The libertarian satirist and journalist tries to get to grips with the US election but merely shows his laziness and foolish prejudices
It’s not just politicians who are getting older; satirists are, too. Near the end of this book PJ O’Rourke lets slip the startling revelation that he is just a few months younger than Hillary Clinton and only a year behind Trump, who at 70 became the oldest ever first-time president. Long gone is the O’Rourke of yore, a Republican answer to Hunter S Thompson, travelling the world’s danger zones in search of drink, women and leftwing stupidity. Now he operates more in the mould of HL Mencken, one of his heroes, who rarely felt the need to leave his beloved Baltimore in order to lambast the idiocy of his fellow Americans. O’Rourke lives, as it says on the dust jacket, “in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get”. This is American politics as viewed from the back room in front of the TV, feet up on the recliner chair
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