Wit & Attitude Quote by P. J. O'Rourke

O'Rourke turns confession into a con job he happily runs on himself. The joke isn’t that he did stupid things in the sixties; it’s that he’s found the perfect euphemism to launder stupidity into self-improvement. "Learning experience" is corporate HR language smuggled into autobiography, and he wields it like a solvent: it dissolves moral judgment, embarrassment, and regret into a warm, marketable narrative of growth.

The specific intent is defensive comedy. By repeating the phrase twice, he makes the rationalization sound both ridiculous and irresistible. He’s not arguing that his past was wise; he’s admitting he needs a story that lets him live with it. That final clause - "It makes me feel less stupid" - punctures any inspirational sheen. Self-help culture promises transformation; O'Rourke’s version promises only reduced shame, which is closer to how most people actually use their personal myths.

The subtext is a sly indictment of American retrospect: the sixties are a cultural Rorschach test, alternately romanticized as liberation or dismissed as indulgence. O'Rourke, a journalist with a libertarian sensibility and an allergy to sanctimony, refuses both. He doesn’t grandstand about ideology, drugs, or politics; he shrinks the whole era to the scale of individual bad decisions and the narrations we build around them. That’s why it works: he aims the satire not at the past, but at the present tense habit of rebranding ourselves so we can keep liking the person in the mirror.