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Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government (Paperback)
by P. J. O'Rourke
| Category:
Comedy, Jokes, Humor |
| Market price: ¥ 148.00
MSL price:
¥ 138.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Devastatingly funny and true, this book is a masterpiece from P. J. O'Rourke, hands down the single funniest polticial observer in recent memory. |
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Author: P. J. O'Rourke
Publisher: Grove Press
Pub. in: February, 2003
ISBN: 0802139701
Pages: 240
Measurements: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00727
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0802139702
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- Awards & Credential -
The #1 National Bestseller in America (including The New York Times Bestseller). The author has also written other two New York Times bestsellers. |
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- MSL Picks -
This book is fantastic in two ways: It presents an intelligent, intricate look at how the US government works (or doesn't work) and keeps the reader not only interested, but constantly laughing.
Unlike many other so-called political satirists, O' Rourke doesn't just poke fun at politicians and institutions, he delves into the reasons why our government has become so bloated and inefficient. To be fair (and although its no secret O' Rourke is conservative, he usually is fair and open-minded), he does point out some of the things our government does do well and states that most of our elected officials do work hard and have the most honorable intentions.
Liberals may be apprehensive about reading a book from an author with a conservative slant, but partisan politics is virtually absent here. Unlike typical Republican lapdogs (e.g. Rush Limbaugh), O' Rourke doesn't preach and this book is more observational than anything else; making observations is more informative (and funnier) than stating opinions anyway.
This book was put together in the eighties and some of the examples and names may be dated, but thats inconsequential to the enjoyment of the book, since he writes about our institutions rather than events or people. Some of the stories will inflame readers, exposing the multitude of ways in which the government wastes time, money and lives, but the resultant black humor is so hysterical you're more likely to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
This may be O' Rourke's finest book in a career filled with great books; its a double-threat: Its funnier than most humor books and more informative and intelligent than most political/sociological books.
I can wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone who likes to think or laugh (that covers mostly everyone, at least outside of government).
(From quoting Richard Goddart, USA)
Target readers:
All the people who enjoy comedy, jokes, humor, laughters and a light-hearted way of living; people who are interested in how the US government works; English majors and advanced English learners.
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P. J. O'Rourke is America's leading political satirist and the best-selling author of ten books. After graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and attending the graduate program at Johns Hopkins, O'Rourke began his career of skewering both the left and the right on the ends of his razor-sharp one-liners. Among the many publications for which O'Rourke has written are The National Lampoon (which he first joined in 1973, becoming editor-in-chief in 1978), Automobile, American Spectator, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Harper's. He was also the Foreign Affairs Desk Chief for Rolling Stone, a position which allowed him to expose the hypocrisies of world politics from the Persian Gulf to the Philippines. Currently he is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow of the Cato Institute and a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
O'Rourke's books have been translated into a dozen languages and have been best sellers worldwide. Three have been New York Times bestsellers: Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which went to #1, and All the Trouble in the World. O'Rourke divides his time between New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
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From Publisher
P. J. O'Rourke's savagely funny and national best-seller Parliament of Whores has become a classic in understanding the workings of the American political system. Originally written at the end of the Reagan era, this new edition includes an extensive foreword by the renowned political writer Andrew Ferguson - showing us that although the names and the players have changed, the game is still the same. Parliament of Whores is an exuberant, broken-field run through the ethical foibles, pork-barrel flimflam, and bureaucratic bullrorfle inside the Beltway that leaves no sacred cow unskewered and no politically correct sensitivities unscorched.
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| View all 7 comments |
Library Journal (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
Investigative humorist O'Rourke puts this vividly cynical examination of how our government works into perspective when he asks: "What the fuck do they do all day, and why does it cost so goddamned much money?" In a manner that is more likely to grab a reader by the lapels and throttle him into hysterics than your average high school civics textbook, O'Rourke deftly skewers our three branches of government. That the enigma of government can be reduced to a parliament of whores is matched only by the enigmatic author himself. Described as an intelligent conservative, he is a National Lampoon alumnus and a Rolling Stone reporter who also garners critical acclaim from the National Review . Intelligent indeed! Sure to be a hit among liberals and conservatives alike. |
Peter Lorenzi (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
This clever, biting satire brings laughs to anyone who is both optimistic and cynical about our government. O'Rourke's take on why we get the government we deserve, and what we get in return is sharply insightful and so very funny that readers can forget (at least for a moment) to be sad because the joke is on us.
His budget proposal, from his cuts on bloated agencies to his final cut, the "circumcision" one, is both hilarious and a good, hard look at the way the American federal government throws money around and, often, away.
But it's not their fault, O'Rourke wryly observes. We ask them to do this TO us in the name of doing things FOR us. Or, perhaps, do it to the other guy so they can do something for me. The best idea might simply be to take some of the money off the table and not let them have so much to spend or waste.
Conservatives will love O'Rourke's condemnations and even the most liberal will have to concede many of his points. He's like Peggy Noonan on acid and, for all we know, he just might be. O'Rourke knows how to live on the wild, not just to comment on the other side. |
Orrin Judd (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
Among the current crop of humorists, P. J. O'Rourke is one of the very best. Though it must be acknowledged that he's operating in a target rich environment, his stories of government stupidity, overreach, waste, and arrogance are truly funny. He's pretty much a libertarian, though made uncomfortable by many of the social behaviors that it would allow and overly enamored of the armed forces, so he's just as likely to light out after stupid Republican ideas as he is to castigate Democrats. Parliament of Whores finds him in the perfect position to flail both, as he follows George Bush the elder to Washington in 1989, and sets out to examine the entire U. S. government.
Unsuspecting readers may assume that O'Rourke is just going to snidely lambaste bureaucrats, politicians, institutions, and government generally, but that assumption really underestimates him. He's after much bigger game, as he reveals in the title of the book :
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
The various government employees and elected officials actually come out looking pretty good. As portrayed by O'Rourke, they seem for the most part to be genuinely dedicated to their work and trying to do the best they can. It is the American people who come out of this looking pretty awful. Time and again, as he shows how useless, wasteful, and outrageously expensive the myriad government programs are, O'Rourke also makes it clear that they exist, and exist at such bloated sizes, because they have constituencies. And those constituencies are not the easily caricatured and vilified underclass, they are more often the regular work-a-day middle classes. You don't end up with a government as elephantine as ours unless those folks, we folks, in the broad middle have a huge appetite for government services.
In what I think is the best chapter in the book, "Protectors of a Blameless Citizenry," O'Rourke tracks a terrific example of this : the demand for government investigation of sudden-acceleration incidents (SAIs). If you recall the hysteria, this was the allegation that some vehicles, when you were just parked innocently in your garage, would suddenly lurch forward into a garage wall. Any objective observer could have taken one look at these SAIs and figured out that they were merely episodes where people shifted into Drive without their foot on the brake, or stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. But to draw such a conclusion would have meant blaming people, blaming taxpayers, blaming voters, for their own carelessness and stupidity, and that would be intolerable. Instead, it has become the particular duty of government to absolve us of blame for such manifestations of our own ineptitude, recklessness, and stupidity.
P.J. O'Rourke is a national treasure, if for no other reason than this willingness to hold us all up to well deserved ridicule. The troubling question that he raises in this book, one which Alexis de Tocqueville made in rather more measured tones in Democracy in America, is whether democracy is ultimately doomed by this very phenomenon, of the citizenry trying to avoid responsibility for their own lives. Once the people in a democracy realize that they can simply blame others for all of the problems in their lives, even those of their own making, the democracy is morally doomed. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
A good handbook for any student of government... a bit bitter at times, but, hey, that's why it was written! O'Rourke's observations make up the best of his books, with All the Trouble and Holidays in Hell close by. Lest you think he's nothing but a Republican lackey, he slams George Bush, S&Ls, and GOP foreign policy as much as he does agricultural subsidies, social security, and urban blight. Those diametrically opposed to the right may fuss and boil too much to enjoy it, but moderate and libertarians will enjoy it immensly. |
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