P.J. O’Rourke: on the confessions of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr

P.J. O’Rourke, a treasured guest in our Video section, is usually too funny to be truly cruel. But he chose to be truly cruel about Arthur Schlesinger’s memoirs, for reasons he makes all too plain, often by the apparently simple means of direct quotation. The result, however, is something better than a Major League baseball pitcher working his way through the line-up in a coconut shy where the coconuts are as big as melons. However he might appal his liberal enemies (I count myself as one of his liberal friends) P.J. rarely argues ad hominem. This man, however, is asking for it, and in this piece he duly gets it. For anyone old enough to remember the Kennedy Era, one of its chief lickspittles and palace flunkeys lives again. P.J. is an expert at drawing the general principle out of the shameful details, and the general principle here is that writers should be careful when they are invited close to power. It hardly needs saying that P.J. has always driven away from power at the wheel of the fastest Ferrari he can get on loan.
Read P.J. O'Rourke's article "Dear Diary, I Think I’m in Love"

A fine latterday example of the legwork that helped to make P.J. O'Rourke's early reputation, here is his 2008 World Affairs article "The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt".