A New Age of Pundits, Politicos and Punch Lines

To the victors go the one-liners.

Soon after President Clinton got off to a fumbling start in office, American conservatives smelled blood and moved in for the kill. One of their strongest weapons was humor, and P.J. O’Rourke, writing in the American Spectator magazine, laid out a caustic plan of attack:

“Stand warned, Boy Clinton . . . Mr. Bill . . . Wet Willie, President Clinton and First Person Hillary: We’re going to laugh you out of office. We did it to the Carters and we’ll do it to you.”

It was February 1993, some 21 months before the Republicans would seize control of Congress and the national agenda. But the battle over America’s funny bone had been joined. Even in their darkest moments of exile, conservatives have enjoyed a savage brand of humor that yields no quarter to the left. And now, with so many Democrats running from their own punch lines, the Age of Right Wit is upon us--a potent force in U.S. media culture.

To be sure, liberals still have their comic forums: “Doonesbury” reaches millions every morning, and the success of Al Franken’s new “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot” (Delacorte) serves notice that the war isn’t over. But these days, conservatives are riding high.

Beyond the satire of Limbaugh and other commentators, the right has been invigorated with publications like the American Spectator and the Standard. O’Rourke gets stiff competition from other H.L. Mencken wannabes, and politicians like Bob Dole exercise their own style of dark, personal humor. Through it all, William F. Buckley’s National Review continues to skewer liberal Democrats with glee, making it the paterfamilias of conservative comedy.

“We conservatives are still moralists, but we’re merry moralists,” says David Brooks, editor of “Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing” (Vintage), one of five new books that highlight the flowering of humor on the right. Although they are hardly unique (earlier books by O’Rourke, Buckley and Limbaugh have collectively sold millions of copies), this marks the first time such a spate of political titles has appeared in an election year.

Besides the Vintage book, readers can sample “More Political Babble: The Dumbest Things Politicians Ever Said” (Wiley), “The Quotable Conservative: From Edmund Burke to Rush Limbaugh” (Birch Lane Press), “The Quotable Bob Dole” (Avon), and O’Rourke’s “The Enemies List: A Vigilant Journalist’s Plea for a Renewed Red Scare” (Atlantic Monthly Press).

Each title acknowledges the growth of conservative wit, yet adds an interesting wrinkle: As in any movement that gains power, fractious voices dominate the GOP laugh track. Quite often, the choicest bons mots are those where prominent conservatives take shots at one another:

“He’s got a mean little temper,” former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater said about Bob Dole in 1993. “Maybe he ought to go home.”

Goldwater’s line comes from “More Political Babble,” compiled by David Olive. Although the 244-page book covers the full ideological spectrum, it mainly quotes prominent players on the right. Consider Dole’s tart comment on House Speaker Newt Gingrich:

“You can go out and say: ‘I’ve got nine ideas.’ Well, maybe one of them is good. We’re the party of ideas, but that doesn’t mean every idea is a good idea. You hear Gingrich’s staff has these five file cabinets, four big ones and one little tiny one. No. 1 is ‘Newt’s ideas,’ No. 2, ‘Newt’s ideas,’ No. 3, No. 4, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ The little one is ‘Newt’s good ideas.’ ”

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Such banging under the boards is inevitable, given the growing clout of right-leaning pundits and politicians, says Peter A. Jay, a critic for the conservative Washington Times.

“For a while their voices were few and therefore easily recognizable to those who chose to listen,” he says. “But now there’s quite a chorus and things are getting downright noisy.”

Raucous, even. Most of the new conservative humorists target Clinton, but they also rip into the sacred cows of cultural liberalism. Some 40 of these voices are found in the new Vintage anthology, which was published to coincide with the GOP primaries. Brooks, a former op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal and now senior editor of the Standard, hopes to erase the image of conservatives as unfeeling, unfunny creatures from the depths. As he notes in the book’s introduction:

“In the melodrama of American politics, conservatives are the heavies. We are the stern ones, the thin-lipped ones. Even when we are complimented, it’s with phrases appropriate to a dangerous villain. . . . Well, I’ve been around conservatives, and ‘angry’ is the wrong word to describe them. Lately, ‘giddy’ might be more accurate. ‘Tipsy’ is sometimes appropriate. ‘Obnoxious’ is not to be missed. But most intriguing is ‘hefty.’ ”

How could it be otherwise, in a national movement led by Limbaugh and other heavyset men, like Gingrich, William Bennett, Ed Crane of the CATO Institute and William Kristol? These guys love red meat, especially when Bill Clinton is on the chopping block.

In Brooks’ book, Mark Helprin writes an open letter to the president, mocking his early efforts to name a woman attorney general and savaging his administration’s foreign policy:

“Mr. President, as Europe slides toward war you are Churchillian to make homosexual rights the centerpiece of your national security policy. As the nation reels under the assault of street criminals, you are right to focus on nannies and bunnies. . . . Have you considered Whoopi Goldberg [for attorney general]? She may not be qualified in the old way, but as long as the attorney general is a woman, must she be a lawyer too?”

Elsewhere, Florence King lampoons a “new sensitivity” on the left that has transformed Dorothy Parker, the tart-talking writer of the ‘30s and ‘40s, into a ‘90s victim of depression and misunderstanding. Parker’s explosive wit and mean streak have been downplayed by feminists and other lefties, King claims, because her unpredictable comedy makes them uncomfortable:

“The flattening of Dorothy Parker was inevitable because liberals run the Deconstruction Company. She reminds them of what Bob Dole would be like if he really let loose.”

Some feminists hope to spawn a different kind of humor--one that is warm, loving, fair and compassionate. “But that,” King says, “is like recommending calm orgasms.”

In another high point, former presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan ridicules a liberal-dominated culture that seeks happiness on Earth, regardless of God or religion:

“Somewhere in the ‘70s, or the ‘60s, we started expecting to be happy, and changed our lives (left town, left families, switched jobs) if we were not. And society strained and cracked in the storm. . . . My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief or existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our cabernet stage.”

Noonan and King are but two examples of funny women on the right. In “The Quotable Conservative,” Margaret Thatcher’s famous line about gender and power is duly noted: “In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

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Bill Adler, a writer who compiled the book, suggests that conservatives have won the war of words with liberals hands down. Time is on their side, he adds, noting that such verbal agility predates the Age of Limbaugh, reaching back to Edmund Burke in the 18th century.

Then as now, limiting government has been a powerful theme. Former President Ronald Reagan drew laughter from campaign audiences in 1986 when he said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”

Those are fighting words for conservatives, but if you didn’t know it was Reagan talking, you might have guessed it was the man from Kansas who’s running for president. “The Quotable Bob Dole” shows why the Senate majority leader is one of the funnier men in Washington.

Once, when asked to recap the 1979 TV competition between Roger Mudd’s interview with Sen. Ted Kennedy on CBS and the simultaneous premiere of “Jaws” on NBC, Dole spoke bluntly:

“Seventy-five percent of the country watched ‘Jaws,’ ” he said, “25% watched Roger Mudd, and half of them couldn’t tell the difference.”

To his credit, Dole can laugh at himself. The quote book, compiled by Jon Margolis, recounts a night in 1961 when a bumbling radio host kept calling him “Bob Doyle” and read this tortured summary of Dole’s early career: “He was born in Kansas, reared in Kansas. Prior to World War II he was a premedical student. He suffered a serious head injury in the war and then went into politics.”

It’s dark stuff, just the kind of material that O’Rourke has traditionally used to create conservative comedy. In his new book, the author reprints the best in a long-running series of imagined “Enemies Lists” submitted by right-thinking readers. There’s also a special section devoted to the Los Angeles riots, where readers mock those who have called for “understanding” of the root causes. The so-called Uebie award, named for businessman Peter Ueberroth, is proposed for several recipients, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, former Mayor Tom Bradley, Rep. Maxine Waters and Bryant Gumbel.

Elsewhere, O’Rourke rips the president, listing 100 reasons Carter was better than Clinton (“No. 43: The FBI didn’t kill anybody at Jonestown”). He ends the book, however, on an ideological note, rising above politics to make a telling point with humor.

Who among the various politicians today, he asks, would you ask to mow your lawn?

“Dole does a tidy job, but he never gets far. He keeps wandering away to talk to the neighbors about cutting their lawn. [Al] Gore hasn’t gotten started yet. He’s talking to the cat about dandelions being an endangered species. Gingrich is using the Toro to carve NEWT in big letters in the grass. And Clinton couldn’t decide whether to do the front first or the back. So he gave up. He’s inside raiding the refrigerator and flirting with your baby-sitter.

“A conservative could have told you: If you want something done right, do it yourself.”