Putting Every Idiot...In Touch With Every Other Idiot. P.J. O'Rourke Talks to A&G

In September of 2018, author, columnist and thinker P.J. O'Rourke joined The Armstrong & Getty Show to talk about his then new book, "None of My Business".

During the discussion, O'Rourke discussed the many shortcomings that have followed the success of our Facebook/Google/Amazon-driven society, telling Jack & Joe that we're all far to obsessed with our devices. Says O'Rourke, "I just consider staring into those screens--the light coming out of the devil's behind". 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ugly times, so ugly ugly times, and who better to
talk to about them then the great p J O'Rourke,
who is the author of many fine books through the years,
including one that I read in my formative years. This
is praise that makes a guy I feel old, Parliament
of Horrors, which is a great eye opener about the
nature of government. Pj's new book is None of My Business.
PJ explains money, banking, debt, equity, assets, liabilities, and why

(00:23):
he's not rich and neither of you here he is
PJ or rock. P J. How are you, sir? I'm well,
how are you terrific? Thank you? I love the description
of your career as you're filing stories for Rolling Stone
Atlantic Monthly weekly standard from countries and not the nice ones.
My job was basically to watch people try to kill
each other. Sounds like rewarding work. Oh yes, yeah, well

(00:45):
instructive work at the very least. And uh, it's how
I learned economics. I mean, some people study in college,
some people learn the School of Hard Knocks, some people
read it up on their own. I watched people kill
each other, always for economic reasons. Interesting, What did you
learn from that experience? Which would probably take in any situation,

(01:08):
and including some of the ugly political ones you were
just talking about. Who profits from this? Who profits from this?
And then always remember that the profit isn't necessarily calculated
in money like it is for us normal people. Sometimes
it's calculated in power. Sometimes it's calculated in fame. And
even the good, good people, the peacemakers and the aid workers,

(01:31):
they're piling up treasure in heaven, aren't they. Wo. Wow,
that's that's interesting. So do you think our culture, whether
you know individuals in the country or politics, are even
more focused on that than they were back when you
started writing about it. Oh? Uh, They've been debased in

(01:53):
pretty much every way. Uh. Yeah, you know, the the
wonders of the Internet have really lowered the tone. I mean,
it's I look at this and I go, well, it
was bright idea? Was it to put every idiot in
the world in touch with every other idiot? Yeah, it's working.

(02:16):
I thought that the description you credit to your daughter
in the Book of the Internet and Social Media was priceless.
Do you do you have that in front of you
you recalling? Oh, yeah, so I'm I'm asking my millennial
daughter when she's still in high school. She's like twenty
nine in college, but she's still in high school. I'm saying,
how do you explain all this to me? Expecting some
sort of defense of of the internet. Uh, And she said, Dad,

(02:41):
it's horrible. You don't understand how horrible social media is.
It's like having a sleepover where everybody you know, whether
you like him or not, comes to the sleepover and
they won't go home. That's pretty good. Yeah. And and
the it's like the school debate team makes everybody from
everywhere is on it. Sure are Yeah, and the dumbest

(03:06):
kid is president. Yeah. Well do you think the democracy
can can can withstand this? I mean, will we get better?
Will the next generation be good at weeding out stuff
that actually is fake news crap stories and weed out
the idiots? And or won't we Oh? No, I think
we will. You know, I don't know if I'll live
to see it. You know, but in in all due time,

(03:27):
I mean when when? When? When? When print? When movable
print was invented and we got our first books, it
set off the thirty years War, you know between uh,
Bible reading Protestants and priest loving Catholics and all of
Europe was torn to bits, which is worse than what's
happening to us now, I think. And uh, but eventually

(03:51):
people began to sort out, you know, what in print
made some sense and what in print did not make
some sense. Um, but I mean we just barely re
covered from our addiction to television when along came the internet. Right.
You know that's both reassuring and horrifying. I mean reassuring
that we'll sort it out and horrifying that we're gonna
have to go through a really ugly period, which we're

(04:11):
doing apparently before we get that. Say so, yeah, I
mean I just consider staring into those screens to be
looking at the light coming out the devils behind. Wow. Wow,
that's a phrase worth memorizing. P J. O'Rourke is on
the line the new book is none of my business
about money, banking, debt, etcetera. Hey listen, and we've talked

(04:33):
a lot about money banking, debt, the real estate crash,
the Robert Baron's Wall Street, etcetera. Not to come off
as you know, Robin Hood, but um, what's your view
ten years down the line of all that ugliness back
in those seven or eight o nine, Well, you know,
We should have let the darn thing just crash, you know,

(04:53):
I mean when when when when the Hindenburg catches fire,
you don't stand around pumping hydrogen into it, you know,
you get out of the way. It would have been unpleasant,
but it would have been brief. And one nice thing
actually about the two thousand and eight crash was at
least there were real assets were involved. Now, the houses
may have been wildly overvalue, the loans may have been worthless,

(05:15):
but there was a house. When the when the this
internet thing crashes, what will there be I mean, if
if Amazon crash today, what what would what? What would
there be left? You know, a list of phone numbers
for ups men. Well in a lot of inventory, I guess,
But but the whole you know. But I mean the

(05:36):
real trick to bezos is a real trick is not
to keep any inventory. Uh. I mean that is to
move so fast, and it's not really It's not like
Sears and Roebuck that I had warehouses and warehouses for
all this stuff. It goes pretty much from the people
who make this h or somewhere overseas, you know, to
the ups man flirting with my wife. Uh, you're the

(05:57):
subtitle of your book is why You're not rich? Neither
of my theg why aren't you rich? Well, stupidity and
sloth would be Wow, we can hang out aside. It's
just incredible if we can all riches in a very
modest way and say what we really all want is

(06:18):
to have the nice middle class life that say, I
grew up with in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties,
when my old man made twelve thousand dollars a year.
And when you look at what it costs to replicate
that uh, four bedroom, to bath, to car, a week
at the lake, UH, good schools, safe neighborhoods. When you

(06:41):
look at what it costs inflation and justed dollars for
UH to to replicate that life today, you've got to
be rich. And all the more so if you insist
on having double that life. That is to say, you
get divorced and so you've got two families that you're
trying to provide this lifestyle for the cost is phenomenal,

(07:03):
way beyond the means of most of us. Yeah. P J.
Rourke is on the line of the new book is
is none of my business. At the same time, though
you know, I I grew up in a house that's
quite a bit smaller than the one I live in now,
and and are typical in a lot of neighborhoods, and
we seem to be quite happy. And I think we

(07:23):
we had one car for most of my youth and
then finally two and one was a pilot crap. But
I just think, well, you know, while it's simultaneously true
that the rich have a higher percentage of income than
they've had in many, many moons, um at the same time,
the poor are much more wealthy than the poor have
been in human history. Oh that's the truth. I mean,

(07:45):
objectively considered American poverty UH is laughable by world historical standards.
And not only that, but the poverty level, the official
government poverty level, is equal to the median middle class income.
And if you adjusted for inflation in the nineteen twenties,

(08:06):
just in the nineteen twenties, you were middle class if
you were at what's now the poverty level. But it's
all perception. People don't people don't mind perceiving that the
that the economic system is difficult, but they do mind
when they feel that it's grossly unfair. And when you
sort when you look at the Zuckerberg billions, it's very

(08:30):
hard to keep You know that the Zuckerberg's billions don't
affect your come I mean, he's not taking it from you,
and yet there is his feeling, an angry feeling. You
realize he's the Antichrist, right, Well, yeah, I mean you
can tell by the way he dresses. Come on, ne tie,

(08:52):
Yeah exactly. P J. L. Rourke, I've been reading his
books for years, as as Jack, guarantee you'll enjoy it.
You'll probably learn something accidentally. The book is none of
my isn't this? PJ explains money, banking, debt, equity, assets, liabilities,
and why he's not rich and neither of you. Hey,
it's great to talk. I hope we can do it
again soon. Good luck with the book. All right, it's
been a pleasure. Got two l O L s out
of me. I'll tell you the reason he's not rich.

(09:16):
Stupidity and slop. That's a good one, and the internet
being whose idea was it to connect all the dumb
people together? Yeah? So you know Parliament of Horse, which
was my favorite PG orrock book and was number one
on the New York Best Times bestseller list for a
long time. It's still worth reading. The names have changed,
some of the names have changed, except in the Senate UM.

(09:38):
But it reminds me it's it's a much funnier version
of UM Rules for Dictators. Oh, the Dictator's Handbook, which
is a book I've been talking about for for a
long time now, UM. And and This Town by Mark Leibovitch.
It kind of those are like my troika of Oh,
that's what politics is, okay and absolutely worth reading. You know,

(10:01):
several people, including Jonah Goldberg and his recent book, have
made that reference to the Thirty Years War, that that
that occurred right after the printing press just all of
a sudden, this dissemination of information, but we weren't people
weren't equipped to handle it. I can't believe this is happening. Well,
it's not happening. Just because it's printed on paper doesn't

(10:22):
mean it's happening. Well now, just because it's on the
Internet doesn't mean it's happening. But it could take a
while to shake out, and it can be very ugly
in the meantime. In fact, you might need thirty years
wards about them right amount of time. You need a
couple of generations to have lived, to live with that
their entire lives, to figure out how to deal with it,