P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke
Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourkeis an American political satirist and journalist. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Since 2011 O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth14 November 1947
CountryUnited States of America
When I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By 'artistic and sensitive' I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school.
The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average.
So-called Western Civilization, as practised in half of Europe, some of Asia and a few parts of North America, is better than anything else available. Western civilization not only provides a bit of life, a pinch of liberty and the occasional pursuance of happiness, it's also the only thing that's ever tried to. Our civilization is the first in history to show even the slightest concern for average, undistinguished, none-too-commendable people like us.
Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.
In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor.
One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.
I think every high school student who was alert during the early '60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let's hope so.
Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot.
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they've shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative.
The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
The 18,000 NASA employees are full of galactic talents and abilities and are ready to accomplish whatever they're directed to do.