PJ O'Rourke Talking Books

Hello and welcome to Cheltenham Literature Festival, one of your's

great cudgel events, bringing together from all over the world all

kinds of thinkers, scientists, logicians and novelists --

CorelDRAW. My guest today is the Republican Party animal himself, a

leading political satirist, he has been writing about the foibles of

politicians for some years. -- cultural events.

PJ O'Rourke, welcome to Talking Books. Thank you. Let's begin not

with your previous work, but your next book, which is called darter

how the hell did this happen? But it is not finished yet? The election

hasn't happened yet, but I do know the title. The thing that worries me

for the greatest living American satirist, had you satire Donald

Trump? His terrible. It has been a terrible 14 months. I am a political

satirist as you say. The election has been completely self satirising.

I am apolitical humourous. It has been impossible to be funnier than

Hillary Clinton's Kensit. I am a political commentator and can't get

a word in edgewise with Donald Trump around -- head sits. Not only am I

outraged, but unemployed. To take the title, how did it happen that

the 300 million people of the world's greatest democracy and

upward to candidates but nobody seems to entirely like? I think it

is worse than that. Most people detest... I was being polite. Yes.

The negatives for both of these candidates, for different reasons.

For Donald Trump, he is a detestable man, so of course he has high

negatives. Hillary Clinton, her situation is a little more context.

-- complex. Bossy, know it all, self pleased, self-satisfied. Really self

- anything with her. The pride of this woman. My analysis of it is

that she is a person of virtuous boards. I don't take that away from

her. -- thoughts. She has been at this for so long and it belongs to

her and she must have it, and what it is she must have is power. She

has a bust for power. That is an unattractive kind of greed -- last.

That is a piling up of riches that can't be shared definitely. It can

be very dangerous to the public. I think people sense at some

subliminal level but this person is just so verging on the criminally

ambitious, and in the case of the Clinton administration, parts more

than verging. You say that, and there are many people who are

listening, especially many Americans, who will not in

agreement. Yet as a Republican, the famous Republican reptile, you have

come out... I shall vote for her. For Hillary Clinton, which it said

was the second worst thing that could happen to America. My

endorsement. My ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Let me get my

reading glasses. Somewhat barbed, I might say. She is the second worst.

Perhaps. Yes, I say that right up front. I endorse Clinton, and she is

the second worst thing that could happen to America. I endorse her in

all her ponds and empty promises. Better the devil you know than the

board of the flies on his own 757 going to and from on with goldplated

seatbelt buckles talking sexist nativist isolationist mercantile

listed edited would involve a crab. The electric is possessed by a Demon

-- electric. Too, if you count Bernie Sanders, the Donald Trump for

people still living in their parents' basements. America is

extrinsic the massive outbreak of psychosis since the cell which I was

and was the night, what kind of person doesn't leave a low Clinton

dumped in a pond. Wicked and wet though she is, I pledge to aid her

in confining Donald Trump to the stocks. Hillary is wrong about

everything. She is to politics and statecraft what the Inquisition was

to Galileo. She thinks the sun revolves around herself. But Trump

earth trademark is flagged and will sail over the edge, here be

monsters. Hillary is terrible, taking her opinions from the top of

the star-studded social calendar in another day and place, campaigning

from Gone With The Wind with the slogan fiddle D-Day. I endorse you

anyway. Better than many things, including my third. Better a mangy

cat than a rabid dog. That is a great slogan. Vote for me, better

than a rabid dog. To go back to the question in the title of the next

book, you can meet Redfearn the manuscript, how did it happen that

the land of opportunity ends up with one candidate who inherited all his

wealth and another candidate whose breakthrough into the politics of

the United States was being married to Bill Clinton, although she has

done other things since? Hillary Clinton is a familiar story to

anyone who watches politics anywhere. If someone is

well-connected and truly put their mind to it and doesn't step in it

too often, through sheer force of will, they can grab hold of a

political organisation. I believe your Labour Party has been shaped.

Something sad. Mere force of will. Trump is an outlier. I have always

been a little vague on voting for policy. American parties have more

tendencies. We usually vote for personality. I would not say we vote

for character. We have collected some dire characters in the past,

Lyndon Johnson, he who must be named, Richard Nixon. -- must not be

named. We do both the personalities, and how this personality of true it

into the American political psyche, I am blaming it on all of the forms

of media I don't understand -- obtruded. Beginning with relatively

TV and extending right up to social media and tweeting and whatever --

reality TV. I began to realise people were not voting for Donald

Trump, there were voting for the character on the TV show. This

character plays rather well. Tough and smart, the political slogan. He

plays tough and smite, whether it he himself is, I don't know! Smart. But

he is smart. You may not like him, but he is smart. Cunning. Let's make

the distension between smite and cunning. His business track record

is rather spotty -- smart. But he has done well by whether the

businesses did well on. You have to give him points for cunning. Let's

go back. How did you start? I can't imagine you were at school and some

careers teacher said what you want to do, I want to be a satire is to?

How did it begin? I began as an English major in college. In my day

in the 1960s, young American men habit of choice except to go to

college. It was fraternities, read, death and Vietnam. An easy choice.

-- fraternities and beer or death and Vietnam. I was painting to the

course catalogue in come across England. I said to myself, I speak

that! LAUGHTER

So I became an English major. I went and read graduate -- undergraduate

school and got a major and came out of school. There were a few jobs for

English on offer. I thought, well, I have read all this stuff. I must

want to write it. So I began to work as a journalist in a very modest way

in underground newspapers as they were so-called. You were at National

Lampoon. This is before that. That was respectable. I went to New York

and scrounged around and started to write freelance for the National

Lampoon. That was enormous fun. I was there for about a decade.

Eventually I felt like my job was simply to make fun of the grown-ups,

and there I was, 32 or 33, and I thought, I am grown up. When you

wrote Republican Party Animal, that seems like a different world now.

There was a lot of junking and tired living in journalism. -- chicken.

That is frowned upon. But maybe that was part of it. -- drinking and hard

living. The Republican Party, when I was initially confessing myself to

be what I called a p down Republican, I was conservative in my

politics but not my life -- pants down. Most people growing up are

getting more small C conservative, things like getting married and

having children. Was there a moment when you had a child got married and

thought you are conservative? That was all years in the future. There

was a moment when I was sort of shocked out of my 1968 Paris style

communism, when I first got a job. This was before went work at

National Lampoon. I was a hippy and broke and finally I just had to get

a job and I got paid $150 every two weeks. I was really booking forward

to $300, as was my landlord. When I got my paycheque, I got around $179

after tax and union dues and health plan contributions. I said to

myself, I'm a communist. I have demonstrated for communism. I

protested for communism. A vandalised for communism. I have

rioted for communism. I finally get a job with a big capitalist

corporations, only to discover we have communism already. They took

off my pay! I am not Rockefeller. That was a bit of a shock. I was

looking through the Barnabas of your journalism and you wrote famously

that God is a Republican but maybe centre close is a Democrat -- on the

bus. Maybe that explains where your tax money is going. God is very

stern, usually portrayed as middle-aged or even older male. Lots

of rules and regulations. Very difficult to get into. God's

heavenly country club. God is not notably concerned with the material

well-being of the poor around the world. Centre close is a different

matter entirely. He is jolly, benevolent -- Santa Claus. He may

know who is naughty and nice, but he gives you present anywhere. --

presents anyway. I'm fascinated by how you write. First of all, do you

really write on and electric typewriter. Not any more. I finally

gave that up. It took a long time. I wanted. It would be so long to learn

to type, and I still only do it with about five fingers. You are a proper

journalist. I wrote longhand for years and then I would type the

final copy. I finally learned to type, and then they changed

everything on me. I'm one of those people for whom every electronic

device, we just had at the beginning of this interview, I touched my

microphone and it went wrong. Often horribly wrong. One of the funniest

things, for me, the observations on foreigners. Foreigners are funny,

reddish, Koreans, the French are funny. -- British. Does that mean

you can write anywhere, in a hotel room, on a plane? No, I have always

gone places and taken a lot of notes. I come home and compose. I'm

not a good reporter on the fly. I hate that business of having to file

on a certain deadline. I'm honest and extinct species. I'm a long form

journalist -- almost an extinct leases. I was writing in excess of

2000 words on a deadline for a monthly publication, and that is

gone. That has gone. But you write the way

you speak. I worked for years on that. I knew I was a good talker.

People will say, PJ O'Rourke, but as your humour come from's I grew up in

a big Irish family. There is to kinds of Irish families. The hitting

and teasing kind. I luckily grew up in the latter. My family expresses

everything with teasing. That is how they said I love you, I hate you, I

am irritated, good on you, job well done. They teased me about

everything. I picked that up. Do you think the subjects of your humour

have changed much? Politicians are always... People in power, they are

big people. But some of the stuff in your earlier writing with drink and

drugs and girls, is that gone? I will be 69 years old next month. I

mean, I am happily married. So not all of it is gone. But most of it...

Perhaps I still drink too much. But most of that is gone. Yes, I mean,

in very early books like Modern Manners and Home Companion, they are

involved with humour and have to do with the life of a man in his 20s,

early 30s. Footloose and not behaving well. That is why it is

like you are not a politician. -- lucky. If you were a politician I

could refer back then. Anyone in journalism or even in the arts, as

broadly defined as that is, it is a badge of honour to be a complete

idiot. Are the British particularly funny? Yeah! Absolutely. The

funniest. Some stand without comparison. The strongest influence

on me would be somebody like Max Beerbahn. Just for the perfection of

his sentences. Yeah, the British... If you put British humour up against

an American humour, it sort of begins and ends with Mark Twain. You

say that. I am not trying to be generous. But you have some great

1-liners and observational comedy. There was one line you put down.

This was years ago. Peace in Communist Eastern Europe, they

believed the Soviet Union was perfect, but brought their own

toilet paper. That completely encapsulated what was wrong with

Russia. All you really had to do was look. You have travelled to some

very difficult places, Iraq, for example. And you also saw what can

happen to journalists and reporters in warzones. Your friend was killed

there. It is a dangerous job now in many places. Yes. And I am glad I am

not doing it any more. I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent.

They were golden years. We used to joke that our biggest danger in a

place like the Lebanese Civil War, even in the Gulf War, even in

Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia biggest danger was having our ear

talked off. Everyone wanted to tell there's story. It wasn't a matter of

getting them to talk it was a matter of getting them to shut up. I

remember frequently not speaking to English speakers. I would be

scribbling in my notebook. Are would be saying shut up, shut up, I have

the information I need. And then I would say yes, yes. Scribble,

scribble, scribble. Something else to blame on modern media is take

somebody like Bashar al-Assad, who is plenty horrible. And then

Vladimir Putin has his own enemies. He doesn't need to talk to a

journalist to tell his side of a story. Donald Trump spends a lot of

his time on Twitter. A perfect example. Donald Trump has no need or

use for a journalist. He can communicate directly with the

public. Yeah, he has known this since he was quite young. He has

been reaching out directly to the public. I understand from recent

revelations that he has reached out a little more than perhaps he should

have. One of the great uses of the new social media is before meeting

you I tweeted I am meeting PJ O'Rourke what should I ask him? I

got some great questions. One of those was essentially canned the

Republican Party survive Donald Trump, a party that you loved. --

can. If it was an organised political party in the British or

European sense, the answer would be a flat no. But because American

politics is a sort of van diagram that has greater and lesser degrees

of overlap. A tendency to say governments can do good and a

tendency of saying watch out when government starts to do good. It can

be darn expensive. But there is trim and is overlap on the mission. --

tremendous. Parties don't get destroyed the same way. I have seen

the Republican Party get destroyed before, quite deservedly, with

Richard Nixon and Watergate and Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon.

The Republican Party was destroyed. They were full of editorials in the

papers saying they will never be a Republican Party again. It will

never be significant in American politics. Then the magic years of

Jimmy Carter and back it came. The law of intended consequences. Yes.

LAUGHING. Most people want the good things in America to triumph because

we look at this country as still the land of opportunity. And just

wondering if you've got some of that had died for many citizens. -- you

felt. It is certainly a low ebb. The United States is a strange place.

You have this amount of people with opportunity. And government

interference in their behaviour over the last 2.5 centuries. It has had

remarkable results. Not all of them remarkably... Some of them

remarkably ugly. But I mean, the wealth and the human potential and

so one that has happened, it is great, it is something to be cheered

on. It is also exceedingly messy. And I would say that it is at a bit

of a low ebb at the moment. But I am not pessimistic in the long-run. I

actually think this is the idea. This is a good idea for a country

not to be a nation but a collection of people. There is a whole mission

for America, everyone does the best to their ability, what they want,

and take the consequences for it. LAUGHING. PJ O'Rourke, it has been a

real pleasure. Thank you. For more on arts and culture, go to