Cruel, rude conservative meanie P.J. O’Rourke, your intellectual superior

Additional “insensitivity training” for the wimpering dolts in the environs:

You see there was this fellow, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died early this year and is on his way to being forgotten but who, unfortunately, isn’t quite there yet.

(…)

I made it all the way to page 12 before I was stopped cold by this sentence about Adlai Stevenson: “He is the one man in politics today who strikes an authentically new and fresh note.” And that note would be? Ah, the note that was passed to Adlai in every classroom of grade school, high school, and Princeton–the small, crumpled piece of paper upon which was written, “LOSER!!!”

Among his many other laudable traits — a fondness for good cigars, a large bank account, reportedly functioning genitalia — P.J. O’Rourke is also not a timid, dim-bulb, humourless careerist party hack.  He doesn’t care if telling it like he sees it might (jeepers!!) “turn off” current or future conservative voters:

…the Republicans should be grateful for their lying, thieving scum. It distracts the public from the things the Republicans have done that are honestly bad. Our postwar policy is creating Weimar Iraq. And when the Islamofascist Beer Hall Putsch comes there won’t even be beer.

Social Security privatization was presented to the electorate with a public relations and marketing flair not seen since New Coke. Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection. “Homeland Security” sounds like a failed 1980s savings and loan. Didn’t Grandma lose $20,000 when Homeland Security went under?

Then there’s No Child Left Behind. What if the child deserves to be left behind? What if the child deserves a smack on the behind? We have a national testing program to test whether kids are . . . what? Stupid? You’ve got kids. Kids are stupid.

So: this?

Or this?

The choice is clear.