The Rittenhouse Review

A Philadelphia Journal of Politics, Finance, Ethics, and Culture


Tuesday, April 16, 2002  

P.J. O'ROURKE
Never Funny, Always Irrelevant

Leave it to the persistently emetic, never funny, and always irrelevant P.J. O'Rourke to make light of the Israeli army's policy of preventing journalists (a professional community of which we were led to believe he was a member) from covering the movement of tanks, heavy artillery, helicopters, and bulldozers in the West Bank. [Ed.: Link requires registration and/or subscription.]

(Big suprise: P.J.'s ditty was published in The Wall Street Journal, one of the most reliable sources of reflexively pro-Israeli commentary this side of the home and the -- at least occasionally -- shared offices of Peter Kann and Karen Elliott House.)

Worse, P.J. does so while arrogantly and blindly ignoring the fact that Israeli conscripts took shots -- shots with real bullets from real guns -- at reporters they believed were getting too close to seeing what the so-called Israeli Defense Force was up to in the Palestinian camps and towns on the West Bank.

There are times when a humorist's attempt to be funny fails so badly it's sad. This is one of those times.

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