Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.
P. J. O'ROURKELittle islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.
P. J. O'ROURKEIdeology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
P. J. O'ROURKENo industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
P. J. O'ROURKEWe need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.
P. J. O'ROURKEComputers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There’s more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it’s awfully close to human.
P. J. O'ROURKETo mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.
P. J. O'ROURKEAgriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.
P. J. O'ROURKENew Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State’s registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they’re going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can’t understand what they say.
P. J. O'ROURKEThank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I’ve been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
P. J. O'ROURKENo humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it’s probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.
P. J. O'ROURKENo doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
P. J. O'ROURKECatchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.
P. J. O'ROURKEWhatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
P. J. O'ROURKE