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Monday, September 13, 2010

Bombed

Upgraded from the Moot:

Humorist P. J. O’Rourke has said that putting Democrats in charge of foreign policy is like giving the car keys and a bottle of whiskey to a teenager.

And then dry drunk W. literally lies us into a ruinous criminal war while the self-nominated Sooper Geniuses of the Project for a New American Century lurch and sway their way through the world declaring the UN building should be bombed, Iran should be bombed, Korea should be bombed, Venezuela should be bombed, you know, for kids! Is "humorist" PJ O'Rourke (whose books haven't been funny for a generation) sure it's the Democrats who sound like they're bombed?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

No. P.J. said:

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

But please. Feel free to continue making a fool of yourself. Carry on.

Dale Carrico said...

Republicans (among them many of their self-styled "libertarian" creatures) say people in government are corrupt, incompetent, lying thieves and then they prove it true of themselves whenever they find their way to government.

Democrats, at their best, believe otherwise and do their best to prove that too when they are in office, often in the face of corruption, deception, and obstructionism from the libertarian champions of the GOP.

It is, of course, the classic cheap Republican trick to hide their crimes behind the generality "government," just as it is a classic ruse of theirs to hide their concern with taxing billionaires a fair share for their disproportionate benefit from America's laws and infrastructure behind the generality "raising taxes."

I am sorry if I misquoted O'Rourke, as you say -- you will note that the passage is italicized. That's because I happened to have been accepting as accurate the quotation by somebody else to whom I was responding in the Moot. I'll grant it wouldn't have killed me to look the quote up, but you know things flow in conversational give and take.

You can be sure I will indeed continue to "make a fool of myself" in your eyes by pointing out that Republican anti-governmentality condemns them and not government.

And I still say PJ O'Rourke hasn't been funny for years, and was overrated even at his best. YMMV.

jimf said...

> > No. P.J. said:
> >
> > "Giving money and power to government is like giving
> > whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
> >
> > But please. Feel free to continue making a fool of yourself.
>
> I am sorry if I misquoted O'Rourke, as you say. . . That's because
> I happened to have been accepting as accurate the quotation by
> somebody else to whom I was responding in the Moot.

It's interesting, though, that the O'Rourke misquotation appears
on the jacket-blurb of a piece of right-wing literature.
I remember seeing it when I thumbed through the book at Barnes & Noble,
and you can find it (the blurb [mis]quote, attributed to author
Steven F. Hayward) here:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Conduct-Unbecoming/Robert-Patterson/e/9781596986213