O’Rourke’s book worth reading twice

PARLIAMENT OF WHORES, by P.J. O’Rourke, Vintage Books, 233 pages, paperback, $12.

Call him the cynic’s cynic.

P.J. O’Rourke, Rolling Stone’s White House correspondent, has tackled the federal bureaucracy and government with his own biting, sour, and often truthful brand of wit. Think of him as Hunter Thompson’s journalistic heir, Dave Barry writing about real issues.

In his best-selling “Parliament of Whores,” now out in paperback, O’Rourke is the perfect fuel for the fire burning among the electorate. Just when he becomes too outlandish, leaving the reader laughing along the way, he will write something that hits home, and you will bonk yourself on the head and think, “Well, of course it should be that way.” But it isn’t, and O’Rourke aims to make you as ticked off — in a smirking, head-shaking way — as he is.

He claims to be a conservative, but you won’t find him on the luncheon calendars of the Reagan-Bush set — O’Rourke is not your golf-and-martini type, although he might take one or two of the latter if offered. (Even if not offered). Few arms of government escape O’Rourke’s sights, and his targets range from the jillions of people and special interests fighting for government dollars to the same core problems found in his own hometown, a small New Hampshire village.

Some samples:

On George Bush’s selection of Dan Quayle as his running mate in 1988: “George must have been missing a few strings on his squash racket. Was everybody with a bong in the attic supposed to vote for the Bush ticket because Danny was forty-one years old? But baby boomers know us. We’re nuts. We don’t wan’t anyone in our generation near the ICBM launch codes, he might start channeling Idi Amin.”

Describing famed civil liberties attorney William Kunstler, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court: “But Kunstler — with eyebrows the size of squirrels and mouth, mind, and long-gray tresses going every which direction and who was wearing a hobo literature-professor-type suit no doubt carefully pre-rumpled at the special Pinko Dry Cleaner and Valet that they have in New York (`Be a Liberal or Just Look Like One’), where you can also get your hair uncut and your shoes scuffed — was the kind of ugly that begs to be played by Paul Newman.”

After attending a rally for the homeless in Washington, D.C., O’Rourke called up a friend on Earth Day and asked, “If the outdoors is so swell, how come the homeless aren’t more fond of it?”

While part of O’Rourke’s task is to amuse or anger readers, “Parliament of Whores” also is a reporting job written by one of the country’s top journalists. He actually went places to study issues before writing about them.

Readers who are not yet cynics, but mere skeptics, will enjoy “Parliament” as the antidote to today’s government governed by sound bites and control. And for those readers who still believe in government in practice, rather than just as theory, the book is short enough to read twice.

John Ripley is a reporter on the NEWS Government and Politics Desk.