You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.
P. J. O'RourkeHow did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?
P. J. O'RourkeOnce we realized that there were these 25 invariable types - the class politician, the frigid popular girl, the kid who tags along behind the jocks - once we came up with these key characters in a cloud of marijuana, the whole thing just came together. One of the things I'm really proud of is how much of a high-school yearbook it is in its look, so much so that Hunter Publishing had the art director, David Kaestle, and I come for years to their annual convention and do a little talk on how not to do a yearbook.
P. J. O'RourkeAt Epcot Center the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world.
P. J. O'RourkePolitical systems must love poverty-they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
P. J. O'Rourke