another excerpt

Even if we look very hard, we find nothing truly funny in service to fascism or communism. But we may find that communists and fascists have otherwise promoted their totalitarianism by way of great and glorious contributions to film, music, and the performing arts - which is to say that anti-individualistic political persuasions may produce fine works of aesthetics, but apparently not humor.

This may lead us to suspect that humor is not subject to whatever strings together the totalitarian-accessible arts. It may also lead us to be wary of any political movement that has lost its ability to put forth comedic works in defense of itself and in opposition to its opponents - and not necessarily because such a movement thus shares a trait in common with communism and fascism, as some traits are superficial and this could perhaps be one of them. Rather, we should be wary for another, more self-evident reason. Political humor is heavily dependent on the ability to perceive and present irony; if a political population consisting of tens of millions of people cannot produce at least a few competent political humorists, we might draw some insulting conclusions about such a population.

For over a decade, the finest political humorist in America was P.J. O'Rourke, a reporter and veteran of National Lampoon whose early adulthood was marked by a gradual transition from Maoism to conservatism. O'Rourke's conservatism was never of the populist strain; he simply favored free market economics and a somewhat hawkish foreign policy stance in such situations as that a hawkish foreign policy stance might be in order. One of the more common elements of O'Rourke's earlier, more readable work was scorn for the histrionics that so often go hand in hand with mass politics, and particularly the empty ritualism of marches and protests. Conservatives, he asserted on several occasions, do not engage in such activities because they have jobs.

After the election of 2008, when the ongoing descent of conservatism into populism and anti-intellectualism brought us the Palinist tea party movement, the same humorist who had so consistently mocked the mentality of the protest-goer was suddenly unable to find anything funny in large gatherings of misshapen, chanting people. Instead, he criticized those media outlets that had been insufficiently respectful of such things, beginning an August 2009 Weekly Standard piece with the following paragraph of populist boilerplate:

Us right-wing nuts sure is scary! That's the message from the Washington Post. To put this in language a conservative would understand, the fourth estate has been alarmed once again by the Burkean proclivities of our nation's citizens. The Post is in a panic about (to use its own descriptive terms) "birthers," "anti-tax tea-partiers," and "town hall hecklers."

    "Burkean" is probably not the first term I would use to characterize large demonstrations by self-described "regular folks" in opposition to some perceived contingent of political elites, but then O'Rourke is certainly entitled to his hilarious delusions.

    He goes on to complain about a sidebar by Alec MacGillis in which the reporter begins with the assertion that "[h]ealth care reform is not that hard to understand, and those who tell you otherwise most likely have an ulterior motive." O'Rourke chooses to take this, as well as the entire piece, as some sort of elitist assault on his Burkean masses, to which he responds with a sarcastic quip that is supposed to summarize the intent of this Post piece: "All you town hall hecklers, calm down and go home."

    This is an odd interpretation of the article in general and that first sentence in particular, as the very next sentence of MacGillis' piece goes on to clarify the intent of the first as such: "Reform proponents exaggerate the complexity of the issue to elevate their own status as people who understand it; opponents exaggerate it to make the whole endeavor out to be a bureaucratic monstrosity." The rest consists of a summary of the major elements of health care reform proposals that were then under debate - who was objecting to what and why and what compromises were likely to be reached as the process continued and that sort of innocuous thing. But O'Rourke repeats his bizarre characterization of what this is all supposed to convey: "But calm down and go home, because the Washington Post said so."

    One must read between the lines, apparently. In fairness to O'Rourke's unfairness, though, the Post did indeed assign one reporter to compose a sort of political fashion piece in which is detailed the particular slovenliness of the heckler crowd. As O'Rourke characterizes the article:

Then, to add idiocy to insult, the Post sent Robin Givhan to observe the Americans who are taking exception to various expansions of government powers and prerogatives and to make fun of their clothes... Meeting with Givhan's scorn were "T-shirts, baseball caps, promotional polo shirts and sundresses with bra straps sliding down their arm."

We learn, then, that making fun of other people's clothes now constitutes "idiocy" according to O'Rourke, who must not be as familiar with his own body of work as I am.

O'Rourke once began an article on the 1990 Nicaraguan elections with a multi-paragraph critique of the sort of clothes worn by those visiting American liberals who supported the Sandinistas. He included similar critiques of liberal dressing habits in an article on the 1994 Mexican elections. He spent a good portion of an essay on the general increase in world travel decrying the fashions of tourists in general and the French in particular, and elsewhere took issue with the appearances of those among the Great Unwashed who now fly on commercial airliners. He made fun of those who appeared before the Supreme Court in opposition to a flag burning ban for their general ugliness. He spent much of the '90s mocking youngish leftists for wearing nose rings and black outfits - in fact, he did this so much as to actually ruin it for everyone else through overuse - and did so on at least one occasion in the pages of The Weekly Standard itself. He's written an entire article in which he and his girlfriend roam around an Evangelical-oriented theme park and make fun of everyone present for their general tackiness. And he once asserted that Hillary Clinton should stop messing with her own hair and instead "do something about Chelsea's."

And, you know what? He was right. Aging liberals who run around Latin America and Mexico dress like idiots. Half of the people one today encounters on a domestic flight would have been rightfully barred from the plane by the captain in a more civilized age. I don't even know where to start with the sort of French people who wander Manhattan in August. Earnest young leftists should be wearing suits or at least a button-down shirt instead of whatever the fuck they think they're doing now. You can probably imagine what a bunch of Middle American Evangelicals look like when they're at the mall. Chelsea Clinton was indeed a late bloomer, although I'm not sure that the appearance of a teenage girl who did not choose to participate in the political arena is of any more consequence than the appearance of a large number of screaming adults who have.

Seeing William Kristol pretend to admire the innocent primitivism of the sort of people with whom he would rightfully never associate is one thing; Kristol has always been worthless. But O'Rourke was once the greatest political humorist of the conservative movement, as well as a strong advocate of taste back when taste still favored Republicans. Today, he must defend the people he once despised; the GOP is now filled with little else.