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.