Of Cows, Scuds and Scotch

By Michael Riley

No wonder P.J. O'Rourke loves being a writer. He can sleep late. There's no heavy lifting. And, unlike being a shortstop, he quips, writing is a lifelong occupation. Still, he never imagined he would have to play Cupid to a cow.

But George, his neighbor in New Hampshire, needed some help getting his heifer in the family way. So, while O'Rourke grabbed the cow's head and George hugged the middle, a farmer named Pete proceeded with the artificial insemination at the far end. Though he missed most of the intimate details, O'Rourke recalls one thing: "I will never forget the look on that cow's face." That same look, for just about the same reason, appeared on his face when he examined last year's federal farm bill, which, he claims, "does to the taxpayer what Pete, George and I did to the cow."

Only O'Rourke could score political points with bovine procreation. But weaving bizarre connections between mind-boggling subjects is a trademark of Patrick Jake O'Rourke, an acerbic master of gonzo journalism and one of America's most hilarious and provocative writers. A conservative with libertarian leanings, O'Rourke mixes a volatile brew of one-liners and vitriol, whether writing about the greenhouse effect or Saddam Hussein. And while his writings may not convert you -- after all, this is a guy who grins when boasting about cutting down 3,400 trees on Earth Day -- they may well make you an O'Rourke-ophile.

Last month he returned from a torturous assignment in the Persian Gulf for ABC Radio News. After weeks of dodging Scuds and eating bad hotel food -- not to mention going without a sip of his favorite fuel, Dewar's White Label Scotch -- he parachuted into Kuwait as an eyewitness to war's inferno and freedom's jubilation. He watched wide-eyed Kuwaiti women flirt with their liberators. He saw Marines reclaim the U.S. embassy. And he surveyed the surreal traffic jam of bombed vehicles on the highway to Basra. "It was nightmarish," he says, "partly because it was so perfectly familiar." Plus he nearly managed to blow himself up by peering into a booby-trapped box of rocket-propelled grenades on a hotel roof.

Like a moth to a flame, O'Rourke, 43, is drawn to exotic hellholes, from the Philippines to Orlando's Epcot Center, to find out just what makes the world such a horrible place. (Besides, it's usually great fun.) But it is not his war reporting that distinguishes him; rather, it is his eye for the bizarre, the mundane and the incomprehensible. During student riots in Seoul, while being pelted with roof tiles, O'Rourke took note of the spotless bathrooms. At Saudi gas stations, which have 58 cents-a-gallon gas and American-style rest rooms, he reported a problem with footprints on toilet seats. It seems not | everyone there is used to modern conveniences. And it may be O'Rourke has a thing for bathrooms.

Such traits -- and lines -- have propelled O'Rourke, who combines a devilish Dennis the Menace grin with the sure shuffle of a frat boy who's dating the homecoming queen, into America's journalistic elite. "He's got the hyperactivity of Hunter Thompson but with a less fried brain," says drinking buddy and political commentator Bob Beckel. Adds friend and humorist Dave Barry: "He's outrageous, and I like that. In the age of political correctness, I think it's good to have somebody who does that." O'Rourke's writing is driven by a practiced wit, a brilliant use of analogy, and a hard edge capable of offending almost anyone. With publication this spring of his latest book, Parliament of Whores (a Morgan Entrekin Book: Atlantic Monthly Press), a scathing indictment of the U.S. government, O'Rourke may be perched on the verge of a breakthrough to wider fame.

Over the years he has built a loyal following, particularly among cynical baby boomers. Although his first crude efforts at experimental poetry have been consigned to a dusty bookshelf in his seven-fireplace New Hampshire home, O'Rourke found success in the late 1970s as editor in chief at National Lampoon. By the early 1980s, he started free-lancing and soon became a Rolling Stone regular. Several books followed, among them Holidays in Hell, an outrageous account of his world travels, and Republican Party Reptile, an uneven collection of essays that includes his infamous "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." From there, he has become a member of what passes for Washington's political literati.

O'Rourke's evolution has taken him from juvenile lampoonery and sophomoric one-liners to a bitterly funny, and fairly astute, analysis of the Federal Government. Though a draft dodger during Vietnam, he saw firsthand the flaws of the 1960s ethic when the self-styled Balto-Cong raided his underground newspaper in Baltimore and claimed the paper was not radical enough. That, coupled with the fact that a huge chunk of his first paycheck went to the government, began to steer him away from liberalism. "A little government and a little luck are necessary in life but only a fool trusts either of them," writes O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores.

In the book, he blasts almost everyone, from the Supreme Court to the bureaucracy to those he derides as "compassion fascists" (read: liberals). He argues that God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat because God is a tough, unsentimental S.O.B. and Santa Claus is a sweet old fellow who doesn't exist. The rightful place for democracy, he writes, is "to shut up and get out of our faces." Such vivid images reinforce the book's conclusion: "The whole idea of our government is: if enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it . . . Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

But O'Rourke is your typical white-bread, middle-class suburban kid from Toledo. His father, a car salesman, died when O'Rourke was nine and left his mother, who later went to work as a school secretary, with very little. She remarried, and O'Rourke detested her new husband. "I was a fairly unhappy kid with a very active fantasy life," he remembers. He left home in high school, then returned for a short time before studying English at Miami University in Ohio. He recently married 26-year-old Amy Lumet, daughter of film director Sidney Lumet and also Lena Horne's granddaughter, and the couple split their time between a 60-acre spread in Shannon, N.H., where Amy is completing college, and a spacious apartment in Washington.

When he writes, O'Rourke retreats to a third-floor hideaway in his New Hampshire home. It's a manly place, replete with fireplace, dark wood paneling and mementos of his world travels scattered about. He shows no interest in computers, choosing instead to hammer away on an IBM electric typewriter. Up close, O'Rourke, like many funny writers, comes across as a fairly normal guy. He holds doors open for women, he likes kids, and he's proud of a tangy hors d'oeuvre he fashions from sliced cucumbers, black pepper and the cheapest vinegar you can buy. At the grocery store, he waits patiently in line to buy swordfish, but he refuses to purchase any lettuce you cannot toss from home plate to first base. His satiric quips often surface without warning, and nearly two decades of pun drill have honed this trademark skill, allowing him to punctuate any point with a snappy one-liner: "This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on aerobic exercise programs." But beneath this talent is an immense desire to succeed. Perhaps O'Rourke's troubled childhood or his mother's death in 1973 helps explain this unfettered ambition, which, along with his right-wing politics, is about the worst trait anyone pins on him. He made some enemies when he took over National Lampoon. "He went from combat boots to two-tones over a weekend," says former Lampooner Sean Kelly, who calls him a chameleon. But even Kelly concedes a grudging respect for O'Rourke's success. Although Koreans are still smarting from his essay that described them as "hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, 'the Irish of Asia,' " O'Rourke bristles at charges of racism and sexism, claiming he spares no group, including his Irish ancestors, from abuse. "I don't think there's anything in my writing that says being a male or white is better," he says, "but it's definitely the thing I'm most familiar with."

His worst flaw may be a rah-rah jingoism that informs some of his pieces, like the one in which he cheers the fall of the Berlin Wall. "The privileges of liberty and the sanctity of the individual went out and kicked some butt," he says. Or it may be that he feels no compunction to propose any answers to the problems he raises. Or perhaps it's that he often invokes the "I'm-just-kidding" defense as an all-purpose shield. But, hey, who can hold a grudge for long against a guy who explains that the Ottoman Empire got its name "because it had the same amount of intelligence and energy as a footstool"? O'Rourke simply calls them as he sees them.

Though he has taken pains to construct his literary persona -- a hard- drinking, drug-taking, fast-driving, womanizing hero -- this red-meat kind of guy has mellowed. He still chain-smokes Petit Nobel cigars, but he's given up cocaine and butter, and he even passes up cheeseburgers for chicken sandwiches. "P.J.'s image of himself is probably quite different from the public's perception of him," says friend Denis Boyles. "He might want to appear a bad boy, but I think the way he'd like to appear, sometime in his life, is as a Victorian gentleman." Readers should hope that never happens.