LONGTIME POLITICAL SATIRIST, PROLIFIC AUTHOR
P.J. O’ROURKE • 1947-2022
P.J. O’Rourke, a journalist and political satirist with a libertarian-conservative bent, died Tuesday morning of complications from lung cancer, his publisher confirmed. He was 74.
“P.J. was one of the major voices of his generation. He was also a close friend and partner for more than 40 years,” said Morgan Entrekin, chief executive and publisher at Grove Atlantic. “His insightful reporting, verbal acuity and gift at writing laugh-out-loud prose were unparalleled. From his classics ‘Modern Manners’ and ‘Parliament of Whores’ to ‘How the Hell Did This Happen,’ a result of his dismay at the 2016 election — P.J. kept providing fierce, smart, always amusing reports on the American condition. His passing leaves a huge hole in my life, both personal and professional.”
Patrick Jake O’Rourke was born Nov. 14, 1947, in Toledo, Ohio. With a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Ohio and a master’s from Johns Hopkins, he started in journalism at small newspapers and in the 1970s became editor of the National Lampoon.
He was foreign affairs desk chief for Rolling Stone and a regular correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His work also appeared in Esquire, Vanity Fair, the Daily Beast and the Weekly Standard, to name a few. He also helped sustain the small publishing house Entrekin spun off from the Atlantic in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, O’Rourke moved to New Hampshire and continued to write. He was the Cato Institute’s H.L. Mencken research fellow and appeared regularly on NPR’s quiz show “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me.”
O’Rourke’s other books include “Republican Party Reptile” and “Give War a Chance.” Though his rightward ideological shift was well under way by the time he was at the Lampoon — followed late in life by his public endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump — his humor and skepticism were the major constants in his life and work.
Having grown up in the 1960s, O’Rourke wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2008 that he was a member of the “moron generation.”
O’Rourke is survived by his wife, Tina, and children Olivia, Clifford and Elizabeth.