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O'ROURKE
COOKS UP THIN GRUEL
EAT THE
RICH: A Treatise on Economics
By P.J. O'Rourke
Atlantic Monthly Press, 291 pp. $25.00
A satirist with eight books and a pile of magazine credits including
his position as Rolling Stone magazine's foreign affairs desk chief
on his resume, P.J. O'Rourke's Limbaughesque schtick is shootinging
easy potshots to his left while maintaining an "I poke fun at
everyone" veneer.
His last two broadsides were aimed at the U.S. government in "Parliament
of Whores" and political correctness in "All the Trouble
in the World." This time out, he gives us a "Treatise on
Economics" by way of an unusual travelogue. He starts with a
day on Wall Street, the heart of what he calls "good Capitalism,"
and then goes to a variety of countries, including Albania ("Bad
Capitalism"), Sweden ("Good Socialism"), Cuba ("Bad
Socialism"), Russia, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Shanghai in search
of the keys to the world's wealth and poverty.
"I wanted to know why some parts of the earth prosper and others
suck," O'Rourke writes in a print-bite sure to be quoted in every
review.
It's a great line, the kind of parlor-room conversation starter that
both liberals and conservatives can engage in with predictable differences
in perspective.
To O'Rourke's credit, he squeezes in enough facts, figures and observations
-- about how stock markets work, how money is made and spent, how
certain types of governments operate, and a whole lot of straight
journalistic writing as he undertakes his journey -- that he only
has time to scatter a few obnoxious barbs in the book like sour notes
in a pretty decent concert performance. The cheapest shot is a footnote
about cattle futures where he strings together Hillary Clinton and
"the cows at NOW" for some liberal-baiting. Hope no one
bites.
When he's not trying too hard to be juvenile, O'Rourke can be engaging
and evocative. Of an interview with a broker in the midst of his stock
market frenzy, he writes, "The New York Stock Exchange is the
Super Bowl of money. Being allowed on the trading floor is like being
allowed on the football field during the game and getting to follow
the players around."
He cites information throughout the book from the likes of the World
Bank and each country's governmental officials. Sometimes, though,
he uses facts as if they were props for an unfunny standup comedy
routine, and just comes off snide. "Tanzania is so poor that
its poverty is hard to calculate. Eighty-five percent of the workforce
is employed in agriculture, if employed is the word. They grow things.
They eat them. This does not generate W-2 forms or register on the
stock exchange that Tanzania doesn't have."
O'Rourke took his task seriously enough to plow through old college
economics texts, and gripes about their "puerile and impenetrable"
style, "The tone varies from condescension worthy of a Presidential
press conference to sly chumminess worthy of the current president."
His mix of humor makes the analysis, journalism and opinion O'Rourke's
an easy read, but even when he's trying to be stylish, the writing's
like a nice suit from a discount store -- smart but cheap.
Ultimately, O'Rourke hasn't written a useful econ book any more than
the ones he gleefully rips, and his comment about those old books
could easily apply to "Eat the Rich."
This review was published in the Rocky Mountain News Book Review
section, Sept. 1998.
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