Apologia pro Tyrrell

A reader takes issue with my dismissive comments about Emmett Tyrrell:

I’ve enjoyed Tyrrell’s writings for a long time, at least until he started consuming copious amounts of Bush’s Kool-Aid. I’m a big fan of irreverent humor and consider Tyrrell a master of it. Irreverent humor, especially that directed at sanctimonious liberals, is valuable because 1) It makes me laugh 2) people who are uninformed or undecided on a issue are more likely to pay attention to the words of someone who knows how to laugh, who is enjoying life and 3) it can be devastatingly effective, knocking liberals off their bearings and leaving them little recourse beyond propaganda and demagoguery. A special moment for me was watching Charlie Rose, with P.J. O’Rourke as a guest occasioned by a book release, and knowing his liberal pals were tuned in, read the title of O’Rourke’s book: “All the Trouble in the World—The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty.” Charlie winced, I roared with laughter and the world was a better place. Tyrrell has often had the same impact on me.

I disagree with your assessment that Tyrrell’s writings are adolescent. No writer has been more critical of the adolescents who’ve hijacked our culture and institutions than Tyrrell. “Boy Clinton” is an apt description of the boy trapped in a man’s body, a perpetual adolescent. His moniker for Hillary, Clinton’s “lovely wife, Bruno”, is right on the mark in describing this adolescent bully. The cover article of the September/October 2002 TAS, by Terrell, was: “Rock & Roll, R.I.P.—Reflections on the World’s Worst Music Occasioned by the Rolling Stones’ 2002 Tour.” From that article:

“Thus we come to another of rock’s deficiencies; rock almost never developed songs for grownups. True, Dylan in his late fifties produced one album that reflected some of the experiences of middle age and aging, Time Out of Mind. The music was occasionally pensive, but the reality of Dylan’s aging, as with so much beneath his fake surface, was not quite grownup. According to his most recent biographers, Dylan did his aging alone, in darkened motel rooms, his youthful defiance narrowing into the squint of a bitter old man. Time Out of Mind’s most salient emotion is not melancholy but bewildered bitterness.”

Tyrrell has made valuable contributions, for which I’m grateful.

My reply:

Ok, I hear you. My taste in this is not yours, but this is an effective apologia for Tyrrell, the first that I’ve read actually, and it helps me understand why his career continues.

Another reader responds to the above:

Tyrrell is just a homeless bum’s Mencken. O’Rourke isn’t even worth a passing scornful thought.

My reply:

That’s my opinion too. But the reader felt I was being unfair, and it was interesting to know that there was someone who actually gets value out of Tyrrell, so I thought it would be worthwhile posting his comment.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 25, 2005 11:25 PM | Send