Ferguson Andrew - Parliament of whores: a lone humorist attempts to explain the entire U.S. government

Praise for P. J. ORourkes

PARLIAMENT OF WHORES

A funnily savage attack on the political authorities of the United States... an unblinkered, often profane, everymans guide to Washington.

The New York Times

A hilarious indictment... outrageous, brutally frank and completely cynical... ORourke has a flair for the biting one-liner and a knack for leaving his readers nodding in agreement.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

One of the nations funniest writers... the wit is as sharp as ever. The book is loaded with lines that will make you laugh out loud.

Kansas City Star

A bilious, muckraking, liberal-bashing, Bush-burning, entitlement-tweaking, thoroughly hilarious screed that does for the inner workings of American government what Marion Barry did for hotel-room home movies.

Joseph P. Kahn, The Boston Globe

Parliament of Whores is exceptional. Its funny, outrageous, and right-on.

Curt Schleier, The Philadelphia Inquirer

An impressive series of scathingly hilarious screeds directed against the high and mighty and the low and relentless.

Joe Leydon, Houston Post

Best humor book of the year. What is truly extraordinary is that it is also the most accurate, incisive, informative civics textbook around today, a wickedly wonderful rebuke to the numerous educators who make the study of government so boring and off-base.

Forbes

Parliament of Whores is very witty. It almost makes government make sense.

Mike Wilson, The Miami Herald

P. J. ORourke is not a man to suffer foolsor foolishness. And thank goodness. Without his latest book, Parliament of Whores, we might never realize what a cesspool of silliness American government really is.... Civics class was never this amusing.

Deb Mulvey, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

[ORourke] is often so marvelously funny, its worth putting aside ones biases in order to enjoy some humor so sharp it draws blood from both right and left.

Paul Craig, Sacramento Bee

As his entertaining, informative and fun-filled book proves on every page, ORourke is arguably mainstream journalisms cleverest and most politically incorrect humorist. He is funny, flip, sarcastic, rude, irreverent, perceptive, a little nasty, bright and talented.

Bill Steigerwald, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This is a well-written, pointed, entertaining book. Its not journalism in the purest sense, but it works. And it may be the most forthcoming and accurate civics lesson in print.

David Gould, Savannah Press

PARLIAMENT OF WHORES

Also by P. J. ORourke

Modern Manners

The Bachelor Home Companion

Republican Party Reptile

Holidays in Hell

Give War a Chance

All the Trouble in the World

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut

The American Spectators Enemies List

Eat The Rich

The CEO of the Sofa

A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government

P. J. ORourke

Copyright 1991 by P. J. ORourke
Foreword copyright 2003 by Andy Ferguson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ORourke, P. J.

Parliament of whores: a lone humorist attempts to explain the entire U.S. government / by P. J. ORourke.

ISBN 0-8021-3970-1 (pbk.)

1. United StatesPolitics and governmentHumor. 2. Politics, PracticalUnited StatesHumor. I. Title.

JK34.074 1991 820.9730207dc20 91-8416

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

03 04 05 06 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

To Amy

Im sure nobody wants credit for my political opinions, so let me say that the influence exercised on me by the people and institutions mentioned below was exercised unintentionally.

The foremost of these unintentional exercisers was Andy Ferguson, former Assistant Managing Editor of the American Spectator and presently an editorial writer of great merit for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Andys knowledge of politics is encyclopedic, his understanding of political behavior is complete and his judgment of man as a political animal is fair and even kind. I have learned a great deal from Andywhen he could get a word in edgewise.

Not long after Andy and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. How come, I asked Andy, whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?

We have jobs, said Andy.

This book owes whatever virtues it has (the vices it acquired while I wasnt looking) to long, pleasant sessions of cocktail drinking with Andy and his wife, Denise, who, until sidetracked by motherhood, was Production Manager of the American Spectator, and with Mary Eberstadt, former speech writer for George Shultz and Executive Editor of the National Interest, and her husband, Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population Studies and Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Nick Eberstadt. These four people and my wife, Amy, endured the dress rehearsals, in inebriated monologue form, of everything here. Thanks to their diplomatically proffered critical skills, what Ive written is no worse than it is.

Ive also spent hours picking the brains and bending the ears of Jim and Marilyn Denton, John Podhoretz, Chris and Lucy Buckley, John and Anna Buckley, Michael and Barbara Ladeen, Peter Collier, David Horowitz, Ed Crane, Grover Norquist, the Honorable Chris Cox, the Honorable Dana Rhorabacher, Paula Dobiransky, Josh Gilder, Jacques and Julie Mariotti, Dave York, Chris Isham, Michael Kinsley, Bob Tyrell, Wladyslaw Pleszczynski and Ron Burr.

I owe a general and enormous debt of gratitude to Rick Robinson, a paragon among Capitol Hill staffers and maybe the only person on Earth who both understands the civics book chapter on How a Bill Becomes a Law and knows how to get good seats at the Kentucky Derby.

Three books that I found invaluable in writing this uninvaluable one were Losing Ground and In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray and An American Vision, edited by Ed Crane and David Boaz, President and Executive Vice President, respectively, of the Cato Institute. I commend these tomes to any critic of government seeking serious amelioration rather than comic relief.

I would like to thank Franklin Lavin for helping make the executive branch of government comprehensible, and my former (and, it is to be hoped, future) Congressman Chuck Douglas for doing the same with the judiciary. David E. Davis, Jr., Editor and Publisher of