Word: o
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sometimes O'Rourke adopts an air of bemusement, reminiscent of Robert Benchley in mid-quandary. But most of his entries could not be written by any other satirist at any other period: "The most delightful introduction you can make is to introduce an important person to someone he or she is going to find sexually interesting . . . you march Kiki over to your well-known friend. 'Antonio, you're going to love this girl. She once made Warren Beatty bleed out the ears...
Throughout his manual, O'Rourke maintains a tone of caustic irony. It fails to disguise a moralist concerned with a lapse of decorum and values. In a discussion of capital punishment, the condemned is told, "Try to think of something piquant to say on your way to the gas chamber. 'See you in hell, Mom,' is nice. Things like . . . 'Don't stop to mourn, organize' sound too stiff for what's basically an informal situation." It is at such times that the mask of the mockingbird slips off to reveal the owl beneath, hooting at a world he is furiously...
...most cases, the classic masculine metaphors for God and Jesus have survived (for example, The King of Love My Shepherd Is). But a few modern hymns were added to ascribe feminine attributes to the divine. Syntax permitting, male pronouns referring to the Deity were shunned. In O Worship the King, for example, "his power and his love" becomes "God's power and God's love...
...Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, "sons of men and angels say Alleluia" is recycled as "earth and heaven in chorus say Alleluia." As for other hymns: God of Our Fathers is now God of the Ages; Good Christian Men, Rejoice metamorphoses into Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; and O Little Town of Bethlehem's angels promise peace to "all on earth," not "men on earth...
Revampers also bent over backward to avoid offending other constituencies. In Have Thine Own Way, Lord, sinners no longer ask Jesus to wash them "whiter than snow," because of objections from blacks. In Wesley's O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, editors originally dropped a verse proclaiming the spiritual uplifting of the "dumb" and the "lame," lest the handicapped take umbrage. They later restored the words, but suggest in a footnote that the stanza may be omitted...