if liberty means anything, it means that we should be able to smoke, shoot guns, drive Corvairs, swallow sac-'Rourke 'Rourke says conservatives are ac- charin, get in fistfights, and start tually predisposed to humor in a barbecue fires with gasoline without in- way that radicals and liberals cannot terference from mom or OSHA...
...world, collecting a gazillion dollars for The small-minded may think of the freedom fighters...
...Volume Two offers Kirkpatrick's formal remarks on nations and nation-building...
...A conservative may tell you that you shouldn't make fun of something...
...They belong in Czechoslovakia...
...Mix good talkers with good listeners...
...Together they present a lucid and comprehensive_account of the position of one of America's most controversial UN representatives...
...But pair off a couple liberals and give them an intoxicant and suddenly you've got legislation and a party...
...Oliver North, have embraced the reptile agenda...
...AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER 1987 Transaction Publishers Dept...
...Not only do most right-wingers hate fun themselves, they hate it when anybody else has fun...
...60/set (cloth) $30/set (paper) VOLUME TWO: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS ISBN: 0-88738-100-6 (cloth) $34.95(p) ISBN: 0-88738-647-4 (paper) $16.95(p) 420 pp...
...that of Pat Buchanan's: Commies, In the Midwest the most urgent debate Ralph Nader, health food, child-proof has never been whether capitalism is aspirin bottle-tops, Senator John Ker- superior to Communism, or authoriry, no-nukers, and Roosevelt ("the tarianism preferable to totalitarianism, Roosevelt in the wheelchair, and not but which is better—fun or its an...
...All that stands between conservatives and a. good time (and perhaps world domination), O'Rourke argues, are a few broken laws, and in Republican Party Reptile he illustrates this idea repeatedly...
...In Lebanon, where chaos reigns and drugs are abundant and cheap, O'Rourke found his paradise...
...Liberalism, on the other hand, inverts this maxim...
...VOLUME ONE: POLITICAL AND MORAL DIMENSIONS ISBN: 0-88738-099-9 (cloth) $34.95(p) ISBN: 0-88738-646-6 (paper) $16.95(p) 485 pp...
...They oppose busing their children \. „,--4 ("anywhere other than Yale"), trailer...
...And he may be right...
...She focuses on Grenada, Poland, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union...
...Being dangerous without being fun puts bicycles in a category with open-heart surgery, the war in Vietnam, the South Bronx, and divorce...
...As wonderful as Republican Party Reptile is, let's not pretend that the scaly beast has written a complete conservative treatise...
...But its bar is still open and people water-ski from the beach there in all but the worst of the fighting...
...Hotel Row along the Corniche was destroyed in the first year of warfare...
...She provides a particularly trenchant analysis of Israel: the Camp David accords, the assault on Israel inside the United Nations, and on the Middle East in general...
...But lest the reader think his voyage was all ideology, fun, and pharmaceuticals, listen to his brilliant descriptions of Beirut from "With Hostage and Hijacker in Sunny Beirut": Beirut doesn't match any mental picture of anything...
...You shouldn't make fun of cripples," he might say...
...And don't confuse good listeners with people who are simply quiet," he advises...
...Kirkpatrick examines the nature of legitimacy of democracy and the illegitimate nature of undemocratic nations...
...Volume One is oriented around themes of democratic societies and undemocratic systems, human rights and political obligations...
...We are the Republican to have a sense of humor...
...Here, O'Rourke is spewing heresy...
...When quizzed on O'Rourke as an incubus sent by Gus his doings by a grand-standing Con- Hall and black nationalists to polgress, he lied about it with reptilian lute the conservative youth of today...
...If a Drunks Against Mad Mothers [DAMM] movement is ever launched, this lizard king REPUBLICAN PARTY REPTILE P. J. O'Rourke/Atlantic Monthly Press/$6.95 paper Jack Shafer If P.J...
...And he's wrong—as anyone who's heard the one about Helen Keller falling into a well and breaking three fingers calling for help can tell you...
...We look like Republicans, and think like conservatives, but we drive a lot faster and keep vibrators and baby oil and a video camera behind the stack of sweaters on the bedroom closet shelf...
...He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapons...
...Essential reading for everyone interested in the policymaking arena, these volumes exemplify Kirkpatrick's articulate conceptual underpinning of present-day American foreign policy...
...O'Rourke's con-Throughout Republican Party Reptile, servative breakthrough is that fun is O'Rourke blasts the liberal agenda with better, and that conservatives can have a shower of ridicule, proclaiming that fun...
...have banking secrecy laws, and Gary y ._ ,' ,/41W-,, ,, Hart—although the Gary and Donna - -, --- — IV V L,,./ N ) a4 _ N., V episode has made O'Rourke rethink ,/, that stand..144,141.7...
...introduction...
...The Bois de Pins, planted in the 1600s, has taken so many rocket attacks that it's a forest of phone poles...
...You can't shoot pheasants with a bicycle or water-ski behind it or go 150 miles an hour or even mix it with soda and ice...
...George, is a burned hulk...
...The best hotel, the St...
...j,-/,/, Now, O'Rourke's conservatism was7 III' **47 _-_-_ Jack Shafer is the editor of Washington, --- - - -RGEYEIX,R= D.C.'s weekly City Paper...
...People who worry themselves sick O'Rourke's love of conservative or- over sexism in language and think the thodoxy is deep...
...O'Rourke was born a conser- not learned at Bill Buckley's Yale, vative Republican, as he claims, his taught at Ben Hart's Dartmouth, or new collection of essays and journal- speechified by Ronald Reagan on the ism, Republican Party Reptile, proves GE rubber-chicken lecture circuit...
...In "How To Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink" he extends automotive pleasures with illicit drugs, alcohol, and vehicular sex...
...U ltimately, though, the slitheriness of a Republican Party Reptile is best judged by his willingness to break the law...
...He is also silent on monetary reform, but one guesses that he would advocate the return to the gold standard in the same breath as a return to the Acapulco gold standard...
...charm...
...For example, he is silent on the subject of immigration...
...The volumes features all of the ambassador's UN and congressional testimonies, addresses, speeches and statements and a broad selection of speeches on international affairs and human rights...
...O'Rourke's Reptiles are for a cleaner environment ("poor people should cut it out with \ the graffiti"), free love ("if our wives If ! _1 ,I don't find out"), and Star Wars or any- — 1 thing else that makes the Russkies nerv- ' --- ,00' ous...
...I once asked someone...
...These volumes, far from the usual government position papers, range widely and personally over the major international issues of.: our times...
...What about the sniper...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 47...
...They are amplified in essays and articles written by Dr...
...And they Party Reptiles," he brags in the book's don't," he writes...
...Kirkpatrick for special occasions not related to specific UN work...
...Historically, conservatism has been about as fun as watching your carpet get shampooed—as you know if you've ever attended a YAF rally, spent a day in ROTC, or dated a nice girl...
...Better to ban them and their riders, "organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF...
...4garrcourts near their vacation homes, all e tiny Third World countries that don't _r% -f,ls ' 4...
...If a few broken laws are fun, a lot of broken laws are a lot more fun, and a place with no laws at all is a perpetual Mardi Gras...
...What about the Snow-Mexicans, people like Mortimer Zuckerman, Peter Jennings, and Lorne Greene, who smuggle themselves down from the 49th Parallel to take jobs away from Americans...
...Impatient with Congress's double-nickel speed on approving aid for the contras, he hot-wired American transaction Legitimacy & Force (IN TWO VOLUMES) STATE PAPERS AND CURRENT PERSPECTIVES Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Legitimacy and Force, Volumes One and Two are the state papers of Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations...
...Alcohol, O'Rourke learned while peering at the Soviet Union through the bottom of a vodka glass, is not only the way to make driving more fun, but also the great maker of brotherhood...
...With each generation, this has made conservatism more like the sex act: satisfying if done alone, tolerable if practiced with a partner, but disgusting in higher concentrations...
...It's that the birth was rectal...
...The social graces fall into the Republican Party Reptile's purview as well, with an entire section devoted to "Manners and Mores...
...There are zones of manic destruction, of course...
...They aren't very accurate...
...She also offers poignant commentary on the presidential election of 1980 and what the "Reagan phenomenon" has meant to the United States and the West...
...But a liberal will tell you, "You can't make fun of cripples...
...But for the final word on the subject, I refer you to the complete volume O'Rourke wrote on this subject a couple years ago, Modern Manners...
...In "Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West," he celebrates the sin of speed, slaloming down Interstate 10 at 140 mph in a Ferrari 308GTS...
...He is our pointed that there have been no con- generation's moral compass—pointing gressional revelations about vibra- straight to hell...
...The fun paradigm is further bifurcated in "A Cool and Logical Analysisof the Bicycle...
...A solitary liberal can't have fun, because there is nobody to tax...
...One piece anthologized here from House and Garden explains the dos and don'ts of dinner table conversation...
...After ten years of polygonal civil war and invasions and air strikes by Syrians, Israelis, and multilateral peace-keeping forces, the place still isn't as squalid as some cities that have never been hit by anything but government social programs...
...the good one who killed bears...
...O'Rourke contends that fun danger is superior to unfun danger, and complains that bicycles are "dangerous without being any fun...
...Already there is evidence that other prominent conservatives, like Lt...
...Consequently, the only way to have fun and be a conservative at the same time is to avoid all other conservatives...
...The Green Line looks like an antinuke-benefitconcert album cover...
...It is so deep, in fact, government sneaks into their houses at that he doesn't mind rewriting it, bend- night and puts atomic waste in the ing it, even perverting it to make it kitchen dispose-all cannot be expected meet his ends...
...Bicycles are too slow and impuissant for a country like ours...
...It is also the only thing that makes the workers' paradise tolerable...
...EF Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 foreign policy and jetted around the tors or baby oil or video cameras...
...He describes it as the book that settles once and for all how much money a woman has to make before you can slug her without feeling ashamed...
...To be sure, the absorbed by osmosis with a cold one former editor of National Lampoon in the frat houses of the land-grant barks like an orthodox conservative, diploma mills of the Midwest—Miami with a hate list that maps neatly onto University in Ohio, in O'Rourke's case...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 45 of comedy would be the perfect poster-child...
...I am pleased that North had Based on the vision presented in Rea drop-dead gorgeous blonde in his publican Party Reptile, I prefer to think employ all the while, but am disap- of him as that and more...
...In addition, the volumes contain crucial papers that were written after her resignation from the UN ambassadorship—and hence reflect Kirkpatrick's current interests and persuasions...
Vol. 20 • September 1987 • No. 9
