Proof Via P. J.

I’m heads down in business, but have also been working (in my head) on a number of longer posts; I’ll try to have them up on the next several days. In the meantime, my lovely wife tells me she heard P. J. O‘Rourke on the local NPR station giving it to conservative talk show hosts. (Now there’s a line I never expected to type in my lifetime: infamous conservative P. J. on NPR sticking it to Rush Limbaugh. Proof of God, right there, ladies and gentlemen.) And lo and behold, here’s his content over at the Atlantic. Give it a read to pass the time, and here’s a preview to whet your appetite.

I tried watching The O’Reilly Factor. I tried watching Hannity shout about Colmes. I tried listening to conservative talk radio. But my frustration at concurrence would build, mounting from exasperation with like-mindedness to a fury of accord, and I’d hit the OFF button.

I resorted to books. You can slam a book shut in irritation and then go back to the irritant without having to plumb the mysteries of TiVo.

My selection method was unscientific. Ann Coulter, on the cover of Treason, has the look of a soon-to-be-ex wife who has just finished shouting. And Bill O’Reilly is wearing a loud shirt on the cover of Who’s Looking Out for You?

Coulter begins her book thus:

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don’t. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.

Now, there’s a certain truth in what she says. But it’s what’s called a “poetic truth.” And it’s the kind of poetic truth best conveyed late in the evening after six or eight drinks while pounding the bar. I wasn’t in a bar. I was in my office. It was the middle of the day. And I was getting a headache.

Yep. Proof of God, right there.