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June 27, 2005
PJ O'Rourke Speaks. Dean Compelled to Comment
I grew up as a fan of PJ O'Rourke when I read Parliament of Whores. In this interview, we find an amusing pair of exchanges. First,
PRWeek: What do you think about the changing media and the way technology is affecting journalism?O'Rourke: If you would have told me 30 years ago that journalism could get worse, I would have called you a liar. But it looks like it's headed that way. As bad as daily journalism can be, and TV journalism, all the kinds of journalism-- and they can be pretty bad-- [they're] not nearly as bad as Arianna Huffington's blog.
Ok, ha ha. I actually like Arianna Huffington, and if you've ever seen my Friendster profile, I explain how I signed up for Friendster to find out if I was connected to Arianna Huffington back when she had a profile (I was, via my cousin Johanna). That said, The Huffington Post is ridiculous. Since my comment on this metafilter post about this entry by Arianna Huffington hasn't gotten much attention, I'll repeat it here:
"I just landed at Vail airport, right next to the Vice President’s Gulfstream jet" has to be the most pretentious opening line of a blog post, ever.
Further down, however, O'Rourke comes close to the mark but misses the target in this exchange:
PRWeek: Why do you think, generally speaking, there are so few funny Republicans these days?O'Rourke: There are a lot of funny Republicans, it's just, are we talking intentional? I don't know, I think because there's something about show business. Being funny has a lot to do with-- it's a kind of show business. There's a lot to do with show business, a lot of easy audience pleasing, if you're going to be successful at it. And that works better with liberal philosophy, because you just sound so sympathetic. Whereas a conservative is always standing back saying, "Wait a minute, I want to cure AIDS too, but I'm not sure that dropping condoms from an airplane over the Congo is gonna do that." So you're always backing away and saying "Well, but, I'm not sure, past history would tell us..." It just doesn't have the warm and fuzzies...
Yes, he gets it right that at issue is the interviewer is discussing intentionally funny Republicans, which makes the question more difficult, (there are certainly plenty of moments of unintentional humor) but he doesn't quite hit on why. You see, while certainly a liberal comedian is going to find the inherent humor in airdropping a planeload of condoms into the Congo (heck, who doesn't? You can't go wrong with condom jokes), a conservative is going to find it oh-so-hilarious to talk about how funny it is that a bunch of Congolese are dying of AIDS when death squads aren't already cannibilizing them. Because, you know, nothing's funnier than stuff like that. I mean, sure, if you think it's funny to make fun of poor people, more power to you. It just doesn't work. Dennis Miller tried to cross over with poor results. So PJ O'Rourke remains the shining exception of conservative humor. The only explanations I can come up with are that he started out as a good writer in the first place, and he never got hung up on the mindless hero-worship of many other conservatives that doesn't lend itself to fostering a sense of humor. It's hard to be funny when you make stuff like this. If you have a good sense of humor, this seems like the obvious creation.
Posted by Dean at June 27, 2005 10:38 PM
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