National Review Cruise to Feature Worst Guests Ever

Cruises of the sort that are sponsored by some partisan news-and-opinion magazines combine all the excitement of a partisan news-and-opinion magazine with all the intellectual stimuli inherent to being on a great big boat. Back when he still had talent, P.J. O’Rourke went along with one such cruise sponsored by The Nation, which organized a trip to the Soviet Union in what one might suspect to have been a mean prank on naive attendees were it not for the fact that the editors were rather naive themselves in those days.

Even when the destination itself does not rise to the rank of the Brehznev-era Soviet Union in terms of desirability, these cruises must be a hell of a thing. They are attended exclusively by those who are both willing to spend money in order to get themselves put on some big boat for over a week and also have the time to do such a thing, which is to say they are attended largely by the elderly. This is a fundamental attribute of such cruises.

You can pay money to go to Spain with Dick Morris.

Here, we have a cruise sponsored by National Review. I subscribe to National Review. I pay special attention to those ads which appear regularly in the magazine and which, by virtue of appearing regularly, convey to us the buying habits of the magazine’s readership. In the case of National Review, some great portion of its readership is apparently in the market for specialty cell phones with overlarge buttons and relatively few conceptual demands and non-threatening names like The Jitterbug, double-page offers for coins in which officials from non-existent fiduciary bodies are quoted on the subject of what a great idea it is to buy coins from some company that quotes officials from non-existent fiduciary bodies, and other, even more ridiculous things. I would pay any amount of money to go on a cruise with such people. I would give my life for it.

As shown above, this year’s National Review cruise will incorporate the erudition of both Dick Morris and Richard Reed. Dick Morris served in some capacity under the Clinton Administration and is best known for getting caught hiring a prostitute with the stipulation that there be involved some degree of foot fetishism. He is not best known for this out of societal prurience, either; it is just that he has not managed to do anything of sufficient quality to rightfully eclipse the incident.

In 2006, Morris released a book entitled Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race. The first sentence reads, accurately, “On January 20, 2009, at precisely noon, the world will witness the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of the United States,” after which point the text descends into fantasy. His most recent book, Catastrophe, is based on the premise that “we must act before President Barack Obama fully implements his radical political agenda. Because after Obama has won his war on prosperity and canceled the war on terror, it will be too late to regain our liberty or our security.” He is not so much a prognosticator as he is an opportunist, and not so much an opportunist as he is a disgusting, overgrown boy. It would be impossible for any person of at least some virtue to look upon this person and not feel a natural sense of revulsion; it would be likewise impossible to point to anything that he has done which would justify his relative celebrity.

I’m not even going to characterize Ralph Reed other than to note that not even religious conservatives will defend him at this point. I don’t even know what else to say, really. Ralph Reed, Dick Morris. There you go.