After P.J. O’Rourke, who can save conservative comedy?
It was poignantly appropriate that the news of P.J. O’Rourke’s death was broken by a tweet from his friend Peter Sagal, host of the Chicago-based NPR quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” where O’Rourke had been a frequent panelist.
“(O’Rourke) made his debut as a special guest on our first show after 9/11,” the show’s staff wrote, “when we needed someone to come on and be funny about terrible things, which, of course, was P.J.’s specialty.”
Yes, it was, even for those of us listeners for whom the “terrible things” included his own deeply conservative views. His “whole purpose in life,” he once joked, was “to offend everyone who listens to NPR, no matter what position they take on anything.”
I’d say he fell way short of offending everyone. We were too amused. As a longtime listener to his radio barbs and a reader of his essays and articles that he turned into 16 books since the late 1980s, I marveled at his ability to view the world with a bold, conservative audacity that usually didn’t scare liberals half to death.
“He was that rare conservative who appeared to be having a better time, and doing better drugs, than everyone else,” wrote The New York Times’ Dwight Garner. “He was well-read; he was, it often seemed, the only funny Republican alive.”
His more quotable quotes show the spirit of a modern-day Will Rogers or H.L. Mencken:
On his libertarian leanings: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
On human rights:
“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
On the partisan political divide:
“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
Sure, his sarcasm sometimes could get on my nerves. But, even for those of us who are not as far right as he was, he offered an illuminating glimpse into the world as seen by those who were.
It was the excesses of some on the left that moved him to the right, but O’Rourke’s swing saw its limits with the rise of Donald Trump, when P.J. decided to vote for (gasp!) Hillary Clinton!
“She’s wrong about absolutely everything,” he said on NPR, “but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
Trump, by comparison, seemed to be off his rocker and determined to take the country with him. “I mean, this man just can’t be president,” O’Rourke said. “They’ve got this button, you know, in the briefcase. He’s going to find it.”
Now the feisty humorist is gone and a long-simmering question takes on a new poignancy: Is this the end of conservative comedy?
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld is on the rise but, to me, his late-night talk show exhibits the flaws that have killed similar ventures in the past: relentless jabs at the left for being left and too little self-examination or accountability of the right. Worse, too often, it’s not that funny.
But maybe that’s a sign of the Trump era. Even liberal comedians like Trevor Noah have praised his stand-up comedy skills in his rally speeches as excellent — although frightening.