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
The preamble to the Constitution states: "We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare..." It doesn't say "guarantee the general welfare." And it certainly doesn't say "give welfare benefits to all the people in the country who aren't doing so well even if the reason they aren't doing so well is because they're sitting on their butts in front of the TV".
What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?
A firm, hearty handshake gives a good first impression, and you'll never be forgiven if you don't live up to it.
The poor of the world cannot be made rich by the redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape.
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
If I give up drinking, smoking, and fatty foods, I can add ten years to my life. Trouble is, I'll add it to the wrong end.
Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.
Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven't been.
The Constitution is an equally forthright piece of work and quite succinct ... giving the complete operating instructions for a nation of 250 million people. The manual for a Toyota Camry, which only seats five, is four times as long.
In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City.
In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'
I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.
I knew Hunter Thompson since the '70s, and I loved him, but he would wear me out as I got older.
I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser. On his TV show, when he went to the home of the guy who invented the car alarm and set off all the car alarms on the block... pretty funny.