Saved by fun

Fun saves us from political dictatorship.

P.J. O'Rourke, Driving Like Crazy

Conservative political humorist P.J. O'Rourke has always regarded cars in general and driving cars in particular as fun. Thus the above line from his 2009 book Driving Like Crazy nicely combines two of the main themes of his writing life into one pithy declaration.

Although the book includes a few digs at the likes of Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and the Bushes, his main focus throughout is cars and how much fun they are.

Besides being a political writer, O'Rourke has also written frequently for car magazines and for other magazines on the subject of cars. Most of the chapters in his book originally appeared as magazine articles or are based on articles he has written. He gives readers no notice of this beforehand, which could cause some readers to get no further than the first chapter, a celebration of the youthful pleasures of driving fast while drinking to excess, doing drugs and having wild sex. This is a satire he wrote years ago for National Lampoon, but he doesn't tell us this until later.

Most chapters concern test drives or endurance races through difficult areas, such as India and Baja California. In each case there are problems aplenty, sometimes mechanical and sometimes not, and there would be a sameness to these accounts except that O'Rourke's jokes are always different. And if O'Rourke drives cars for fun, we read his books for fun.

Here's a sample of his wit about the Jeep: "My personal theory about the visceral appeal of the Jeep is that it is purposeful-looking while having no clear purpose. The Jeep is inadequate as a pickup, drafty as a sedan, oversized as an ATV, and lacks sufficient cargo space to be an SUV. True, Jeeps will go almost everyplace but, if you think about it, Jeeps mostly go everyplace there's no reason to go."

Then there's this comment he makes, in an interview at the end of the book, about the federal government subsidizing General Motors: "Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force. What's another example of an organization that gets into the same business that you're in, except that their guys have got guns? That would be the Mob."

There he goes again. Cars and politics.