Middlin'

I suspect that a lot of political satirists have been divided during the presidency of Donald Trump. On the one hand, he's a serious goofball who offers a wealth of material of which fun can be made. On the other hand, every time someone jokes about what the president might do, using wacky exaggeration to make the point in a funny way, he'd go ahead and do exactly that thing or something so far beyond it that they just give up and stare dumbly at the screen.

Although he's still insightful and perceptive and he still knows how to throw a funny line in a way that a lot of supposed modern online commentators and satirists can't match, P. J. O'Rourke's A Cry From the Far Middle has a distinct atmosphere of staring dumbly at the screen in a few too many places to be some of his best work.

The idea hinted at by the title is that someone with a long history of libertarian and conservative policy ideas finds no home with the protectionist, undisciplined and shallow man in the White House. But if opposing him means throwing in with the even wackier and lunatic wokery of the Democratic party that person doesn't feel like that's a choice either. Thus, "the far middle." Spectator USA columnist Bridget Phetasy uses the phrase "politically homeless."

A couple of longer introductory essays offer this idea as a frame for the pieces in the book, many of which have already appeared in O'Rourke's American Consequences magazine. And of course O'Rourke is a consistent enough thinker that his worldview does stay more or less connected to this central thread. But sometimes it's more less than more, and several of the short essays don't really hang together as solidly as some earlier books, such as Holidays in Hell, Give War a Chance or the magnificent Parliament of Whores.

One of the things that anyone following the news to any degree over the last four years could probably discuss ad æternum is how exhausting the process has been. The news cycle has operated at warp speed, with major events being subsumed and forgotten in mere weeks, if not days. Cry may be laboring with that burden, rendering even O'Rourke's mighty satirical eye a little sleepy. Reading it, you'll still probably laugh and learn -- just not as much as you might have wished you could.