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Such traits -- and lines -- have propelled O'Rourke, who combines a devilish Dennis the Menace grin with the sure shuffle of a frat boy who's dating the homecoming queen, into America's journalistic elite. "He's got the hyperactivity of Hunter Thompson but with a less fried brain," says drinking buddy and political commentator Bob Beckel. Adds friend and humorist Dave Barry: "He's outrageous, and I like that. In the age of political correctness, I think it's good to have somebody who does that." O'Rourke's writing is driven by a practiced wit, a brilliant use of analogy, and a hard edge capable of offending almost anyone. With publication this spring of his latest book, Parliament of Whores (a Morgan Entrekin Book: Atlantic Monthly Press), a scathing indictment of the U.S. government, O'Rourke may be perched on the verge of a breakthrough to wider fame.
Over the years he has built a loyal following, particularly among cynical baby boomers. Although his first crude efforts at experimental poetry have been consigned to a dusty bookshelf in his seven-fireplace New Hampshire home, O'Rourke found success in the late 1970s as editor in chief at National Lampoon. By the early 1980s, he started free-lancing and soon became a Rolling Stone regular. Several books followed, among them Holidays in Hell, an outrageous account of his world travels, and Republican Party Reptile, an uneven collection of essays that includes his infamous "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." From there, he has become a member of what passes for Washington's political literati.
O'Rourke's evolution has taken him from juvenile lampoonery and sophomoric one-liners to a bitterly funny, and fairly astute, analysis of the Federal Government. Though a draft dodger during Vietnam, he saw firsthand the flaws of the 1960s ethic when the self-styled Balto-Cong raided his underground newspaper in Baltimore and claimed the paper was not radical enough. That, coupled with the fact that a huge chunk of his first paycheck went to the government, began to steer him away from liberalism. "A little government and a little luck are necessary in life but only a fool trusts either of them," writes O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores.
In the book, he blasts almost everyone, from the Supreme Court to the bureaucracy to those he derides as "compassion fascists" (read: liberals). He argues that God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat because God is a tough, unsentimental S.O.B. and Santa Claus is a sweet old fellow who doesn't exist. The rightful place for democracy, he writes, is "to shut up and get out of our faces." Such vivid images reinforce the book's conclusion: "The whole idea of our government is: if enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it . . . Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."