The stock market is going down faster than the Hindenburg after that fellow lit his cigarette. The supposedly staid and sober bankers now seem to be about as solvent and judicious as drunken sailors. The economy is collapsing around our ears. Congress is running around in circles screaming and shouting. And somehow it's no longer quite so amusing that President Bush looks a lot like Alfred E. Newman.
But enough of all this doom and gloom!
We interrupt this panic for a little humor. . . but not right away.
It turns out P.J. O'Rourke has cancer. . . pause, drumbeat, rising volume. . .the big C!
That kind of puts all that economics gloom in perspective don't it? Even though P.J. has a relatively survivable form of cancer.
But I promised humor. And P.J. O'Rourke wouldn't be P.J. O'Rourke if he didn't still have his sense of humor. So, in his inimitable way he has made lemonade out of the great big lemon life has dealt him.
His latest column is an interesting example of bitter sweet humor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-orourke28-2008sep28,0,3317114.story
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4 comments:
Very much liked his column. I've always felt that gallows humor is Mother Nature's way of helping us to process and absorb bad news.
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Glad you liked his column. His books are funny too. Very good medicine for what ails you when you get to realizing that we're all doomed because of the inherent contradictions of democracy.
I went to Amazon and looked at some of his books.
In light of the current situation in Washington, the book "Parliament of Whores" caught my eye.
Did you read it, and did you like it?
Thanks.
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Thinking back, I probably laughed harder while reading Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut; but then I'm a sucker for that sort of collection that shows a writer evolving in his views while maintaining his edge.
Parliament of Whores was also good for quite a few deep laughs; but sometimes it's a bit harder to laugh at because it's mostly focused on the present day.
Don't get On The Wealth of Nations unless you really want to understand Adam Smith without attempting the unbelievable boredom of actually trying to read Adam Smith's original book. O'Rourke may be one of less than a hundred living people who've actually read Wealth of Nations cover to cover and are permitted to wander loose in the world. Like Darwin's book or Pynchon's novels. Everybody talks about them; very few capable of reading them all the way through are wholly sane.
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