P. J. O’Rourke (1947–2022)

We were greatly saddened by the news that our very dear friend Patrick Jake “P.J.” O’Rourke had passed away on February 15th, at the age of 74, of complications from lung cancer. P.J. was peerless as a maverick journalist, essayist, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author, who we were privileged to know and work with for decades, as he was a founding Member of the Board of Advisors for the Independent Institute.

Over the years, we held numerous events with him, including our 30th Anniversary: A Gala for the Future of Liberty, for which he served as master of ceremonies and at which we honored tech-entrepreneur Timothy C. Draper; Nobel Laureate economist Vernon L. Smith; and North Korean refugee, defector, and human-rights activist Yeonmi Park with the Alexis de Tocqueville Award.

Beloved and respected by people across the political and cultural spectra, P.J. brought refreshing and reassuring humorous relief by ridiculing the absurdities, hypocrisies, and corruptions of life in the modern world, especially including politics and the rampant evils of collectivism and statism. He brought truth, clarity and common sense through a mischievous but biting humor in ways that were actually quite comforting and uplifting. The foibles and vanities of humanity were his targets, especially when they were used to prop up and excuse the imposition of power over others. He joyfully and ecumenically lampooned elites of all sorts, left, right, and everyone in between, but always with a disarming and affectionate charm that endeared him even to his opponents.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, P.J. went on receive a B.A. in English from Miami University of Ohio (1969) and M.A. in English from Johns Hopkins University (1970). He later recounted how as a student, he was a naive Maoist and antiwar hippie who became disillusioned first with bullying and then political power to become a classical-liberal critic of Big Government. (“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”—Lord Acton)

His initial writing was in Baltimore for Harry, a liberal underground newspaper, and the Rip-Off Review of Western Culture, which led to his writing for National Lampoon (becoming editor-in-chief in 1978). His work on the Lampoon‘s newspaper and yearbook parodies as well as its stage show Lemmings inspired the 1978 hit film Animal House and helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest.

He then went freelance as one of the all-time best magazine writers for such publications as Vanity Fair, Playboy, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone (where he was foreign-affairs desk chief); a columnist for The Daily Beast; a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard; and a frequent panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me game show. While working for ABC Radio, he also starred as himself in the 2004 British documentary directed by Esteban Uyarra, War Feels Like War, a compelling account of the brutalities of 21st Century war that documented the lives of reporters and photographers who subverted military media controls to get access to the real Iraq War. He was also the conservative opponent to liberal Molly Ivins on CBS TV’s 60 Minutes in the mid-1990s, and he was a guest on The Tonight Show, The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, Real Time With Bill Maher, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, and other talk shows. And his final work was as editor-in-chief of the online magazine, American Consequences.

P.J. became rooted in the Judeo-Christian natural-law tradition, as he was a joyous champion of honesty, personal responsibility, civic virtue, individual liberty, free markets, property rights, strictly limited government, and the rule of law. As a young man, he had developed a taste for alcohol, tobacco, fast cars, and loud music, but unlike other, prominent, cultural critics and “Gonzo” journalists of the time, such as Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. never succumbed to the post-modern folly of nihilism. Subsequently, he became a devoted husband of Tina and father of their two daughters and a son at their March Hare Farm in New Hampshire. Throughout, he was mindful that God is good, mortality is real, prigs are insufferable, and utopias are a cruel delusion.

His work has sometimes been compared to the wit, brilliance, and insights of such writers and cultural critics as Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Tom Wolfe, H. L. Mencken, but he never, for example, suffered from the elitism, self-righteousness, arrogance, narcissism, and atheism of Mencken, who after all was a devoted admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed, P.J. cleverly mocked such traits, but he did so without being unpleasant, mean-spirited or hateful. Instead, he remained poignant, humble, generous, kind, and fun. Here for example is but a smidgen of his insightful quips:

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

“Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.”

“Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God’s grace. (Although this option is not usually open to reporters.)”

“A politician who commends himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to do good with other peoples’ money.”

“One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.”

“The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”

“Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free—indeed, sanctimonious—way for ‘progressives’ to be racists.”

“Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers.”

“When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state … this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.”

“Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.”

“If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty, not the difference. Wealth is good.”

“The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”

Among his over twenty books are the following:

• Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: Twenty-Five Years of P.J. O’Rourke
• All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
• The American Spectator’s Enemies List: A Vigilant Journalist’s Plea for a Renewed Red Scare: Check to See if You Have Been Denounced
  
• The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again)
• The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
• The CEO of the Sofa
• Don’t Vote!–It Just Encourages the Bastards
• Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be — With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn
• Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics
• Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-Free Beer
• Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World’s Worst Places and Asks, “What’s Funny About This?”
• How the Hell Did This Happen? The Election of 2016
• Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People
• National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody (edited with Douglas C. Kenney)
  
• National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody (edited with John Hughes)
  
• None of My Business: P.J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He’s Not Rich and Neither Are You
• On the Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World
• Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
• Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism
• Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O’Rourke
• Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader

And, his last book is A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land, for which he was interviewed by Independent’s Senior Vice President Mary L.G. Theroux:

He was also a contributing author to our quarterly journal, The Independent Review, as well as our book, Future: Economic Peril or Prosperity? And, other Independent events with him have included the following:

P.J.’s Economics 101: Open House with P.J. O’Rourke (October 29, 1998)

P.J. O’Rourke “On the Wealth of Nations” (February 9, 2007)

P.J. O’Rourke “Talkin’ ’Bout His Generation” (February 13, 2014)

Reflecting the widespread admiration for P.J. and his work, and the indubitable mark he has left, here is just a sampling of the vast outpouring of tributes (in alpha order by source):

• “P. J. O’Rourke Was Our National B. S. Detector: He was a champion of human nature, which is often crushed by inhumane and cruel governments,” by John Herr (American Greatness)
• “P. J. O’Rourke: A Free Soul and the Funniest Writer in America: I have never hidden the significant influence he held over me,” by Itxu Diaz (The American Spectator)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, irreverent author and commentator, dies at 74: His writing style suggested a cross between the hedonism of Hunter S. Thompson and the patrician mockery of Tom Wolfe.” (Associated Press)
• “The Inimitable P. J. O’Rourke: Across 11 years of writing at The Atlantic, the late journalist and satirist championed a sense of fun,” by Faith Hill (The Atlantic)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, Acerbic Voice of Unreason and Unrepentant Car Enthusiast, Dies at 74: O’Rourke was most famous for his satirical writing in The National Lampoon and his sharp, witty political essays, but some of his finest work happened here at Car and Driver,” by Jamie Kitman (Car and Driver)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, scribe of a franker time: The most notorious episode in his career didn’t even make O’Rourke’s obituaries, perhaps because we’re afraid to say what happened,” by Neil Steinberg (Chicago Sun-Times)
• “After P.J. O’Rourke, who can save conservative comedy now?”, by Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, prolific author, satirist and ex-editor of National Lampoon, dies aged 74 at home in New Hampshire after battle with lung cancer” (Daily Mail, London)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, RIP,” by David Henderson (Econlib)
• “Why We Need More O’Rourke Conservatives,” by Anthony Sacramone (Eurasia Review)
• “My thoughts on P.J. O’Rourke: P.J. was a primary inspiration for me—steering me to become what I am now,” by Greg Gutfeld (Fox News)
• P.J. O’Rourke obituary: Conservative American humorist, political satirist and writer who took aim at his own generation—the baby boomers (The Guardian)
• “Troubles shooter—Frank McNally on an encounter with the late P.J. O’Rourke,” by Frank McNally (The Irish Times)
• “Honoring the irreplaceable P.J. O’Rourke” (Los Angeles Daily News)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, political satirist and journalist, dead at 74,” by Christie D’Zurilla (Los Angeles Times)
• “Satirist P.J. O’Rourke, panelist on NPR’s ‘Wait…Wait Don’t Tell Me,’ dies at 74,” by Elizabeth Blair (National Public Radio)
• “P.J. O’Rourke was America’s greatest satirist and coolest conservative,” by John Podhoretz (New York Post)
• “P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor,” by Christopher Buckley (New York Times)
• “P.J. O’Rourke Wrote With High, Cranky Style in a Shrinking Tradition,” by Dwight Garner (New York Times)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, Conservative Political Satirist, Dies at 74: In articles, in best sellers and as a talk show regular he was a voice from the right skewering whatever in government or culture he thought needed it,” by Neil Genzlinger (New York Times)
• “Jake Tapper, Others Mourn Passing of Conservative Humorist P.J. O’Rourke,” by Adam Staten (Newsweek)
• “P.J. O’Rourke (RIP) Explains Why You Can Never Win Over Your Political Adversaries by Mocking Them” (Open Culture)
• “Honoring the irreplaceable P.J. O’Rourke” (Pasadena Star News)
• “P.J. O’Rourke—A Tribute,” by Charles Murray (Quillette)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, R.I.P.: ‘At the core of libertarianism is the idea that people are assets’,” by Nick Gillespie (Reason)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, renowned political satirist and journalist, dies at 74: Rose to fame as editor-in-chief of the now-defunct humour magazine National Lampoon” by Tyler Clifford (Reuters; Montreal Gazette)
• “Goodbye P.J. O’Rourke, the Dry Conservative Wit Behind Rolling Stone’s Foreign Affairs Desk: A former RS editor remembers our Reagan-era counterpart to Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo antics,” by Corey Seymour (Rolling Stone)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, Celebrated Journalist and Conservative Satirist, Dead at 74: The writer served as foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone and wrote for numerous publications,” by Althea Legaspi (Rolling Stone)
• “P.J. O’Rourke mastered the art of teasing: The late great satirist chose pleasant ribbing over contempt, and made us all laugh along the way,” by Teresa Mull (The Spectator)
• P.J. O’Rourke, the Irreverent Author and Conservative Commentator, Has Died at 74 (Time)
• “Satirist P.J. O’Rourke dies at 74: ‘His work was wonderful. His heart was even better’,” by Edward Segarra (USA Today)
• “Political Satirist P.J. O’Rourke Dies at Age 74: Author and journalist worked for publications including National Lampoon and Rolling Stone,” by Joseph Pisani and Talal Ansari (Wall Street Journal)
• “Appreciation: P.J. O’Rourke, 1947-2022: The conservative satirist kept his sharp wit at the ready to puncture political folly—but his generous vision of his fellow Americans betrayed a big heart,” by Dave Shiflett (Wall Street Journal)
• “The Great P.J. O’Rourke: 1947-2022,” by Matthew Continetti (National Review)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, Political Satirist and Journalist, Dead at 74: P.J. O’Rourke died Tuesday morning at the age of 74 due to complications from lung cancer,” by Vanessa Etienne (People)
• “How P.J. O’Rourke Became Republican: Over the years, I watched a fast-driving Maoist turn into his own kind of conservative icon,” by Glenn Garvin (Politico)
• “Tributes pour in for satirist and journalist P.J. O’Rourke, who has died: One of America’s smartest, funniest writers & the ultimate Gonzo journalist,” by Tom Skinner (Rolling Stone UK)
• “P.J. O’Rourke, satirist and conservative commentator, dies at 74: He wrote more than 20 books, targeting hypocrisy, pomposity and contradiction wherever he found it,” by Harrison Smith (Washington Post)
• “Famed humorist P.J. O’Rourke’s beginnings included poverty, success at Miami University,” by Michael D. Clark (Yahoo! News; Journal-News, Hamilton, OH)

Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.