PJ, Misplaced Criticism, and Preemption

If you’ve ever looked at my profile you’ll know I list PJ O’Rourke as one of my favorite authors. Mr. O’Rourke is living proof Republicans know how to have Big Fun, and he amply demonstrated this in his book Republican Party Reptile, among others. If you’re “of a certain age” perhaps you remember that PJ was at the National Lampoon in its salad days (i.e., when it was actually funny), joining NL in 1973, advancing to managing editor in 1975, and editor-in-chief in 1978. He left in NL 1981. NL hasn’t been funny since.

I digress. I stumbled on a few “PJ-isms” and thought I’d share a couple with you…here we go!

ACCENTS

A midwestern nasal twang gives listeners the impression that you have lawn ornaments in your yard. The slurs and ellipses of California speech strike the hearer as the first three danger signals of drug abuse in teen-agers. And a New York accent sounds like somebody buggering a goose with an automobile horn.

A Texas accent is safe. Texans are all thought to have money. You can acquire a Texas accent by any of the usual means of getting brain damage.

THE CAT: TODAY'S DOG

Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive, disloyal, and lazy. It's easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it's often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

An interesting column by Joe Galloway in today’s Salt Lake Tribune concerning the fact our “elites” don’t serve in the military. The opening grafs:

WASHINGTON - A new book expands on a familiar subject: the absence of America's elite and its governing class - and their children - from the ranks of our nation's military.
The book is AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service - and How It Hurts Our Country. Its authors, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, didn't embrace the military ethos so much as it embraced them.
Roth-Douquet describes herself as a former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer and Clintonite. She just happened to fall in love with a Marine pilot and married him, she told me, thinking that within a year she would ''turn him around'' and get him out of uniform.
Instead she found herself falling in love with the military life, so much so that this year, when her husband made the list for promotion to colonel, she was delighted because it meant they could have a few more years on active duty.

There’s much more, including the disconcerting fact that only about a third of our CongressCritters are veterans. That one fact, in and of itself, is disturbing, and there are many more disturbing facts in this brief column.

I saw Mr. Schaeffer, one of the co-authors of this book, in an extended interview on C-SPAN2’s Book TV this past weekend. Mr. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and filmmaker, saw his plans for his youngest son - ''top college, good grades, smart jobs . . .'' - go awry when his son enlisted in the Marines after he finished high school. SN1 happened to call during that interview and got an inadvertent earful, probably a lot more than he wanted or needed.

Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. Books like the one Ms. Roth-Douquet and Mr. Schaeffer have written are good things. Very good things, assuming these books reach their target audience, and said audience receives the message and takes it to heart. I’m glad Mr. Schaeffer had his epiphany, I’m glad he’s “converted,” and I’m glad he’s written not one, but three books on this subject.

But.

I found Mr. Schaffer’s attitude and demeanor during the C-SPAN2 interview to be more than a little off-putting. His various anecdotes about his immersion by association into the military culture and the veterans culture came off as the experiences of a detached observer, akin to Margaret Mead’s writings about the indigenous tribes of Borneo, who, in the end, “went native.” What I saw and heard was definitely a double-edged sword. I found myself, on the one hand, saying “Good for You!” while wondering, on the other hand, how someone could be so woefully ignorant of such a large portion of American culture that has always existed, if not literally next door to Mr. Schaeffer, but most certainly down the block or around the corner from his house. I know it’s just me, and I’m absolutely sure Mr. Schaeffer’s motivations are pure; after all, one doesn’t write three books on the subject if one doesn’t believe. Still, throughout the whole interview I couldn’t shake the feeling I was a resident of some Petri dish being observed for the first time. It didn’t feel good at all.

And there you have your misplaced criticism for today.

Several good editorials today on that impending North Korean ICBM test. My two favorites: An Act of War, Not a Test, by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen and If Necessary, Strike and Destroy, by Ashton Carter & William Perry in the Washington Post. The WaPo editorial is written by two former Clinton administration DoD officials. These individuals are right on the mark; we cannot allow the North Koreans to develop, deploy, and/or sell this technology to regimes hostile to the United States. If ever there was a case tailor-made for the Bush Doctrine of preemption, this is it. Kill it on the pad.

It feels like Mississippi outside this morning: 75 degrees with 52% relative humidity as I write. While we’re getting a minor reprieve from the heat today (our forecasted high is “only” 92), the increased humidity will cancel it out. And there are thunderstorms forecasted for later today.