Hello. [applause] you are such a gentleman. I kept asking p. J. Orourke to proceed me in coming out. So welcome. P. J. Orourke has written this wonderful book called the baby boom. He has fashioned this book as only he could. And it has some terrific lines, great oneliners and a lot of insight and actual information. And i was disappointed that that. [laughter] but we will forgive you. Okay. So id love to hear authors read their own work. So i hope you will indulge us. We have asked them to start us off with a selection from the book. A brief selection. And this was actually, this was the first thing i wrote when i sat down to write this book and ive been thinking about it for a wild. We are the generation that changed everything. All of the air is an epic of america, ours made the biggest impression on ourselves. [laughter] but that is an important accomplishment. Because we are the generation that created this and made the firmament. The lightness of the self from the darkness of the self and say let there be felt. [laughter] if you were born between 1946 and 19 to the fore, you may have noticed this your self as well. This is not to say that we are a selfish generation. Selfish means two concerned with the self. And we are not. Something that we are not as concerned with. But we are the self. And so before that it was without form and void like her parents and their dumpy clothes. [laughter] and then we came along. And now it is the socioeconomic and the religious and the secular and everything that creep upon the earth. If the baby boom has done one thing, it is to get a personal universe and our apologies for anyone who personally happens to be a jerk. It is kind of like fish, which is proverbially speaking, you teach a man to fish and he turns into a dry fly, up to his liver, with a thousand dollar graphite rod, well, at least his life partner is glad to have him out of the house. [laughter] so here we are in the baby boom cosmos formed in our image and tailored to our individual needs and predetermined to be eternally fresh and novel. And we saw that it was good. We saw it was pretty good. I wish it had a cooler name. So good luck to anyone who tells us to get lost. And its too late now. Were stuck as being described as exploding infants and now it is time that we have splattered ourselves all over the place to look back and think what made us who we are. And what caused us to act the way we do and what the league map and the truth is that if we hadnt decided to be young forever, we would be old. [laughter] [applause] the youngest baby boomers born in the last year when everyone thought it was hip to like lyndon johnson, are turning 50 years old. And we would be sad about getting old if we werent busy remarrying younger wives with children arriving and renewing prescriptions for drugs to keep us alive. We will never retire, we cant. The mortgages underwater and we are in dead up to the was new and it serves us right. Because we are the generation who insisted the passion for living should replace working for one. And so it is an appropriate moment for us to weigh and tally will we we have added to and subtracted from existence and reached the age of accountability and the world is our fault. We are the generation that has an excuse of excuse for everything. But the world is still our fault in a matter of power and privilege and demography. Whenever anything happens everywhere, someone over 50 years old signed the bill for it. The baby boom, its even as we are at the head of lies table is here with the millennial as theyre all saying check, please. [applause] wonderful. I actually, just a couple of paragraphs, do you need your reading glasses here . Yes. [laughter] this is near the end of the book. Its a bit of a summing up. So you can see where p. J. Lands with us. Bear to turn the page. Okay, got it. And yet we are the best generation in history which goes to show that this reads things. [laughter] but at least we are fabulous by historical standards. The baby boom was a carefully conducted scientific experiment. With him here call result. Taking the biggest generation in the most important country and putting them all into excessively happy family, irresponsibility, plenty of money. And a profusion of opportunities and a collapse of traditional social standards. And you get better people. Well, not better. But we are as maddeningly smug as abel and cain. But we are better behaved, although that may not be the better way to talk about it. We are willful and entitled and, you know, we are still swell. [laughter] [applause] we love that. Thank you. This book has a very interesting structure. The chapters are essay length. You also blended in some real memoir stop about your life along with broader thinking about the baby boomers and how we got this way. You start, as we all know, the baby boom started in 1940s and lasted the last year of the baby boom was 1964. You were born sort of on one end of the spectrum and i was on the other, although it was a defining characteristic of the baby boomers that we all look the same age. Yes. About 18 years old. [laughter] that is my rough estimation. You describe the experience as seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshman. And you are in the inner class. Yes, i am in the senior class. Its me and share and Hillary Clinton and bill clinton as well. [laughter] the seniors, we were like right at the voyage of the exploration. And we cut it very closely behind her parents. The greatest generation. We got dragged under the bow and we wound up a little bit soggy as Financial Advisors with tongue studs. [laughter] trying to start tea party protest, we are forgiven. The senior class was really on the vanguard. And by the time the freshman class came along, i think i am the youngest of four and i watched my three older siblings do all of these things and it scared me witless. And i did none of those things. So its as if i grew up in the 50s. The younger baby boomers are more cautious. And they embrace sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Who wouldnt. [laughter] to but you seen us in action. The older boomers in action. What works in general doesnt always work well when you set fire to the beanbag chair. [laughter] so kind of gets better behaved as we go along. One delightful aspect of the book is that you start by describing a very early memory near toledo, ohio. That is where im from. Youre watching the world to her brandnew Family Friends house. Yes, im standing there and im up to my chin and am watching the big kids go to school. And this is the silent generation. And they werent silent out there. It just seemed like, that all generations of kids had wanted to be grownups except for us. We wanted to be bigger kids. And that is a vow that we kind of cat. Escamilla actually make an observation about childhood that stop me. You say that children, the baby boom children were in control of their own childhood and our children work like maniacs, and yet we were a generation, where people have childhoods. Yes, if i get out of the house. Its a beautiful day. And its raining and its 30 degrees. [laughter] and they said it was a beautiful day. Get out of the house. [laughter] so ive never quite figured out the parenting style. We take a lot of grief for being helicopter parents. But our parents, they were strange. They could be like so cautious and so fearful. Like dont get to know people who are not from europe. [laughter] and that would be scary. [laughter] and then the fourth of july would come around and dad would hand this or that out. [laughter] and here are some explosives and they should probably take a license. And everyone has an uncle. My key might. But its like, this is a more respectable uncle. He was a businessman. His cottage at the lake would blow up on the fourth of july. He would give us each a lit cigarette. [laughter] but because that was the safeway with the firecrackers. [laughter] and we started to fill with matches, we could hurt ourselves. And then of course they drank. You know . It was a real stretch all day long until about 6 30 p. M. [laughter] of late, i know that i have this but can i take the car. [laughter] your experience with explosives comes in handy later on when you are living in what sounds like a really awesome drug fueled environment as a young adult and decide to celebrate with an occasion. It wasnt even an occasion. [laughter] okay, i tell you that story. I kind of did the hippie thing with both amps for a while there. And that kind of wised up. And this is not the incident that wised me up that probably should have. We had some dynamite. And we had rented a farm house out in the country and we were smoking hash and we happen to have some dynamite. [laughter] in southern ohio, and most days you could go into the Hardware Store and buy dynamite. And we are going to blow this up. So you guys had like long hair . Its like, hey, maxine . No, it was a college town. They were used to us. And we did have a big pastor out there. You might have a big stump. [laughter] and so this friend of mine that we called uncle mike, he would urge you to take more drugs and drink more. And he also loved firearms. So we decided it would be fun to set off the dynamite and so he takes the dynamite and he goes out into the yard and he goes way out there. Running and running . Oh, yeah. Going so far out and it just took forever and time is going very slowly. So he runs back to the house. Running and running. And puts this, he pud he just ps his foot on the porch step in the dynamite goes off and its like 15 feet away. And its like a they blew out all the windows in the house and she says she goes back into this and no one can here for about four days. And its blown through the screen door. So it seemed like a good idea at the time. Which leads to the issue of how baby boomers talk to our kids. They cant tell our kids that kind of story. Now. I always say, be very careful. [laughter] but you have a great quote from a friend of yours. One of the other uncles in your life who said Something Like drugs may be great at line . Just tell me how to live. Yes. It was actually something that you may be familiar with. Andy ferguson writes for the Weekly Standard and his kids are a little bit older than mine. And i said, what do you do and tell the kids about drugs and what you tell them about your own drug use . Because i know that he was every bit as bad as i was back in the day. And he said that i lied. Just lie. Thats the nice thing about having an adult situation. And i said, you lied . Youve written about taking drugs. And he said the only group of people in the world you could count on, reading a single word that you have written, are your children. [laughter] dad never took drugs, i was in a punk rock band. We played out folk masses. [laughter] and so yes. He said that is always very important. Somehow we ended up running the place. So how did that happen . We ended up running the place because we got older and when people are over 50, they do run the place. Plus we came off a great deal prosperous with world war ii growth area the one big difference between us and our parents is if you want it in one word, three, come to think of it. And i am paying twice now for what i did before. [laughter] so three words. A difference between us and the greatest generation and that is a difference in median family income. Smack in the middle. The medium family and come when we were blowing up after world war ii. It was 10,000. Inflation adjusted higher than it was for the greatest generation. Not only that, but we were on this track on technology from world war ii to jimmy carter. Its not rocket ship, but its a good and strong steady growth. It goes up and it goes down and it goes way up and way down. And we lived in a much more, not only less, but they were less secure about it. Yet during her childhood, your father sold cars and he described her childhood friends. Did any of their mothers work . Yes, there were a few that work. One guy kind of had his own Insurance Agency and his wife worked. And the number of the mothers would take temporary jobs at christmas time. But not many fulltime. So you point out that these families that were pretty solidly middleclass, in todays dollars they would be near the poverty line . Yes, it is interesting. What the government says is the poverty line comes very close and is only a few thousand dollars less than what was the Median Income right after world war ii. So it kind of tells you something about the nature of poverty. There was a poverty of something besides just money in this country. Which is why it is so difficult to make things work. Its way off the subject of the book. But it is true. And its not that they are simply material problems. Right. Its social problems. Did you feel like you do your parents of a war . If you care to know them . Now. I did not. [laughter] i wish i knew them now. They died when i was young and i envy my wife who is about the same agent amy. Theyre sort of like my foster parents now and my fatherinlaw would say, he was a bit artillery observer and he was an fbi agent for 25 years for organized crime. And her dad had come home from work and talk about this. [laughter] and so hes like 80 years old now. Its just great. But no, we felt this immense separation from our parents. Nice parents and her parents. That we felt separated from them. You feel that we are dying for her children to know us . Our relationship with our children, pain in the [bleep] though they can be, we have a much better relationship with our children. I think that is to our credit. Yes, we get laid. But i think it honestly takes two. And our generation wouldve shot that helicopter down. And our kids let us. And then, i mean, we talk to our kids more about more things. I started having kids lightly. I have young kids, a 16yearold, 13yearold, and a 9yearold. By nine years old, she is a sophomore in high school and she talked about things. And await you probably cant imagine . Yes, exactly. You cant just imagine. So you do describe a couple of painful moments in your book of your mother driving you to your first date . Yes, was there anything more embarrassing than just having your parents be her parents. [laughter] with that awful time that im sure you all remember. Youre old enough to start this but youre not old enough to have a drivers license. And it wasnt really served by public transportation. So your mom had to drive the places in our member her letting me and my date out three blocks from the Movie Theater that we were going to so that no one would see my mother. [laughter] then you couldnt figure out where to do it. If all three got in the front seat, then it was like ridiculous. But if you put the girl you were taking out of in the front seat with your mom, they would start to talk. [laughter] and then her mom would talk to you and you and the girl would be in the backseat and it was just so horrifyingly embarrassing. One thing that hasnt changed is that we still embarrass them and there isnt anything i can do that doesnt embarrass my 16yearold daughter. She liked looking at me. [laughter] and shes like, dad, you are wearing plaid on plaid. Come on, i live in new england. [laughter] speaking of which one quote you would love to see you expand on, we failed to keep our eye on her sense of shame. Can you explain that . Well, obviously every generation does himself wrong. We didnt do things right is wrong as there was a generation that started world war i and i was really wrong. But we did kind of did loose and relativistic to see the outcome now of not being as morally and ethically strict as we could be. More than a little of bill clinton and most of us. Poor impulse control i like to think of him as being. I write and advise column and often people will write and say you are so judgmental. And im like, thats kind of like why i am here. [laughter] the max i can tell you thats okay. [laughter] but you touch on this idea that weve almost prohibited the idea of being ashamed and feeling ashamed. One key statistic is the rate of single motherhood is back after world war ii in the very lowest economic stratum of society. Where things are kind of chaotic and maybe insanely criminal. So in this after world war ii, the number of kids born to unwed mothers was the same percentage as it is now among rich people. And so its like 100 in some ways. And its like, that is us. We were so unwilling to make moral judgments and in many cases rightly. We were unwilling to tell them it was wrong. And it is wrong to go around saying that being gay is wrong or being a catholic is wrong or being jewish is wrong. This or that or the other thing. But not taking care of the kids, that is wrong. And we could let that be clipped occasionally. You point out that the baby boom generation invented sex three you know, i just found this out by researching the book. [laughter] and im sure youre all familiar with this. Your parents, your parents having sex. No. [laughter] it couldnt have possibly have happened. Now. When i found out how babies were made, i was like nine or 10 or Something Like that. The neighbor kid told me. Then i was like oh, no. So how do you get this into that. And i was being persistent there, but i was six years ahead of my time and so forth. But he said, really, youll get used to the idea. And he said no, really. And so then i had this quandary. He was very convincing. And so i was convinced that he was right. But that was how babies were made. I couldnt figure out. My sisters were twin spirits i couldnt figure out my sisters had been born because my parents did it twice or three times. [laughter] your experience as a writer and editor of an underground newspaper in baltimore was very of its time. Can you talk about that . This is one i think i started to get over the hippie thing. Because i was in graduate school in baltimore and i started to write for a little underground newspaper. And probably quite a few of you remember them. It was illegal. We based our whole idea on the combat and the French Resistance under grounders, basically. And we were doing illegal things. Like publishing a newspaper was not one of them. [laughter] suddenly we were writing and we turned through the newspaper once a week. But i cant remember if it was when we ran out of marijuana to smoke and needed to make money begets more. Whether it was when we got a bunch of marijuana and then got ideas for the newspaper. It was one of the other. [laughter] until then this kid turns up and this is just when things were starting to get violent. In 1970 when kent state happen. Also when the weatherman bombings happen and the kids blew themselves up in the town house in greenwich village. And this kid showed up wanting us to hide him. Not from the police book from the weather underground. He had been totally freaked out by how a violent they have become and he spent a week in the attic before he got the courage to go home to his mother. And that was like an eyeopener. And then it turns out that we had all along had an underground cop. An undercover cop working. Get from an undercover cop is working there. And they had put him there. And he had decided that he liked us. And he particularly liked the girls that hung around with us. So he was a nice guy. And so i dont think that he was really like going to start a Major Television show about cops. Police academy six or Something Like that. [laughter] and so he would eventually, he got the files with the freedom of information act. And he had written things like oh, theyre just doing this to upset their parents. Does being rebellious and no, i have not seen any Illegal Drugs and things like that. And so mysteriously he will blow my cover. [laughter] and am watching the dangerous radical here. These people are dangerous. And the hippie chicks. [laughter] there was a very exciting raid . Yes, a terrifying rate. From people to our left. Because we were more into waterbed testing them into crushing the state. So when i this group of people invaded our office and liberated our newspaper. And they call themselves, and i am not kidding about this. Changing the names of most things in this book on a call themselves the baltimore com. They were part of this. And so they crash into this very they said we are liberating this newspaper in the name of the people. And its like, okay, you understand what you are liberating is consistent of about 10,000 in debt. And the rent is about three months overdue. There are a couple of old typewriters and they basically were not taking aspirin answer. A consciousnessraising session and we got screamed at. Some of the more courageous individuals, the more courageous hippies had actually yelled back and they had converted my grandpa. She became a baltimore balticong . Yes. In the way we got them to leave, we didnt get them to leave. We are yelling and screaming at them with the whole communist anarchist thing. Crush the state, kill the pigs, one of them was our photographer in any way it was right in the middle of that. And it was in a section of baltimore that were three or four blocks away from Johns Hopkins and there were these kids in the neighborhood that would come by. Nice kids. These two high school guys. Both of them big guys. And what they wanted was to get their poetry published. And they were english majors and really into it and really nice as well. And so they just stopped by the office to say hi and found them there. And they were to actual members of these people. The two nicest kids. But they were sort of dress at like this at the time. So she looked at them and ran out the door. [laughter] and philip said, what is going on here to. [laughter] and thereafter we did publish their book, i am glad to say. [laughter] so it just keeps going. And off goes my girlfriend. So we decided decide that we are going to stand guard at the office. Because its so valuable . Well, yeah. And for whole wheat we managed remember this vanguard. [laughter] but then it was late, i did actually have that and i thought that was pretty cool and i guess i could use this to this level. And so i said, well, i havent done. And the Staff Photographer turned out, that he had a gun. So now we know he is a cop. And he said i have my old Service Revolver so p. J. And i will stand watch. Sending lots of and then we would get it a sixpack and stand a little less watch. This goes on for about a week and we are not watching very well at all. We are making sure that all the beer is actually gone and then back him balticong. Leaning up against a wall at the side of the room is standing behind a desk and glenn reaches into his pants. That never had. That never happens. Soybased flesh as we can to the desk drawer in my latest comes up against the desk drawer. And so my leg is in the desk drawer. And they are just looking at us. And so i finally think, okay, i will shoot through the back of the desk and cant get it out of there because my leg is in the way. And in comes my old girlfriend and she said i cant get my ironing board back. This is a girl who wore nothing. And i mean nothing. Like a moo moo . Yes, like that. And that was all she wore period so he is fishing around the front of his pants and now hes fishing from down here. And so he comes back down with an ironing board and iron and out the door if she goes. The last i ever saw her or balticong. [laughter] and that is the only time that i have ever pointed a gun at anyone. It looks a lot cooler in the movies. The perfect makings of a writer. And you set down so many of these Great Stories in the book also with the larger story of how we got this way. And its not your fault. We arent blaming you. [laughter] but we would like someone to answer for us. We would love to move towards the question and answer portion of the evening. Are you game . Okay. Thats great. Three i was trying to write nonregular memoir but not how different i was but how the same we were. To get everyone thinking about all this stuff again. Because all of our parents looked alike. We had a kind of unitary generation. Sir . The greatest generation of baby boomers here comes your microphone. The greatest generation has certain goals for our generation having to do with education and our generation actually has some of the same goals then some of the other generations do. How do you say that they view the success of our generation and how do we deal with other generations . I dont know what these kids are up to today. But kids today, i dont know what theyre doing. But i think that the greatest generation was equally mystified by asked. And they were going around all the time thing that you can do anything you want. And the sky is the limit. When we took them and it didnt turn out to be whatever we wanted it to be, they said he should have been an accountant. [laughter] why dont you marry a dentist. And they wanted a very stable life for us. And i think that we failed our parents because our lives are not as stable as they wouldve liked to have seen. They wanted a safe world for us. Kids dont because they dont have that sense of consequence. So what we had with the Little Common sense and what we got was it was stuck and maybe they got common sense in there. I wonder if i could get dispensation. And i am a boomer and we were rumors that were all alike. There is a shade of gray. Not 50 shades of gray. [laughter] i dont know, ive never tried it. That come im glad hear that. Incidentally dave barry has a book coming out in a couple of and he has the funniest review of the book 50 shades of gray. He read it. And it turns out that women dont want a really hot looking guy with an amazing body. They want a hot looking guy with an amazing body and a billion dollars. [laughter] so simple. [laughter] just three little things. Rethink the very uncomplicated. Hello, i am a member of generation x myself. A friend of mine in college was politically involved. Saying by the time people our age are running for office, anything that we do will look okay. You see that happening. Yes, and i think of bill clinton to be the absolute proto typical babyboom politician. But now it is rob ford. [laughter] and the guy has the answer for political questions. [laughter] i know, it is perfect. Its like, i was drunk. And its like, come on, kathleen. R we want b the tea party and the communist party. Well just take it all in. So we will have used up all the nonsense, you know, right, left and middle by the time you guys get around to as well as youre bogarting all the nonsense as well as all the pot, so [laughter] to quote you from a previous book, to you miss being a shithole specialistsome. [laughter] oh, yeah. I was a Foreign Correspondent for a long time, war correspondent really. It was trouble of any kind. And back, you know, before everything was tiny and miniaturized and everybody was blogging, there were really only a few hundred of us that did this. There were, you know, the camera crews and the reporters and some newspaper people and stuff. Wed call ourselves shithole specialists because whenever there was some shithole like marcos, when marcos was being overthrown, wed all show up. And right before that wed just been in lebanon for the civil war, and when bosnia came along, we were all there, we were all there for the gulf war. And then Technology Sort of began to overtake us. And it was enormous fun. It was incredibly interesting. It was kind of scary sometimes. And it was great. But when i got back from the iraq war, i thought, you know, im getting too old to be scared stiff and too stiff to be sleeping on the ground, you know in. [laughter] i think well, im going to have to retire that horse. I see a hand waving right there. Right here. Over here. Hello. Ah, okay. Im really interested in your take on the dramatic change of the labor force from generally men with the identity of providing for the family to this transition that its both sexes, to the sort of swinging over to the loss of identity of men within the generations as they go. So whats your take on that . Yeah. I mean, i think thats one of the things that makes modern life sort of, you know, this period of transition uncomfortable. We really came, you know, a lot of us in this room were born into the last era where men and it was mostly men did physical work. I mean, work was, it was lifting stuff. Maybe it wasnt as brutal as it had been before it was mechanized, but it was still, it was labor intense i have. And those of us intensive. And those of us who grew up in rural areas, the women did a lot of physical work too. But work was a physical thing. And work is now a mental thing. Now, thats good in a lot of ways. But it also leaves out a lot of people that dont have the skill set. And it also takes a lot more training and a lot more time. And i think, you know, the various things, you know, you talk about, you know, theres a lot of talk now about how much more divided the society or how much richer the rich are than the poor, how big the divide is. And a lot of this has to do with the sort of complexity, mental complexity of modern work. And its great because it includes women, and it doesnt exclude anybody. But it doesnt leave much of a place for people who may have enormous amount of virtues, but mental nimbleness isnt chief among them, you know . People who were physically worthy, capable of enormous hard work, were morally decent. And what do they do in the modern world . And thats a question weve got to answer. And i dont have any, i dont have any funny, you know, wisecracks to make about that. Its you know, i it puzzles me. I always say no, i off think this i often think this, and this comes up a lot in my advice column because so many questions are about identity and the transition and the changes and the loss of identity, and i think the two Big Questions for any of us to answer are who am i and what do i want. And i think this is sort of what, this is the brief of the baby boom. Were still at it. Were still trying to answer these questions. And as p. J. s personal story shows, the answer changes through time if youre smart and lucky. Yeah. And luckys part of it. You know, when work is less physicality, its harder to identify with it, you know . Maybe you were just a had carrier, people say what to you do, youd say, well, i take this pile of bricks and carry them up there. Now people ask what do you do, i sit and i stare at a computer screen. [laughter] what do i do . Im not at all certain myself. Okay. We have one more question. I think this is my last one. Sir. Good. Good. Taken to quoting you a lot, so would you announce it exactly in your words your famous quote about health care . About health care . Yes. Oh, yes. I did once say that if you think health cares expensive now, just wait until you see how much it costs when its free. Thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] thank you, p. J. [applause] i also, i want to point out that p. J. Will be out, i think, in that directioning signing books. Please come, have a chat. I will also be there. Ill stay late and solve all your problems, okay . Right. [laughter] ill sign your books, shell solve your problems. Right. Okay . So join us out here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] is there a Nonfiction Author or book youd like