“Children,” says Mrs. Clinton, “are like the tiny figures at the center of the nesting dolls for which Russian folk artists are famous. The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood. But around the family are the larger settings of paid informers, secret police, corrupt bureaucracy, and a prison gulag.”

I added the last part for comic relief, something It Takes a Village doesn’t provide. Intentionally.

The late, lamented P. J. O’Rourke had something to do with my transition from liberalism to conservatism, back in the ‘80s. Not a determinative influence, but a step along the way. I would have become a conservative anyway, because liberalism was pulling its rug quietly out from under me, like Douglas Fairbanks in an old swashbuckling scene, though slower. But O’Rourke’s Give War a Chance was a book I picked up as I was coming to terms with the situation. I couldn’t buy his whole stoner-libertarian shtick, but a lot of the stuff he wrote made sense to me. And he always made me laugh, which counts for a lot.

CEO of the Sofa is a collection of his essays written around the turn of the millennium. He explains in his Acknowledgments that the title was suggested by Oliver Wendell Holmes’ classic The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and he frames the essays with imagined vignettes from his home life, in which he cross-talks with his wife, his assistant, his godson (who apparently lives with them), their babysitter, their daughter (later two daughters) and the Political Nut (who is himself), along with occasional others.

It’s been a while since the early 2000s, and some of the material hasn’t aged well. And, of course, O’Rourke is himself gone now, which is a bummer. But it’s still a fun ride, touching on a miscellany of subjects from the UN to childbirth, from Hunter S. Thompson to the indignities of middle age. I didn’t always agree with the points, but it was always funny. Great lines were everywhere – “Two hundred and fifteen dollars for your story, ‘Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People With Eating Disorders.’”

I wish I’d written that.

Recommended, with major cautions for obscenity, drug humor, and general bad taste.