{"id":16731,"date":"2022-05-09T19:03:53","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T23:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16731"},"modified":"2022-05-09T19:03:53","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T23:03:53","slug":"the-ceo-of-the-sofa-by-p-j-orourke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16731","title":{"rendered":"‘The CEO of the Sofa,’ by P. J. O’Rourke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cChildren,\u201d says Mrs. Clinton, \u201care 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<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>

I added the last part for comic relief, something It Takes a Village<\/em> doesn\u2019t provide. Intentionally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The late, lamented P. J. O\u2019Rourke<\/strong> had something to do with my transition from liberalism to conservatism, back in the \u201880s. 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\u2019Rourke\u2019s Give War a Chance<\/a><\/em> was a book I picked up as I was coming to terms with the situation. I couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CEO of the Sofa<\/a><\/em> 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\u2019 classic The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,<\/a><\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a while since the early 2000s, and some of the material hasn\u2019t aged well. And, of course, O\u2019Rourke is himself gone now, which is a bummer. But it\u2019s 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\u2019t always agree with the points, but it was always funny. Great lines were everywhere \u2013 \u201cTwo hundred and fifteen dollars for your story, \u2018Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People With Eating Disorders.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I\u2019d written that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended, with major cautions for obscenity, drug humor, and general bad taste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cChildren,\u201d says Mrs. Clinton, \u201care 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 … Continue reading ‘The CEO of the Sofa,’ by P. J. O’Rourke<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-reviews"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16732,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16731\/revisions\/16732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}