Book: The CEO of the Sofa

Overview
P. J. O'Rourke's The CEO of the Sofa is a loose, high-spirited collection of essays about a political satirist who traded war zones and campaign buses for a living room command post. Written around the turn of the millennium, it captures the moment O'Rourke settled into marriage and fatherhood, discovering that domestic life offers as many opportunities for mockery, philosophy, and combat as foreign policy ever did. The title is a joke about corporate grandiosity applied to a stay-at-home dad with a remote control and a baby monitor, but it also signals a mellowed conservatism rooted in family, neighborhood, and the small freedoms of everyday life.

Domesticity as Politics
O'Rourke reframes home life as a conservative stronghold: the private sphere where competence, thrift, and responsibility matter more than utopian schemes. Diapers, minivans, mortgages, and school board meetings become the raw material for a case against central planning and political grandstanding. He treats household chaos as a referendum on human nature, arguing that policy should respect the limits revealed in the kitchen and the backyard. The jokes about toolboxes, cocktails, and lawn care double as arguments for voluntary order over bureaucratic fix-it-ism.

Structure and Subjects
The essays jump from domestic scenes to the public square and back again. One moment he is contemplating upholstery and the spiritual meaning of the recliner; the next he is skewering the 2000 presidential campaign, the impeachment hangover, or the fashions of late-1990s prosperity. He writes about suburban rituals, home repairs, neighbors, dogs, and children with the same corrosive wit he once applied to dictators and diplomats. Occasional forays into travel and reportage puncture the cocoon, reminding readers of the unruly world beyond the property line, yet the gravitational pull is always the living room, where he tests grand ideas against the petty emergencies of family life.

Voice and Style
The voice is classic O'Rourke: libertarian, curmudgeonly, and eager to turn a manic simile. The zingers are plentiful, but the edge is softened by affection, for kids, for marriage, for the peculiar virtues of the middle class. He still lampoons liberals, the nanny state, and political correctness, but he also needles Republicans for sanctimony and corporate culture for its empty jargon. The book is less a conversion than a recalibration, keeping his skepticism about power while embracing the bourgeois comforts he once mocked. He writes about drinking and cars, but now the bottle is hidden from the preschool co-op and the vehicle tends to have sliding doors.

Cultural and Political Commentary
Set in the calm before and just after the 2000 election, the book catches American politics between the Clinton-era theatrics and the Bush-era uncertainty. O'Rourke turns campaign promises, media puffery, and policy debates into fodder for domestic metaphors, comparing political schemes to home improvement projects gone wrong. He distrusts crusades, prefers prudence, and believes the busiest bureaucracy is a toddler with markers. The culture-war skirmishes of the time, guns, schools, speech codes, are filtered through gigs as chauffeur, handyman, and short-order cook.

Context and Significance
For readers who know O'Rourke from Parliament of Whores or his travel send-ups, The CEO of the Sofa marks a notable pivot: the gonzo road warrior becomes a householder without shedding his satirical armor. The result is both cozy and cutting, a portrait of early-21st-century American normalcy written by someone delighted to find that normalcy is ridiculous enough. Under the jokes lies a political thesis about the primacy of private life, rendered in the idiom of the couch, the crib, and the garage.