The Enemies List: Flushing Out Liberals in the Age of Clinton

by P. J. O'Rourke

Overview

Written with the same acerbic wit and infectious humor that has made P. J. O'Rourke one of the most popular political satirists of all time, The Enemies List will keep you howling and his enemies scowling. From Noam Chomsky to Yoko Ono, from Peter, Paul, and Mary (yes, they're still alive) to all the people who think quartz crystals cure herpes, from Ralph Nader to the entire country of Sweden, P. J. O'Rourke has created a roster of the most useless, politically disgraceful, and downright foolish people around. Although a rating system of S=Silly, VS=Very Silly, SML=Shirley MacLaine was ultimately cast aside, the distinguishing feature of the cluster of dunces presented here is silliness, not political subversion. The Enemies List began as an article in the American Spectator and, as readers contributed their own suggestions, quickly grew into a hilarious and slashing commentary on politicians and celebrities alike. Now they have been named, we just need to figure out what to do with them. "To say that P. J. O'Rourke is funny is like saying that the Rocky Mountains are scenic - accurate but insufficient." - Chicago Tribune

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871136329
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	03/11/1996
Series:	O'Rourke, P. J.
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

P.J. O'Rourke is most recently the author if the Canadian bestsellers Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and A Bad Haircut and All the Trouble in the World, both published by Random House Canada.

Read an Excerpt

The Enemies List

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By P. J. O'Rourke

Grove Atlantic, Inc.

Copyright © 1996 P. J. O'Rourke
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-87113-632-5

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Chapter One

Our era is supposed to be the 1950's all over again. Indeed, we are experiencing anew many of the pleasures and benefits of that excellent decade: a salubrious prudery, a sensible avariciousness, a healthy dose of social conformity, a much-needed narrowing of minds, and a return to common-sense American political troglodytism. But there's one delightful and entertaining feature of the Eisenhower years which is wholly absent from the contemporary scene-old-fashioned red-baiting. Where's our McCarthyism? Who's our Tail-Gunner Joe? Why don't we get to look for Communists under our beds or-considering the social changes of the past thirty-five years-in them? ("Good night, honey, and are you now or have you ever been a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador?")

God knows the problem is not a lack of Commies. There are more fuzzy-minded one-worlders, pasty-faced peace creeps, and bleeding-heart bed wetters in America now than there ever were in 1954. The redskis have infiltrated the all-important exercise-video industry, not to mention movies and TV. Academia, too, is a veritable compost heap of Bolshie brainmulch. Beardo the Weirdo may have been laughed out of real life during the 1970s, but he found a home in our nation's colleges, where hewhiles away the wait for the next Woodstock Nation by pestering undergraduates with collectivist twaddle when they should be thinking about better car stereos.

We need some means of persecuting neuterers, nutters, and screaming greenies, some way to abuse entitlement tramps, participants in Gorby orgies, men who think the government is their mother, and women who think government can do the mothering for them. Let's give a wedgie to the whiners, criers, and wet smacks in mortarboards. Let's soap the windows of those who would beggar achievement, vandalize the lawn ornaments of magical thinkers, and heave rotten fruit at haters of beef, gin, and cigars. Let's tell ghost stories to the mollycoddles who fear atomic power, military strength, and the very puissance of Western Civilization itself and turn the garden hose on the people who can't bear their freedoms, their selves, or their society and want to vent those pathetic loathings on us, the betters.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Enemies List by P. J. O'Rourke Copyright © 1996 by P. J. O'Rourke. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

The ghosts of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon live on through political humorist O'Rourke's compilation of his New Enemies list. Debuting in 1989 in the conservative monthly American Spectator, it has since appeared annually. Readers of the magazine responded to the list by gleefully sending in their own nominees of individuals and organizations deemed too "politically correct." Thus, feminists, liberals, any elected Democrat at any level, various organizations (including the American Library Association), celebrities, TV talking heads, and the like are skewered here. Funny as the columns and reader comments are (even to liberals), in book form it's a one-joke, redundant whine. If your library doesn't have anything by O'Rourke and doesn't carry American Spectator, buy this; otherwise, save the money and interlibrary loan the magazine. Better yet, buy some of O'Rourke's previous books.-Pamela R. Daubenspeck, Warren-Trumbull Cty. P.L., Ohio

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