The American Spectator's 25th Anniversary Gala, starring P. J. O'Rourke et. al
We are here tonight to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The American Spectator—the magazine, the men and women, the way of life. But we are also here to celebrate something else—our return...
...The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment bankers who lived a simple life in tune with money...
...And won't have another after 1996...
...No more firing blanks...
...Every car was a Mercedes-Benz...
...and Author Plug: The above remarks were adapted, in part, from a rueful preface that Mr...
...They'll find it and they'll communicate it in that inestimable prose...
...Clinton may be a disaster for the rest of the nation, but he is meat on our table...
...Leslie Lenkowsky, Tom Bethell, and George Gilder Cheryl Weber, Vin Weber, and Grover Norquisr Danielle Frum and Richard Perle Only in the White House can they call me Pierre...
...Baron Von Kannon I think the President wants to do the right thing...
...And Clinton's staff believes that 12-step programs are the only way that God manifests himself in the modern world...
...one of the most memorable events in Washington since Andy Jackson reportedly invited horses into the White House...
...Christopher Cox Thomas Mallon and Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Let me introduce tonight a thought that has only been expressed so far by my friend Bill Kristol, and that is: We are winning...
...And the persistent minority consists of all those interests whose desires for particular outcomes lead them to violate the majority's desire for a nation ordered as our forefathers would have ordered it, with small government, individual initiative, and a market economy...
...To lead our straying nation, not forward—we're conservatives—but back...
...says Mr...
...Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes...
...When sleeping with the President meant you'd attended a cabinet meeting...
...But then, invited to this dinner tonight, I decided I really didn't have to think so hard, because I'm sure The American Spectator will tell us what the plot is...
...When Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of American politics and Hillary was still in flight school—hadn't even soloed on her broom...
...Clinton doesn't know this...
...We are the governing ideas of the majority not only of the American people but of the world...
...Clinton has never had a real job in his life...
...I think that also applies to magazines of opinion...
...Pete du Pont Gen...
...Wasn't that a grand time...
...When the Malcolm who mattered was Forbes...
...Bill Clinton, bless his heart, won talking about empowerment, talking about limitations on the growth of government, talking about privatization, talking about enterprise zones...
...And opposition is where we belong...
...Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...And I agree...
...And Clinton was in Flowers...
...We are not the opposition party...
...We didn't lose it...
...We are alsohere to work ourselves into a delicious battle frenzy...
...When we preferred a Shining City on a Hill to a whining Hill all over Clarence Thomas...
...William Kristol Richard Carlson and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...There was only one problem: try as he might, he could not see the plot...
...N.B...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick Dinner Chairman Richard Scaife John ("Baron") Von Kannon Amb...
...So stand warned, Boy Clinton...
...Jack Kemp Joshua Muravchik Stuart Reid and Allen Taylor Andrew Ferguson, Ellen Ladowsky, Daniel Casse, John Podhoretz, and Denise Ferguson Jack Kemp and William Kristol Mona Charen, Richard Brookhiser, and Edward Capano The largest-circulated Washington-based opinion magazine is...
...Bob Tyrrell, I think, was born knowing the plot...
...Being opposed to government is what defines true conservatism...
...Companion was originally published during the Reagan Administration...
...Victims of a Republican Administration—you remember how George Bush liked to sneak out of the White House at night and sell crack and get teenage girls pregnant...
...Clinton thinks people are victims...
...now the 25year-old American Spectator...
...Pete du Pont Christopher Caldwell and Zelda Novak I think about Mark Twain's reporting that he greatly enjoyed reading Webster's dictionary, that he spent quite a lot of time doing just that...
...Another great advantage of conservatism is that we don't have to fill this evening with sanctimonious twaddle and self-righteous blather...
...What a relief to be on the attack again...
...It's not the leadership of the wrong majority that's about to take up residence in the White House, it's rather the new leadership of what I would call the persistent minority...
...If I had to go through four more, years of that miasmic confusion and ideology, I think I would have gone bonkers...
...Herbert Stein Terry Eastland Robert Novak Jeane KirkpatrickSharon and Emanuel McLittle Jack Kemp We've gone now for twelve years of listening to liberal Democrats and the liberals whine about how someone stole the election from them...
...As I have gotten old, I am more and more impressed with the dictum of Vladimir Nabokov, who said, "Style and structure are the essence of a book...
...He probably thinks some inches can be voted off his own waistline...
...T he Clinton people like to say that they are "non-ideological...
...Edward Rowny, Wesley Pruden, and Edwin Meese Herbert Stein Rep...
...We did it to the Carters and we'll do it to you...
...Back when health care was a tummy tuck, not an unalienable right...
...To the rest of you, I'm Pete...
...A fellow could romance a gal without having to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent...
...When tax cuts were in bloom...
...Once this is done, I think we can leave office in good cheer...
...It was a great achievement, he said...
...I do think people in this room and elsewhere could make a difference if they strongly make the case and coherently make the arguments for pardoning all those who have been the victims of the undue process of the Iran-contra Independent Counsel...
...Someone stole the election in 1980, someone stole the election in 1984, someone stole the election in 1988, and I want to tell you, I'm starting to hear some Republicans and conservatives say someone stole the election from us in 1992...
...Great ideas are hogwash...
...But we are also here to celebrate something else—our return to political opposition...
...Back to that lost golden age of yore—the eighties...
...There's going to be a huge amount of pressure—public pressure, and some private pressure—for him not to do the right thing, on grounds that he will take such a political battering or raise questions about his own credibility...
...Well, I think that's where I am, for one, today...
...Let us all salute (and be sensitive to the needs of) the shiftless, the feckless, the senseless, the worthwhileness-impaired, the decency-challenged, and the differently moraled...
...And I actually was a bachelor...
...It means that they don't know right from wrong...
...So when I think of The American Spectator, I think of style, I think of the fact that it is humorous, literate, varied, that it doesn't beat a subject to death, and that there are occasional traces of modesty, and even self-doubt—although I can't at the moment think of one...
...William Westmoreland and Richard Larry To call The American Spectator irreverent is to say not nearly enough...
...10 Scenes and Speeches...
...I quote the ultimate paleoconservative hero, Bluto, as played by John Belushi: "Take no prisoners...
...O'Rourke...
...Let us take our text from that great paean to individual rights, Animal House...
...America seldom has the problem of the wrong majority, but we often have the problem of an underpowered majority...
...Because pragmatism is a fancy term for "don't know can't from shouldn't...
...Ronald E. Burr Ben Wattenberg Sen...
...From an editorial standpoint, for the next four years, Bob Tyrrell's going to feel like Perry White at the Daily Planet, with Lex Luther in town and Superman nowhere in sight...
...Clinton thinks Americans can vote themselves richer, vote themselves smarter, vote themselves taller...
...We believe in God...
...But one of the many good things about being conservatives is that we never have to feel betrayed by the common people...
...No more striking with the flat of our sword...
...Bill . . . Wet Willie . . . You and your "Presidential Partner" . . . President Clinton and First Person Hillary .. . Pudge and Ruffles...
...Anyway, stand warned the pair of you...
...Let's be honest with ourselves...
...Christopher Cox Ronald E. Burr The accident of Ben's bronchitis brings to this microphone the only person in this room who doesn't know what a conservative is, and who isn't sure whether he is one or not...
...What a joy to be able to turn to the helmsman of our good ship Spectator and say, "Captain Bob, bring the guns down to deck level and load with grapeshot...
...Every wristwatch was a Rolex...
...And that idea ultimately is going to prevail, be it in this administration or the next...
...I don't know what he'll do about capital gains, but as Jesse Jackson said, "You can't have capitalism without capital...
...Think of the dreadful dinners that liberals will be sitting through for the next four years . . . Yes, welcome to the 1990s...
...As always she was thoughtful, but for once I find myself in disagreement with Midge...
...If the Fathers of the Christian church had known these two, divorce would not only be permitted, it would be a sacrament...
...Let us return to that glad epoch when we knew the proper order of words in our language—"free alcohol" not "alcohol-free...
...And hello to their leaders—progressive, committed, and filled to the nose holes with enormous esteem for themselves...
...Well, the American voters elected Clinton...
...We believe in freedom and we know that there is no freedom without economic liberty...
...We know that government doesn't work even when the most brilliant people in the world—us—run it...
...That of course gives me a special license, as the only person here who can testify that you don't have to be a conservative to admire and appreciate The American Spectator...
...We're going to laugh you out of office...
...And so I've been thinking hard about how to make sense of it all...
...Evans & Tyrrell Photos by Wallace F. Rollins P. J. O'Rourke calls it a night...
...We've been in opposition for four years already...
...I want to find out who that guy was who stole the election from us, and I want to go up and shake his hand and thank him: it was about time someone stole the election from us after the last four years...
...We know people have free will and responsibility for their own actions...
...B ut that's their problem...
...And as we prepare for winter and the new President—or should I say the winter of our new President—we find ourselves again the members of an underpowered majority...
...We know government is an ineffective and morally unacceptable means of delivering life's benefits...
...Our problem, on The American Spectator's silver anniversary, is to lead the straying nation...
...Well, I don't want to hear any more of that whining...
...Sure, they voted for Clinton—that's what made them so common...
...I don't really see the plot, and for the last half-century I've grown accustomed to a great drama in which the plot was clear, the characters were clear, and the strategy and the tactics were clear...
...I submit that The American Spectator was not at the full height of its powers in 1987, and I submit that despite all of the recent successes, it is not even at the full height of its powers today...
...The eighties, when Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of American and General Motors...
...No more gentle sparring with the Administration...
...O'Rourke wrote for a new edition of his book Bachelor Home Companion (due out this spring from Atlantic Monthly Press...
...When, if you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley...
...Clinton believes in going to church...
...Ladies and gentlemen, we have game in our sights...
...She ended her speech with: "I am here to celebrate tonight, to celebrate this twenty-year-old magazine at the full height of its powers...
...Let me translate...
...y ou know, some people think we lost this election...
...John McCain and Amy Lumet Andrew Whist, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...The Clinton people claim to be "pragmatists...
...So we're here tonight not just to congratulate ourselves for writing and reading and founding and editing and—most important—contributing lots of money to The American Spectator...
...Richard Scaife At the twentieth anniversary dinner of The American Spectator five years ago, Midge Decter spoke...
...Some people we know .. . people we like personally . . . people whose politics we can just barely tolerate . . . They lost this election...
Vol. 26 • February 1993 • No. 2
