Schlesinger Journals: Autistic Solipsistic Narcissism

P.J. O'Rourke is the most accomplished graduate of National Lampoon, which he edited in its heyday in the early '70s. He reviewed Arthur S. JR or rather, claims he didn't.

Naturally we cannot expect a man with credentials such as Arthur's to be merely a jerk; he's an idiot, too. The quickest riffle through Journals is enough to prove it. Said Arthur, after a 10-day visit to the USSR in 1982: "I fear that those who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse are kidding themselves." It just so happens that I was in the USSR myself for about 10 days in 1982. I was an ignorant, neophyte foreign correspondent on my first overseas assignment. But I did notice that the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic and social collapse.

Arthur wrote one book worthy of reading: The Age of Jackson. I read it back when I
still suffered from delusions of leftism---now I see it as merely mainstream liberal lucubrations that victims of academicide inflict on themselves in the "Publish or Perish" sweepstakes.

I saw him once on an East Side sidewalk---he was about five feet tall, if that. A hero worshipper and Nixon hater, JUNIOR exemplifies on how wrongheadedness combined with narcissistic self-regard times knee-jerk liberalism leads to suffocating silliness.