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Go Home One Man's Quest To Become Even Less Funny

THE PLANK JANUARY 10, 2009

One Man's Quest To Become Even Less Funny

See if you can guess the author of the following paragraph, which kicks off this week's Weekly Standard cover story, entitled 'A New Circus Comes to Town.'

Is it too soon to talk about the failed Obama presidency just because
Obama isn't president yet? That depends upon how quickly Barack Obama
is able to apply the lessons he's learned from Management Secrets of the Illinois Governors.
So far he's not doing very well. He has allowed America's current
number one jackleg, crackpot, smut-mouth, slime-licking politician to
give the Obama Senate seat to a lovable old African-American doofus
whom no one has the heart to execrate. Roland Burris will be the kind
of ornament to this year's Senate that the broken plastic Rudolph with
its antlers missing was to last year's Christmas tree.

Any guesses? Well, the words above belong to P.J. O'Rourke, noted humorist and wit. Perhaps you think this excerpt is unfair to the 1960s-lefty-turned-conservative-funnyman. Try this one:

So what's the big deal about Bill Richardson and the highway
contractors? You want those highway contractors making their Democratic
presidential contributions during the primary campaigns of 2012 when
the "failed Obama presidency" is being challenged at the polls by
Hillary Clinton? Speaking of "witch," am I the only person who experienced an
unexpected surge of warm fellow-feeling for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when
Hillary was named secretary of state? I wouldn't wish dealing with her
on my worst enemy, who'd be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hillary is a witch! Hilarious. One strange aspect of becoming politically aware or active is that you enter into a world where everyone already has a reputation. So, suppose you started reading political magazines around the time of Bush's 2000 victory. You would have noticed that a man by the name of P.J. O'Rourke was allowed to write almost anything he pleased for serious publications. And yet the pieces were invariably humorless or worse. You really wanted to share this insight with others, but then maybe you would be accused of not getting the joke. Lighten up, you would be told. Don't you see the humor, or are you too politically correct to laugh? The only theory to reach for was the one which stated that O'Rourke used to be funny but then hit a rough patch. The problem was that the old stuff was not funny, either. For example, here is O'Rourke on homeless activist Mitch Snyder (from decades ago): "The perennial homeless advocate and incessant protest-faster who would
commit suicide a few months later, thereby obtaining an eternal home,
and a warm one at that." Hah! 

I suppose the only other question is whether this sort of thing is funny to right-wingers. In his current piece, O'Rourke has a few jokes along the lines of this one:

In the language of politics there is only one translation for the phrase "hope and change," to wit, "big, fat government."

So then, the question remains: Does anyone find this stuff humorous? And if so, will they come out and say so? My sneaking suspicion is that inertia--more than anything else--is responsible for O'Rourke's continued presence in American cultural life.

--Isaac Chotiner

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18 comments

I thought your headline referred to Al Franken.

- nbarry

January 10, 2009 at 7:49pm

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Franken will naturally be less funny that he's been in the past because, after all, he will be a United States Senator from the State of Minnesota in a few weeks. Even then, though, he'll crap funnier than O'Rourke.

- WoodyBombay

January 10, 2009 at 8:05pm

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Holidays in Hell was pretty hilarious.  But threshold-breaking hyperbole was in back in 1987.  Right now it's just annoying.  

- dylanposer

January 10, 2009 at 8:39pm

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nbarry, I thought it referred to Dennis Miller, I forgot that PJ O'Rourke was even still alive.

Isaac, there are actually some conservatives who found American Carol funny, to me that was about the worst movie of the year and only managed to survive the whole movie by sexually harassing my wife throughtout most of it (the theater was pretty much empty)

- blackton

January 10, 2009 at 9:48pm

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You know, I've never tuned in to the right-wing hate machine.  Not ever.

So there's a terrific amount of political info---stuff that moves big blocs of

voters that I am plain ignorant of.  Including P.J. Who??  He's very unfunny.

And in his crude overreaching for funny, he's just, not sad, exactly, but

pathetic.

- wscothan

January 10, 2009 at 9:56pm

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Thing is, he's still usually pretty funny on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.  Maybe knowing he has to appeal to those NPR listeners keeps the funny alive, and it dissipates in the asylum of yes men found at the Weekly Standard.

- Crock1701

January 10, 2009 at 9:58pm

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blackton,

You paid to see that movie in a theater? Really?

- WoodyBombay

January 10, 2009 at 10:13pm

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Well blackton, apparently the DVD Commentary's... interesting.

www.avclub.com/.../commentary_tracks_of_the_damne_0

- Crock1701

January 11, 2009 at 1:36am

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Crock's right -- but I don't think it's because he's faced with an audience of ideological NPR listeners per se.  It's more that, on WWDTM, O'Rourke has to dial down the over-stretched smartass columnist register to adapt to a relatively good-humored show with a lot of in-the-moment non-political comic repartee that requires spontaneity and a feel for the situation.  He has to be a nicer guy, in other words.

- ironyroad

January 11, 2009 at 4:21am

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It's like Jonah Goldberg, who is quite sane (and likable) when interacting with another but goes absolutely berserk when he puts his fingers to the keyboard.  Maybe wing nuts are sane enough to behave in the presence of others but lose all control in the isolation of writing.

- raylward

January 11, 2009 at 8:44am

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Agreed that O'Rourke was funny in Holidays in Hell but not since.

Reason?  Holidays in Hell required actual reporting, as opposed to sitting back and snarking at what he reads in the papers.

P. J. needs to get out on the road some more.

- timteeter

January 11, 2009 at 10:44am

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I have the opposite reaction to crock and irony. I used to enjoy PJ on "Wait Wait," but since about 2006 his appearances there have struck me as cringeworthy. He'll make a "joke" that not only isn't funny, but isn't even conceivably funny, in the vein of a child who just says "not!" and then laughs at his own genius, and PJ will chuckle his self-satisfied little chuckle and then the rest of the guests will go on as if PJ had not spoken at all. That's anti-comedy, and it's a definite change in PJ from previously.

Then again, I have the same reaction to Dave Barry these days, too. Perhaps it's a question of lacking the discipline of the weekly deadline, or of getting old and wealthy. Comics who rarely perform tend not to be funny when they do, and there also seems to be something about becoming old and financially comfortable that deactivates the funny switch in humorists. PJ O'Rourke suffers from all of the above, so perhaps it's not really his fault that he's lost his humor skills.

- rhubarbs

January 11, 2009 at 10:44am

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Yeah, he's a clearly a broken man and a lost soul. Like Mike Myers. Going through the motions with a clear "somebody for the love of God put me out of my misery NOW" vibe. Weird.

- psantillana

January 11, 2009 at 11:17am

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PJ O'Rourke is so 1990's. Still, when he first hit the scene, he wrote some funny, cutting stuff that certainly showed a [rare] conservative wit. The problem is that the conservative humor market has morphed into something more crass, less humorous, and characterized by hate and an all encompassing resentment, exemplified by the success of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Coutler is sort of the Standard for right wing humor and on that note, O'Rourke just can't compete, though this post make it appear that in a desperate career move, the dried up former enfant terrible is making a las ditch effort to remain relevant.

I find whole thing very sad and depressing. O'Rourke was readable, though I detested his politics. Now, he is just another has been wasting his depleted talent in an ignoble effort to sell his stuff in a degraded right wing market.

- thejauntyboulevardier

January 11, 2009 at 11:27am

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Another reason O'Rourke is no longer funny--changed political circumstances.

H. L. Mencken was amusing until 1929.  But attacking FDR in Menckenian fashion in the 30s just wasn't very funny.  The dust bowl probably made comments about country bumpkins vs. city-slickers sound pretty stupid.

O'Rourke could be funny in the Carter--Reagan--Clinton years, when government wasn't cool and personal peccadillos were everywhere.  But he fell flat during Bush 43 and his style does not fit the Obama age.

- timteeter

January 11, 2009 at 11:33am

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Yes, O'Rourke is not funny because he's lazy and unoriginal -- but also because he's partisan. Political humor, at it's best, takes no sides and takes no prisoners.  Lewis Black today, and way long ago, Mort Sahl.  For that matter, the first 15 minutes of the DAILY SHOW.  

Dan

- dbuck

January 11, 2009 at 12:58pm

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I remember the decidedly weird 1992 article in Rolling Stone when Jan Wenner, PJ O'Rourke, William Greider and Hunter Thompson went to have a conversation with Bill Clinton.  I think that was the last time O'Rourke was humorous.   Or at least in such a bizarre situation that simply reporting it was humorous.  Although, I must admit that my favorite version of the meeting was Thompson's addled take.

- kgrant1054

January 11, 2009 at 7:33pm

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O'Rourke is considered the sine qua non of conservative humor, which goes a long way toward explaining why the term is an oxymoron.

- WayneJM

January 12, 2009 at 11:32am

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