:00:00. > :00:18.Hello and welcome to Cheltenham Literature Festival, one of your's
:00:19. > :00:22.great cudgel events, bringing together from all over the world all
:00:23. > :00:27.kinds of thinkers, scientists, logicians and novelists --
:00:28. > :00:32.CorelDRAW. My guest today is the Republican Party animal himself, a
:00:33. > :00:40.leading political satirist, he has been writing about the foibles of
:00:41. > :00:47.politicians for some years. -- cultural events.
:00:48. > :00:54.PJ O'Rourke, welcome to Talking Books. Thank you. Let's begin not
:00:55. > :01:01.with your previous work, but your next book, which is called darter
:01:02. > :01:06.how the hell did this happen? But it is not finished yet? The election
:01:07. > :01:11.hasn't happened yet, but I do know the title. The thing that worries me
:01:12. > :01:17.for the greatest living American satirist, had you satire Donald
:01:18. > :01:24.Trump? His terrible. It has been a terrible 14 months. I am a political
:01:25. > :01:29.satirist as you say. The election has been completely self satirising.
:01:30. > :01:34.I am apolitical humourous. It has been impossible to be funnier than
:01:35. > :01:38.Hillary Clinton's Kensit. I am a political commentator and can't get
:01:39. > :01:43.a word in edgewise with Donald Trump around -- head sits. Not only am I
:01:44. > :01:50.outraged, but unemployed. To take the title, how did it happen that
:01:51. > :01:52.the 300 million people of the world's greatest democracy and
:01:53. > :01:59.upward to candidates but nobody seems to entirely like? I think it
:02:00. > :02:06.is worse than that. Most people detest... I was being polite. Yes.
:02:07. > :02:11.The negatives for both of these candidates, for different reasons.
:02:12. > :02:15.For Donald Trump, he is a detestable man, so of course he has high
:02:16. > :02:24.negatives. Hillary Clinton, her situation is a little more context.
:02:25. > :02:34.-- complex. Bossy, know it all, self pleased, self-satisfied. Really self
:02:35. > :02:42.- anything with her. The pride of this woman. My analysis of it is
:02:43. > :02:47.that she is a person of virtuous boards. I don't take that away from
:02:48. > :02:53.her. -- thoughts. She has been at this for so long and it belongs to
:02:54. > :03:01.her and she must have it, and what it is she must have is power. She
:03:02. > :03:07.has a bust for power. That is an unattractive kind of greed -- last.
:03:08. > :03:11.That is a piling up of riches that can't be shared definitely. It can
:03:12. > :03:17.be very dangerous to the public. I think people sense at some
:03:18. > :03:23.subliminal level but this person is just so verging on the criminally
:03:24. > :03:28.ambitious, and in the case of the Clinton administration, parts more
:03:29. > :03:31.than verging. You say that, and there are many people who are
:03:32. > :03:37.listening, especially many Americans, who will not in
:03:38. > :03:42.agreement. Yet as a Republican, the famous Republican reptile, you have
:03:43. > :03:45.come out... I shall vote for her. For Hillary Clinton, which it said
:03:46. > :03:50.was the second worst thing that could happen to America. My
:03:51. > :03:55.endorsement. My ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Let me get my
:03:56. > :04:01.reading glasses. Somewhat barbed, I might say. She is the second worst.
:04:02. > :04:07.Perhaps. Yes, I say that right up front. I endorse Clinton, and she is
:04:08. > :04:12.the second worst thing that could happen to America. I endorse her in
:04:13. > :04:17.all her ponds and empty promises. Better the devil you know than the
:04:18. > :04:24.board of the flies on his own 757 going to and from on with goldplated
:04:25. > :04:27.seatbelt buckles talking sexist nativist isolationist mercantile
:04:28. > :04:34.listed edited would involve a crab. The electric is possessed by a Demon
:04:35. > :04:38.-- electric. Too, if you count Bernie Sanders, the Donald Trump for
:04:39. > :04:42.people still living in their parents' basements. America is
:04:43. > :04:48.extrinsic the massive outbreak of psychosis since the cell which I was
:04:49. > :04:52.and was the night, what kind of person doesn't leave a low Clinton
:04:53. > :04:59.dumped in a pond. Wicked and wet though she is, I pledge to aid her
:05:00. > :05:04.in confining Donald Trump to the stocks. Hillary is wrong about
:05:05. > :05:08.everything. She is to politics and statecraft what the Inquisition was
:05:09. > :05:15.to Galileo. She thinks the sun revolves around herself. But Trump
:05:16. > :05:20.earth trademark is flagged and will sail over the edge, here be
:05:21. > :05:25.monsters. Hillary is terrible, taking her opinions from the top of
:05:26. > :05:29.the star-studded social calendar in another day and place, campaigning
:05:30. > :05:40.from Gone With The Wind with the slogan fiddle D-Day. I endorse you
:05:41. > :05:45.anyway. Better than many things, including my third. Better a mangy
:05:46. > :05:54.cat than a rabid dog. That is a great slogan. Vote for me, better
:05:55. > :05:58.than a rabid dog. To go back to the question in the title of the next
:05:59. > :06:03.book, you can meet Redfearn the manuscript, how did it happen that
:06:04. > :06:07.the land of opportunity ends up with one candidate who inherited all his
:06:08. > :06:10.wealth and another candidate whose breakthrough into the politics of
:06:11. > :06:16.the United States was being married to Bill Clinton, although she has
:06:17. > :06:18.done other things since? Hillary Clinton is a familiar story to
:06:19. > :06:22.anyone who watches politics anywhere. If someone is
:06:23. > :06:29.well-connected and truly put their mind to it and doesn't step in it
:06:30. > :06:36.too often, through sheer force of will, they can grab hold of a
:06:37. > :06:42.political organisation. I believe your Labour Party has been shaped.
:06:43. > :06:50.Something sad. Mere force of will. Trump is an outlier. I have always
:06:51. > :06:56.been a little vague on voting for policy. American parties have more
:06:57. > :07:00.tendencies. We usually vote for personality. I would not say we vote
:07:01. > :07:05.for character. We have collected some dire characters in the past,
:07:06. > :07:13.Lyndon Johnson, he who must be named, Richard Nixon. -- must not be
:07:14. > :07:23.named. We do both the personalities, and how this personality of true it
:07:24. > :07:27.into the American political psyche, I am blaming it on all of the forms
:07:28. > :07:32.of media I don't understand -- obtruded. Beginning with relatively
:07:33. > :07:36.TV and extending right up to social media and tweeting and whatever --
:07:37. > :07:40.reality TV. I began to realise people were not voting for Donald
:07:41. > :07:44.Trump, there were voting for the character on the TV show. This
:07:45. > :07:50.character plays rather well. Tough and smart, the political slogan. He
:07:51. > :07:55.plays tough and smite, whether it he himself is, I don't know! Smart. But
:07:56. > :08:00.he is smart. You may not like him, but he is smart. Cunning. Let's make
:08:01. > :08:05.the distension between smite and cunning. His business track record
:08:06. > :08:10.is rather spotty -- smart. But he has done well by whether the
:08:11. > :08:19.businesses did well on. You have to give him points for cunning. Let's
:08:20. > :08:22.go back. How did you start? I can't imagine you were at school and some
:08:23. > :08:27.careers teacher said what you want to do, I want to be a satire is to?
:08:28. > :08:33.How did it begin? I began as an English major in college. In my day
:08:34. > :08:37.in the 1960s, young American men habit of choice except to go to
:08:38. > :08:44.college. It was fraternities, read, death and Vietnam. An easy choice.
:08:45. > :08:49.-- fraternities and beer or death and Vietnam. I was painting to the
:08:50. > :08:52.course catalogue in come across England. I said to myself, I speak
:08:53. > :08:58.that! LAUGHTER
:08:59. > :09:04.So I became an English major. I went and read graduate -- undergraduate
:09:05. > :09:13.school and got a major and came out of school. There were a few jobs for
:09:14. > :09:19.English on offer. I thought, well, I have read all this stuff. I must
:09:20. > :09:26.want to write it. So I began to work as a journalist in a very modest way
:09:27. > :09:32.in underground newspapers as they were so-called. You were at National
:09:33. > :09:39.Lampoon. This is before that. That was respectable. I went to New York
:09:40. > :09:42.and scrounged around and started to write freelance for the National
:09:43. > :09:49.Lampoon. That was enormous fun. I was there for about a decade.
:09:50. > :09:53.Eventually I felt like my job was simply to make fun of the grown-ups,
:09:54. > :10:00.and there I was, 32 or 33, and I thought, I am grown up. When you
:10:01. > :10:06.wrote Republican Party Animal, that seems like a different world now.
:10:07. > :10:11.There was a lot of junking and tired living in journalism. -- chicken.
:10:12. > :10:22.That is frowned upon. But maybe that was part of it. -- drinking and hard
:10:23. > :10:27.living. The Republican Party, when I was initially confessing myself to
:10:28. > :10:34.be what I called a p down Republican, I was conservative in my
:10:35. > :10:42.politics but not my life -- pants down. Most people growing up are
:10:43. > :10:48.getting more small C conservative, things like getting married and
:10:49. > :10:52.having children. Was there a moment when you had a child got married and
:10:53. > :10:56.thought you are conservative? That was all years in the future. There
:10:57. > :11:03.was a moment when I was sort of shocked out of my 1968 Paris style
:11:04. > :11:07.communism, when I first got a job. This was before went work at
:11:08. > :11:14.National Lampoon. I was a hippy and broke and finally I just had to get
:11:15. > :11:20.a job and I got paid $150 every two weeks. I was really booking forward
:11:21. > :11:30.to $300, as was my landlord. When I got my paycheque, I got around $179
:11:31. > :11:38.after tax and union dues and health plan contributions. I said to
:11:39. > :11:42.myself, I'm a communist. I have demonstrated for communism. I
:11:43. > :11:48.protested for communism. A vandalised for communism. I have
:11:49. > :11:53.rioted for communism. I finally get a job with a big capitalist
:11:54. > :11:58.corporations, only to discover we have communism already. They took
:11:59. > :12:04.off my pay! I am not Rockefeller. That was a bit of a shock. I was
:12:05. > :12:10.looking through the Barnabas of your journalism and you wrote famously
:12:11. > :12:15.that God is a Republican but maybe centre close is a Democrat -- on the
:12:16. > :12:22.bus. Maybe that explains where your tax money is going. God is very
:12:23. > :12:28.stern, usually portrayed as middle-aged or even older male. Lots
:12:29. > :12:36.of rules and regulations. Very difficult to get into. God's
:12:37. > :12:39.heavenly country club. God is not notably concerned with the material
:12:40. > :12:45.well-being of the poor around the world. Centre close is a different
:12:46. > :12:51.matter entirely. He is jolly, benevolent -- Santa Claus. He may
:12:52. > :12:59.know who is naughty and nice, but he gives you present anywhere. --
:13:00. > :13:03.presents anyway. I'm fascinated by how you write. First of all, do you
:13:04. > :13:12.really write on and electric typewriter. Not any more. I finally
:13:13. > :13:19.gave that up. It took a long time. I wanted. It would be so long to learn
:13:20. > :13:23.to type, and I still only do it with about five fingers. You are a proper
:13:24. > :13:28.journalist. I wrote longhand for years and then I would type the
:13:29. > :13:32.final copy. I finally learned to type, and then they changed
:13:33. > :13:37.everything on me. I'm one of those people for whom every electronic
:13:38. > :13:40.device, we just had at the beginning of this interview, I touched my
:13:41. > :13:45.microphone and it went wrong. Often horribly wrong. One of the funniest
:13:46. > :13:49.things, for me, the observations on foreigners. Foreigners are funny,
:13:50. > :13:55.reddish, Koreans, the French are funny. -- British. Does that mean
:13:56. > :14:02.you can write anywhere, in a hotel room, on a plane? No, I have always
:14:03. > :14:10.gone places and taken a lot of notes. I come home and compose. I'm
:14:11. > :14:16.not a good reporter on the fly. I hate that business of having to file
:14:17. > :14:21.on a certain deadline. I'm honest and extinct species. I'm a long form
:14:22. > :14:27.journalist -- almost an extinct leases. I was writing in excess of
:14:28. > :14:31.2000 words on a deadline for a monthly publication, and that is
:14:32. > :14:41.gone. That has gone. But you write the way
:14:42. > :14:52.you speak. I worked for years on that. I knew I was a good talker.
:14:53. > :15:00.People will say, PJ O'Rourke, but as your humour come from's I grew up in
:15:01. > :15:08.a big Irish family. There is to kinds of Irish families. The hitting
:15:09. > :15:15.and teasing kind. I luckily grew up in the latter. My family expresses
:15:16. > :15:20.everything with teasing. That is how they said I love you, I hate you, I
:15:21. > :15:27.am irritated, good on you, job well done. They teased me about
:15:28. > :15:32.everything. I picked that up. Do you think the subjects of your humour
:15:33. > :15:39.have changed much? Politicians are always... People in power, they are
:15:40. > :15:42.big people. But some of the stuff in your earlier writing with drink and
:15:43. > :15:49.drugs and girls, is that gone? I will be 69 years old next month. I
:15:50. > :15:54.mean, I am happily married. So not all of it is gone. But most of it...
:15:55. > :16:07.Perhaps I still drink too much. But most of that is gone. Yes, I mean,
:16:08. > :16:12.in very early books like Modern Manners and Home Companion, they are
:16:13. > :16:18.involved with humour and have to do with the life of a man in his 20s,
:16:19. > :16:25.early 30s. Footloose and not behaving well. That is why it is
:16:26. > :16:31.like you are not a politician. -- lucky. If you were a politician I
:16:32. > :16:47.could refer back then. Anyone in journalism or even in the arts, as
:16:48. > :16:50.broadly defined as that is, it is a badge of honour to be a complete
:16:51. > :16:57.idiot. Are the British particularly funny? Yeah! Absolutely. The
:16:58. > :17:05.funniest. Some stand without comparison. The strongest influence
:17:06. > :17:13.on me would be somebody like Max Beerbahn. Just for the perfection of
:17:14. > :17:17.his sentences. Yeah, the British... If you put British humour up against
:17:18. > :17:24.an American humour, it sort of begins and ends with Mark Twain. You
:17:25. > :17:29.say that. I am not trying to be generous. But you have some great
:17:30. > :17:47.1-liners and observational comedy. There was one line you put down.
:17:48. > :17:50.This was years ago. Peace in Communist Eastern Europe, they
:17:51. > :17:52.believed the Soviet Union was perfect, but brought their own
:17:53. > :17:58.toilet paper. That completely encapsulated what was wrong with
:17:59. > :18:06.Russia. All you really had to do was look. You have travelled to some
:18:07. > :18:09.very difficult places, Iraq, for example. And you also saw what can
:18:10. > :18:15.happen to journalists and reporters in warzones. Your friend was killed
:18:16. > :18:21.there. It is a dangerous job now in many places. Yes. And I am glad I am
:18:22. > :18:25.not doing it any more. I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent.
:18:26. > :18:29.They were golden years. We used to joke that our biggest danger in a
:18:30. > :18:36.place like the Lebanese Civil War, even in the Gulf War, even in
:18:37. > :18:43.Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia biggest danger was having our ear
:18:44. > :18:47.talked off. Everyone wanted to tell there's story. It wasn't a matter of
:18:48. > :18:52.getting them to talk it was a matter of getting them to shut up. I
:18:53. > :19:01.remember frequently not speaking to English speakers. I would be
:19:02. > :19:07.scribbling in my notebook. Are would be saying shut up, shut up, I have
:19:08. > :19:11.the information I need. And then I would say yes, yes. Scribble,
:19:12. > :19:17.scribble, scribble. Something else to blame on modern media is take
:19:18. > :19:24.somebody like Bashar al-Assad, who is plenty horrible. And then
:19:25. > :19:28.Vladimir Putin has his own enemies. He doesn't need to talk to a
:19:29. > :19:32.journalist to tell his side of a story. Donald Trump spends a lot of
:19:33. > :19:37.his time on Twitter. A perfect example. Donald Trump has no need or
:19:38. > :19:43.use for a journalist. He can communicate directly with the
:19:44. > :19:47.public. Yeah, he has known this since he was quite young. He has
:19:48. > :19:53.been reaching out directly to the public. I understand from recent
:19:54. > :19:57.revelations that he has reached out a little more than perhaps he should
:19:58. > :20:01.have. One of the great uses of the new social media is before meeting
:20:02. > :20:05.you I tweeted I am meeting PJ O'Rourke what should I ask him? I
:20:06. > :20:09.got some great questions. One of those was essentially canned the
:20:10. > :20:14.Republican Party survive Donald Trump, a party that you loved. --
:20:15. > :20:19.can. If it was an organised political party in the British or
:20:20. > :20:25.European sense, the answer would be a flat no. But because American
:20:26. > :20:33.politics is a sort of van diagram that has greater and lesser degrees
:20:34. > :20:37.of overlap. A tendency to say governments can do good and a
:20:38. > :20:44.tendency of saying watch out when government starts to do good. It can
:20:45. > :20:51.be darn expensive. But there is trim and is overlap on the mission. --
:20:52. > :20:55.tremendous. Parties don't get destroyed the same way. I have seen
:20:56. > :20:59.the Republican Party get destroyed before, quite deservedly, with
:21:00. > :21:05.Richard Nixon and Watergate and Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon.
:21:06. > :21:10.The Republican Party was destroyed. They were full of editorials in the
:21:11. > :21:13.papers saying they will never be a Republican Party again. It will
:21:14. > :21:18.never be significant in American politics. Then the magic years of
:21:19. > :21:25.Jimmy Carter and back it came. The law of intended consequences. Yes.
:21:26. > :21:29.LAUGHING. Most people want the good things in America to triumph because
:21:30. > :21:33.we look at this country as still the land of opportunity. And just
:21:34. > :21:45.wondering if you've got some of that had died for many citizens. -- you
:21:46. > :21:51.felt. It is certainly a low ebb. The United States is a strange place.
:21:52. > :21:56.You have this amount of people with opportunity. And government
:21:57. > :22:01.interference in their behaviour over the last 2.5 centuries. It has had
:22:02. > :22:09.remarkable results. Not all of them remarkably... Some of them
:22:10. > :22:13.remarkably ugly. But I mean, the wealth and the human potential and
:22:14. > :22:16.so one that has happened, it is great, it is something to be cheered
:22:17. > :22:26.on. It is also exceedingly messy. And I would say that it is at a bit
:22:27. > :22:29.of a low ebb at the moment. But I am not pessimistic in the long-run. I
:22:30. > :22:34.actually think this is the idea. This is a good idea for a country
:22:35. > :22:39.not to be a nation but a collection of people. There is a whole mission
:22:40. > :22:43.for America, everyone does the best to their ability, what they want,
:22:44. > :22:57.and take the consequences for it. LAUGHING. PJ O'Rourke, it has been a
:22:58. > :22:58.real pleasure. Thank you. For more on arts and culture, go to