{"id":1843670,"date":"2023-02-12T05:19:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T10:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1843670"},"modified":"2023-02-12T05:20:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T10:20:09","slug":"the-indispensable-humorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-indispensable-humorist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Indispensable Humorist"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-indispensable-humorist%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1843670&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<p>The title of this volume, The Funny Stuff may imply that other volumes are available of the same type, but it is not the case. P.J. also published 20 volumes of really funny stuff. O\u2019Rourke are, indeed, already weighing down our bookshelves.<\/p>\n<p>What this new book does is build a kind of museum exhibit of O\u2019Rourke sentences, the better to examine them up close while we note their careful construction and hell-for-leather action. As for the perky title, it\u2019s just an opening gambit, a promise that you\u2019ll want to pause admiringly here, there, and everywhere, maybe memorize some of the words and plagiarize them in conversation until you get too big a laugh and have to admit, yeah, I am just ripping off P.J. O\u2019Rourke.<\/p>\n<p>The Funny Stuff reminds us of O\u2019Rourke\u2019s amazing range for subjects and settings (cars, manners, sex, Africa, government spending, drugs and alcohol, and on and on), unusual for someone so inimitably himself on the page. The range is, I think, a happy byproduct of the author\u2019s well-known lust for life in all forms, which helps make him one of the most companionable writers I can think of.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I just read an essay by David Bentley Hart complaining about how modern English prose is so stripped of character that it&#8217;s hard to tell which writer wrote what sentences. Not so with O\u2019Rourke and not because of any grossly indulgent flourishes. His sentences, like his point of view, were the product of a true appetite for understanding paired with a comedian\u2019s gift for parody. These sentences are amazing examples of craftsmanship. The ones that weren\u2019t born perfect were surely raised to be perfect, turned upside-down and inside-out many times before their creator was satisfied that they weren\u2019t getting any more logical, readable, or funny\u2014then he hammered them shut and waterproofed them.<\/p>\n<p>As a staff editor for several years at the Weekly Standard, I was always excited when it fell to me to copyedit an essay by O\u2019Rourke\u2014excited, at first, but then disappointed because he had left me nothing to do but check his spelling. While I was able to query a few passages to keep us honest, the text shined like polished gold. He made copyeditors superfluous. Really. He made it seem like bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The title of the present volume, The Funny Stuff, might imply the existence of other volumes of the not-funny variety, presumably by the same author, but this is not so. Some 20 other volumes of genuinely funny stuff by the late P.J. O\u2019Rourke are, indeed, already weighing down our bookshelves.<br \/>\nThe post The Indispensable Humorist appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":1309023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[18388,18387],"class_list":["post-1843670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon","tag-humorist","tag-indispensable"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1843670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1309023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1843670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1843670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1843670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}