P J O'Rourke RIP
Feb. 17th, 2022 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI paid my respects to P J O'Rourke by reading an early piece from National Lampoon about the joys of drunk driving. It's very funny, but in a groovy kind of way that would get a person cancelled if they attempted it today. There's misogyny, casual racism, toxic masculinity and practically anything and everything that's unacceptable today- except anti-semitism- which even then was a complete no-no. Of course O'Rourke is being ironic- even satirical- but maybe not as ironic or satirical as all that. He's taking liberties, but on the understanding that liberty is a good thing.
All comedy- even the gentlest- is about sticking it to The Man; that doesn't change, but the angle from which it's wise to launch the attack is always changing. O'Rourke's entitled frat boy persona was once radical but has now morphed into a version of the Man that all good contemporary ironists are bound to stick it to. O'Rourke's piece is only fifty years old but now needs to be placed behind museum glass with a warning and explanatory notes attached.
I'm not nostalgic for then and not making a case for now, just noting the difference. As for O'Rourke, de mortuis nil nisi bonum- and, as Yeats said of Swift- in whose company O'Rourke now finds himself-
"Imitate him if you dare,
World besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty."
All comedy- even the gentlest- is about sticking it to The Man; that doesn't change, but the angle from which it's wise to launch the attack is always changing. O'Rourke's entitled frat boy persona was once radical but has now morphed into a version of the Man that all good contemporary ironists are bound to stick it to. O'Rourke's piece is only fifty years old but now needs to be placed behind museum glass with a warning and explanatory notes attached.
I'm not nostalgic for then and not making a case for now, just noting the difference. As for O'Rourke, de mortuis nil nisi bonum- and, as Yeats said of Swift- in whose company O'Rourke now finds himself-
"Imitate him if you dare,
World besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty."
