P. J. O'Rourke

I should have posted this during my reading of his book On The Wealth of Nations but was derelict.

When I read Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw At The Revolution, I came across my favorite P.J. O’Rourke quote.

From page 219 of her book:

Well, I’ll tell you how I feel about European tastes. I love Europe, we all love Europe. But there’s that European attitude, the snide superior smirk you get sometimes in Paris or Bonn. I have only once seen it properly responded to, by the writer P. J. O’Rourke in a 1986 essay for Rolling Stone about his vacation in Europe. It was at the end of the trip and he was having an argument about America with a “Limey poofter” and he finally blew his stack. “We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock-market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together, and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original giant economy-size new and improved butt kicker of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes…. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying cheerio. Hell can’t hold our sock hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further…and buy more things that you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and s**t [edit by scooter] them out before lunch.”

Although he exaggerates to illustrate, I hope he was right or I hope we still are. I also hope that the Merkel and Sarkozy elections indicate a change.