P. J. O'Rourke

Patrick Jake O'Rourke (November 14, 1947 – February 15, 2022) was an American libertarian political satirist and journalist. O'Rourke was the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He was a columnist at The Daily Beast from 2011 to 2016.

In the UK, he was known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s. He authored 16 books, including three that made The New York Times Best Seller list. The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 states, "O'Rourke's original reporting, irreverent humor, and crackerjack writing makes for delectable reading. He never minces words or pulls his punches, whatever the subject."

O'Rourke was born in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Delphine (née Loy), a housewife, and Clifford Bronson O'Rourke, a car salesman. O’Rourke has Irish ancestry that traces back to County Roscommon. He graduated from Toledo's DeVilbiss High School in 1965, received his undergraduate degree from Miami University in 1969 and earned a Master of Arts in English at Johns Hopkins University. Many of O'Rourke's essays recount that during his student days he was a leftist, anti-war hippie, but that in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist rooted in libertarian conservatism.

O'Rourke wrote articles for several publications, including "A.J. at N.Y.U." for The Rip Off Review of Western Culture, an underground magazine/comic book, in 1972, as well as pieces for the Baltimore underground newspaper Harry and the New York Ace, before joining National Lampoon in 1973, where he served as editor-in-chief, among other roles, and authored articles such as "Foreigners Around the World" and "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink."

O'Rourke received a writing credit for National Lampoon's Lemmings which helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest. He also co-wrote National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney.

Going freelance in 1981, O'Rourke's writing appeared in Playboy, Vanity Fair, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone. He became foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone, where he remained until 2001. In 1996, he served as the conservative commentator in the point-counterpoint segment of 60 Minutes. During the Bosnian genocide, O'Rourke received criticism for using the American public's lack of interest in Bosnia as a way to joke about "unspellables killing the unpronounceables."

O'Rourke published 16 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance reached No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. O'Rourke was a "Real Time Real Reporter" for Real Time with Bill Maher covering the 2008 presidential election.

In 2009, O'Rourke described the presidency of Barack Obama as "the Carter administration in better sweaters". However, in 2016, he endorsed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. O'Rourke stated that his endorsement included her "lies and empty promises" and added "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

O'Rourke was married to Amy Lumet, a daughter of movie director Sidney Lumet and a granddaughter of Lena Horne, from 1990 to 1993. In 1995 he married his second wife, Tina Mallon; they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Olivia, and one son, Clifford. In an interview with the New Statesman, O'Rourke revealed that his "wife is a Catholic, the kids are Catholic" and described himself as, therefore, a "Catholic fellow-traveller".

Health and death

In September 2008, O'Rourke announced that he had been diagnosed with treatable rectal cancer, from which he expected "a 95% chance of survival."

O'Rourke died from lung cancer at his home in Sharon, New Hampshire, on February 15, 2022, at the age of 74.

O'Rourke was a proponent of gonzo journalism; one of his earliest and best-regarded pieces was "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink", a National Lampoon article in March 1979. The article was republished in two of his books, Republican Party Reptile (1987) and Driving Like Crazy (2009).

O'Rourke's best-received book is Parliament of Whores, subtitled A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government, whose main argument, according to the author, "is that politics are boring". He described himself as a libertarian.

O'Rourke typed his manuscripts on an IBM Selectric typewriter, though he denied being a Luddite, asserting that his short attention span would have made focusing on writing on a computer difficult.

• National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody (1974; with Doug Kenney); ISBN 978-1-59071-057-9
• National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody (1978; with John Hughes); ISBN 978-1-59071-037-1
• Modern Manners (1983); ISBN 978-0-87113-375-5
• The Bachelor Home Companion (1986); ISBN 978-0-87113-686-2
• Republican Party Reptile (1987); ISBN 978-0-87113-622-0
• Holidays in Hell (1989); ISBN 978-0-8021-3701-2
• Parliament of Whores (1991); ISBN 978-0-8021-3970-2
• Give War a Chance (1992); ISBN 978-0-679-74201-2
• All the Trouble in the World (1994); ISBN 978-0-87113-611-4
• Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1995); ISBN 978-0-87113-653-4
• The American Spectator's Enemies List (1996); ISBN 978-0-87113-632-9
• Eat the Rich (1999); ISBN 978-0-87113-760-9
• The CEO of the Sofa (2001); ISBN 978-0-8021-3940-5
• Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (2004); ISBN 978-0-8021-4198-9
• On the Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World (2007); ISBN 978-0-8021-4342-6
• Driving Like Crazy (2009); ISBN 978-0-8021-1883-7
• Don't Vote! – It Just Encourages the Bastards (2010) ISBN 978-0-8021-1960-5
• Holidays in Heck (2011); ISBN 978-0-8021-1985-8
• The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn't My Fault) (And I'll Never Do It Again) (2014) ISBN 978-0-8021-2197-4
• Thrown Under the Omnibus (2015); ISBN 978-0-8021-2366-4
• How the Hell Did This Happen? The Election of 2016 (2017); ISBN 978-0802126191
• None of My Business: P.J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He's Not Rich and Neither Are You (2018); ISBN 978-0-8021-2848-5
• A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land (2020); ISBN 978-0-8021-5773-7