The Enemies List (O'Rourke, P. J.)

Truly a great writer. A cross between Twain, Hunter S Thomson and a wise cracking Irishman. One of my favorites.I've read everything he's written and it's worth reading again. Humor, fact and truth make him unique. I'd love to have a few drinks with him - I'm buying!

I was about to abandon the read then slowley there began to be some substance. Lists of persons and organizations don't much interest me. Thelast three chapters are the fine raucus analysis I expect from our author. He sure didn't mince any words with the clintons, I was in awe of what he said.

I am a huge P.J. O'Rourke fan... his wit and level of penmanship stand him above his peers. However, unless you enjoy reading one hundred pages of names with the occasional cutting remark, I would skip this one. Of all his books, this is the only one I am not wildly enthusiastic about.

Very disappointing for a P. J. O'Rouke book.

The American Spectator is sadly gone now (what's left of it is called the American Prowler), a victim of its own overzealous pursuit of President Clinton and itsdalliance with the loathsome David Brock. But many of the best writers on the Right once wrote in its pages, among them P. J. O'Rourke. Mr. O'Rourke is one ofthose writers who entertains us often enough that he can be forgiven for cashing in once in awhile, which is fortunate, because this is only barely a book. It starts witha very funny column, A Call for a New McCarthyism (American Spectator, July 1989), in which he calls for a new blacklist. Unlike the McCarthy era list though :"The distinguishing feature of this cluster of dunces is not subversion but silliness." And rather than barring these dunces from working and trying to hush up theirviews, he has the more diabolical idea of exposing them and their ideas to the harsh light of day : [T]he worst punishment for dupes, pink-wieners, and dialectical immaterialists might be a kind of reverse blacklist. We don't prevent them from writing, speaking, performing, and otherwise being their usual nuisance selves. Instead, we hang on their every word, beg them to work, drag them onto all available TV and radio chat shows, and write hundreds of fawning newspaper and magazine articles about their wonderful swellness. In other words, we subject them to the monstrous, gross, and irreversible late-twentieth-century phenomenon of Media Overexposure so that a surfeited public rebels in disgust. This is the 'Pia Zadora Treatment,' and, for condemning people to obscurity, it beats the Smith Act hollow.That's pretty funny stuff, but then you read the list and realize that almost all of the folks on it--Gore Vidal, Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Amy Carter, SusanSarandon, Mike Farrell, Tikkun, Garry Trudeau, the Sheen brothers, etc.--faded into obscurity on their own; they were so awful they weren't even worthy enemies.Unfortunately though, this initial essay was followed by six more installments (the last in November 1993) and some of these consist of nothing more thannominations from readers and Mr. O'Rourke's comments on their nominations. It all gets pretty tiresome.But then just as you're ready to toss the book on the trash heap, it's redeemed by two final pieces that were seemingly tacked on at the end just to flesh the book out to150 pages. The first, 100 Reasons Jimmy Carter Was a Better President Than Bill Clinton (American Spectator, September 1993), is very funny. The second, Why IAm a Conservative in the First Place (Rolling Stone, July 13-27, 1995), is not only amusing but also presents as good a defense of conservatism as you'll findanywhere these days. In light of its title and the gist of the piece, it almost has to be read as a response to F. A. Hayek's famous libertarian essay, Why I Am Not aConservative. Hayek, who seems to have understand American conservatism not at all, wrote : Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a "brake on the vehicle of progress," I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.Mr. O'Rourke on the other hand, though often characterized as a libertarian, accepts the conservative label and his definition of conservatism : The purpose of conservative politics is to defend the liberty of the individual and--lest individualism run riot--insist upon individual responsibility.contains the all important corollary to liberty, that the price of our freedom must be that we each take responsibility for ourselves. Libertarianism's major fault isthat it insists on the former but refuses the latter.On balance, the first and then the last two pieces make the collection marginally worthwhile. And Mr. O'Rourke does have to earn a living, so we'll not begrudgetoo much the filler in between.GRADE : B-

This is, frankly, a terrible book. I'm a conservative, but I didn't find O'Rourke funny, clever, or insightful in the slightest. This book is exactly what it claims to be: a list. It is a sequence of long, boring lists of names, many of long-forgotten figures and celebrities. Explanations for the choices are rare, and superficial.The essay about Carter at the end is mildly amusing, if trite. The "why I am conservative" is slightly better, but nothing most conservatives haven't already heard a thousand times before, in a more articulate manner.I've never read O'Rourke before this. They say his other work is better. I certainly hope so.

Good reading. Very funny.

These side-splitting lists were first published in the late '80's and early '90's. Since then, thanks to the Clinton administration the enemies of freedom and democracy have multiplied like mosquitos. P.J., get back to work, please.