Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. This is my gift to you,
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to connect
Speaker 1: with our next guest. I've been reading his stuff for years.
Speaker 1: Huge fan, totally unabashed. I'm just gonna say it. P
Speaker 1: J O'Rourke. He's got a new book. It's called A
Speaker 1: Cry from the Far Middle. It is out. You got
Speaker 1: to pick it up because it captures so much, as
Speaker 1: he tends to do, of the absurdity of our time,
Speaker 1: but with such a rapier wit, as they used to say.
Speaker 1: He joins us on the phone from New Hampshire. P J,
Speaker 1: what a pleasure to have you here on Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: What a pleasure to be here, A pleasure to be
Speaker 1: here Otherwise unpleasant times so unpleasant. It's so unpleasant. So
Speaker 1: how do you even I mean, listen, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of material for you. How do
Speaker 1: you even go about attacking this right now? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: tough because everybody is so angry, and anger is not
Speaker 1: the friend of the happy humorist m So you know,
Speaker 1: it makes it really tough. It's not so much that
Speaker 1: I'm worried about offending people. It's just that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: worried about people being in any kind of mood to receive,
Speaker 1: receive any kind of lightning up um about anything. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's such a good point, you know, PJ.
Speaker 1: Because people it's like, you know, I try to have
Speaker 1: conversations with people, and it gets so heated and angry
Speaker 1: so quickly. I'm like, lighten up. We're discussing things, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have maybe a different opinion. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: a different opinion, but let's let's discuss it is. We've
Speaker 1: got the whole nation involved in that kind of fight
Speaker 1: that those of us have been married for a long
Speaker 1: time cannot help but be familiar with this kind of fight.
Speaker 1: It starts out over like whether we should slip cover
Speaker 1: the couch, and by the end of the fight, it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: And not only that, I remember when you flirted with
Speaker 1: that girl at that party in nineteen and you leave
Speaker 1: wet towels all over the bed and your socks are
Speaker 1: all over the floor, and it's it's the kitchen sink.
Speaker 1: You know, we're throwing the kitchen sink at each other
Speaker 1: and uh, we we we we better stop that. The
Speaker 1: other thing for it is, I don't get what the
Speaker 1: causes really, I mean, in a way I do. I
Speaker 1: Trump is shall we say that he's a somewhat divisive president?
Speaker 1: I could probably go that far. I get that. And
Speaker 1: then the pandemic has got everybody cooped inside, like seething
Speaker 1: with grievances, you know, and like letting their minds run
Speaker 1: on all the things that make them angry and stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, really we're not facing a huge external
Speaker 1: threat at the moment where you know, wors overseas were
Speaker 1: winding down. China is a worry, you know, but it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a word. It's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not an imminent throughout I don't think. Uh. The
Speaker 1: economy was perking along pretty well, and it shows some
Speaker 1: signs of being able to reperk um uh And you
Speaker 1: know why are we so mad? So you take to
Speaker 1: this on directly in your book, And the essay that
Speaker 1: I love the most is whose bright idea was it
Speaker 1: to make sure that every idiot in the world was
Speaker 1: in touch with every other idiot? Social Media, I have
Speaker 1: to think is responsible for part of this right, social
Speaker 1: media has got lots and lots to blame. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up. I'm I'm I'm old. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: seventy two years old. So I grew up in like,
Speaker 1: you know, the fifties and sixties, and there was this
Speaker 1: wonderful idea that we would all get along better if
Speaker 1: we could just communicate, you know, if the generation gap
Speaker 1: could be closed with communication, if we could just talk
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union, you know, if if if if races,
Speaker 1: if people from different races would just communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: And there was this big star, Malcolm mclowin, you know,
Speaker 1: who had the whole idea that that that television would
Speaker 1: create a global village. And we all thought, oh, this
Speaker 1: is just genius. This is just wonderful, and it gives
Speaker 1: me excuse to sit around and watch TV. And what
Speaker 1: thing is is that we were We knew about Marshall mcgloon,
Speaker 1: but we hadn't read him, because if you read him,
Speaker 1: Marshall McLellan, he was. I found a radio interview with
Speaker 1: him actually where a Canadian radio broadcaster says, I thought,
Speaker 1: you said, we're gonna have a global village, and there's
Speaker 1: almost like war and Hadrian rioting and stuff. You said
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a global village, and mcglellan goes, I
Speaker 1: said we were going to have a global village. I
Speaker 1: didn't say the villagers would like each other. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: there's one essay. It's the inaugural address. I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear the president, whoever it may be, deliver. Um. PJ.
Speaker 1: You do write a lot about politics, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's so much in here that I love, But there's
Speaker 1: also one that I'm just trying to find. I had
Speaker 1: a line highlighted just this reminder of the government is
Speaker 1: more than just one individual, even though that's who we elect.
Speaker 1: And you know, just tell us about kind of how
Speaker 1: you look at politics right now and what you kind
Speaker 1: of want to get across to Americans with your writings. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of the things about the presidency is we've
Speaker 1: just allowed it to grow into some sort of cult.
Speaker 1: You know, it's almost like a shi Jing king or
Speaker 1: or or Vladimir Putin, where the President of the United
Speaker 1: States becomes like this sort of sacred king who is
Speaker 1: responsible for our well being of our entire country. And
Speaker 1: and of course if anything goes wrong, we we we
Speaker 1: take that sacred king, and we sacrifice him. Um uh,
Speaker 1: actually what we We don't kill him the way that
Speaker 1: primitive societies do. We just give him a giant book
Speaker 1: contract for a really really boring book. But you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And the thing is that that's not
Speaker 1: how it works. If you read the Constitution, it's you
Speaker 1: get you get about five pages into the Constitution before
Speaker 1: the president is even mentioned. You know, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a chief executive. He's not the chairman of the board.
Speaker 1: We're the chairman of the board. He's he's just the
Speaker 1: chief executive. And he's supposed to make the laws that
Speaker 1: we make in Congress. He's supposed to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're put into force. Yes, he's the commander of chief
Speaker 1: during wartime, but it's Congress that has the power to
Speaker 1: to declare war, not the president. They should remember that
Speaker 1: every now and then when they're they're when they're griping
Speaker 1: at the president for the wars that he's had, that
Speaker 1: they've got the power. And uh, yeah, this was never
Speaker 1: meant to be some sort of of of of weird
Speaker 1: kingship or or or our cult of personality for good
Speaker 1: or for real. You know, we're not supposed to worship
Speaker 1: the president and we're certain and we're not supposed to
Speaker 1: revile him. Um, he's he's he's just he's got a
Speaker 1: corner office. But you know, he depends on us for
Speaker 1: for to do all the work. And yet p J.
Speaker 1: As I think about it, and and I am conscious
Speaker 1: of the fact that I and Carol make our living
Speaker 1: in the in the media, and you make your living,
Speaker 1: you know, in and around the media. And I listened
Speaker 1: to you and wait, wait, don't tell me, and I
Speaker 1: love those appearances. But you know, from McLuhan to Facebook
Speaker 1: to Twitter, like the media broadly defined is certainly, if
Speaker 1: not complicit in all of that, or is complicit maybe
Speaker 1: and and and maybe responsible for the way that this
Speaker 1: has been a little bit warped. We probably should all
Speaker 1: be grounded without TV for at least a month, right,
Speaker 1: and take away our phones. Right. I'll take my share
Speaker 1: of the blame here. I'm not I'm not not picking
Speaker 1: on you guys, but the um, yeah, we we get
Speaker 1: obsessed with trivia and then you know, of course, there's
Speaker 1: always been that thing in the media where if it bleeds,
Speaker 1: it leads Naturally we love a disaster. But then there's
Speaker 1: also this thing that has emerged more recently. If it
Speaker 1: sleas it leads, and um, yeah, I don't think that
Speaker 1: uh many members of the media could could could say
Speaker 1: of the media as a whole. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we each try and do our own job as well
Speaker 1: as we can. But overall, the media gets is easily distracted.
Speaker 1: It's getting sort of Facebook brain, you know where it's
Speaker 1: so easily defind Twitter or Twitter brain worse than Facebook brain.
Speaker 1: Facebook at least has some pictures of grandchildren. Uh so
Speaker 1: it's the it's the last thing anybody said, it's the
Speaker 1: last thing anybody heard, and uh, you know, end depth
Speaker 1: reporting is is is hard to find, and impartial reporting
Speaker 1: is hard to find. Um, journalists, I'm old enough to
Speaker 1: remember when journalists like really looked down on partisan politics,
Speaker 1: and the idea of a journal having partisan politics would
Speaker 1: be really like the I don't even know what to
Speaker 1: compare to exactly, would be like, uh, a journalist having
Speaker 1: like a favorite European soccer team. We have a few
Speaker 1: of those. Actually, yeah, well, listen, one thing I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, and you you know, you end up
Speaker 1: this new book, um that's out with a bunch of
Speaker 1: your essays, and you end with and I'm an optimist,
Speaker 1: and I know, Jason is to what I like about
Speaker 1: you USA, and you say three things I like about
Speaker 1: America fast food, suburban sprawl, and traffic jams. Um. We
Speaker 1: haven't seen a lot of traffic jams because of the virus.
Speaker 1: Um suburban sprawl, though we're thinking we might see a
Speaker 1: little bit more of because of the virus. As people
Speaker 1: he's moving out in the gundry, even if the country
Speaker 1: is only as far as Levittown, best get out of town. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's interesting, and you write, you do
Speaker 1: a pre preface if you will, in your book, because
Speaker 1: you say you wrote these essays in nineteen and then happened.
Speaker 1: As we know, it's been a year of just one
Speaker 1: you know, explicative and one an unbelievable story after another,
Speaker 1: and a lot of heartache, if you will. And I
Speaker 1: think we're all wondering what happens on the other side.
Speaker 1: You know, what are your thoughts about this year? Well,
Speaker 1: it rights itself, you know, I mean, people say, oh,
Speaker 1: America is so divided. America has never been this divided,
Speaker 1: And I go eighteen sixty one, I'm not sure America
Speaker 1: has ever been Having survived the sixties in the early seventies.
Speaker 1: America is a ship that's got a lot of keel
Speaker 1: to it, and we may take on water from the right,
Speaker 1: take on water from the left. We have a tendency
Speaker 1: to right ourselves. It's very important to remember America is
Speaker 1: not some country that once all where everybody all got along.
Speaker 1: That that ever ever happened from the moment that the
Speaker 1: colonists landed here and started to to fight with the
Speaker 1: people who were already here, who were defeated not in
Speaker 1: battle but by disease and demography. And then think about
Speaker 1: all the people in America. I mean, some came here
Speaker 1: a scam artist, some came here as religious nuts. Some
Speaker 1: came here uh totally unwillingly. We're dragged here as slaves. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of us here were forced. My family was forced
Speaker 1: by poverty, the Irish Potato family, um. Some people forced
Speaker 1: by bigotry, oppression at home, or pure lack of opportunity.
Speaker 1: Were completely random bunch of people turned loose into huge place.
Speaker 1: We hate each other. I mean, you know, in a
Speaker 1: nice and most of the time in a pretty nice
Speaker 1: and civil way, but every now and then it bursts out.
Speaker 1: We've never been there, We've never had this like golden
Speaker 1: age where we all got along, and I just think
Speaker 1: we should go back to arguing in a civil you know,
Speaker 1: see each other in a civilized manner. Yeah, well, here's
Speaker 1: hoping and we just discuss exactly, let's just have a conversation. Well,
Speaker 1: really really great to catch up with you. What a
Speaker 1: treat for us. Thank you so much. The book is
Speaker 1: called A Cry from the Far Middle Dispatches from a
Speaker 1: Divided Land p. G. O. Rourke. Um, you know I
Speaker 1: should have said this at the top. I read Parliament
Speaker 1: of who made me want to be a writer? You know?
Speaker 1: I was going to study politics in Washington and listen,
Speaker 1: I still have it. It's a it's a gem, and
Speaker 1: it's about the government and how it works or doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I gotta love a guy who says America is a
Speaker 1: ship that has a lot of keel to it. Jason,
Speaker 1: that is going on our T shirt list. There you go,
Speaker 1: it's on the T shirt list, p Ark. He's the
Speaker 1: best