P.J. O’Rourke (1947-2022)

Photo by Cato Institute., CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

P.J. O’Rourke, from one of my favorite political books:

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer and remove the crab grass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”

From the New York Times:

P.J. O’Rourke, the satirist, political commentator and best-selling author known for books like “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government,” for outspoken articles in a wide range of magazines, and for appearances on the NPR show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” and many television talk shows, died on Tuesday at his home in Sharon, N.H. He was 74.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Deb Seager, the director of publicity at Grove/Atlantic, Mr. O’Rourke’s publisher.

Mr. O’Rourke, whose political writing was in the caustic tradition of H.L. Mencken, was a proud conservative Republican — one of his books was called “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O’Rourke” — but he was widely admired by readers of many stripes, because of his fearless style and his willingness to mock just about anyone who deserved it, including himself. In “Republican Party Reptile” he recalled his youthful flirtation with Mao.

“But I couldn’t stay a Maoist forever,” he wrote. “I got too fat to wear bell-bottoms. And I realized that communism meant giving my golf clubs to a family in Zaire.”

I’m not sure how I first stumbled onto P.J. O’Rourke work. I definitely remember that it was Parliament of Whores that I read because I distinctly remember coming down to the living room and repeating the funniest lines to my dad. It was the funniest political book I’d ever read. There were lines I giggled at for hours. And lines I still quote to this day:

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

The thing I would learn about P.J. O’Rourke, though, was that he wasn’t just funny. He was insightful. In Parliament of Whores he mocked the government for doing a multi-million-dollar study to prove that “sudden acceleration incidents” were actually people accidentally stepping on the accelerator, thinking it was the brake. But then he interviewed people at NTHSA and realized that they had to do the study because no one would believe them without a multi-million-dollar study. In his book Eat the Rich, he journeyed to different countries to see how different economic systems worked and came up with a few things — freedom of speech, property rights and rule of law, for example — that were the critical differences between functional and dysfunctional economies. In Holidays in Hell, he talked about Philippine guerrillas shooting each other over tiny disputes while a water pump that could relieve their crushing poverty went unrepaired. His response to 9/11 was to want the Muslim world to become like the West: so wealthy and prosperous that they didn’t have time to be terrorists. He pointed out that while wealth doesn’t solve all our problems, it allows us to choose the problems that we have.

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.

P.J. O’Rourke was often described as a libertarian. Or maybe, as he described himself, as a Republican Party Reptile. But while libertarian was as good a label as any, he didn’t fit comfortably into any box. He started out as a radical liberal, shifted to a Reaganite conservative with libertarian edges, abandoned the GOP when they embraced Trump. If I were to describe his politics as anything, it would be, in his words, that a little luck and a little government will help you through life, but only a fool relies on either. To read him was to watch the Boomers’ trip through politics — from long-haired peace freaks to Reaganites. Although he pointedly refused to go on their final trip to Trumpism.

P.J. O’Rourke was compassionate enough that poverty, war and suffering enraged him. But smart enough to see that thinking good thoughts and throwing money at governments wouldn’t necessarily solve those problems. He knew how lucky he was to live a comfortable life by writing for a living. And he felt that all that was standing in the way of everyone having that privilege was the stupidity, arrogance and greed of politicians. He wrote a short treatise on The Wealth of Nations that explained the concept even better than Smith did.

What I would say P.J. O’Rourke really was a skeptic. He was suspicious of power and those who sought to wield it, no matter what their ideology. He was skeptical of people who claimed to have all the answers, no matter who they were. He mocked those who took themselves too seriously and took the air out of dictator wannabees. He knew that humans are often no damned good but usually mostly OK. But he respected honest people who disagreed with him. And he realized that politics — for all its silliness and corruption and condescension — was a better way of dealing with our issues than any other way. His reaction to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 convention speech was typical:¹

I was touched by it. Not just because I was drunk. And not by Jackson’s political ideas, which serve to do nothing but work 10 or 15 percent of the nation into useless enthusiasms. But here was this firebrand, this radical, this leader of an alienated and angry minority. And was he in jail? Was he in exile? Was he dead? He certainly would have been one of the three in any other nation-state in history. But, no. He was being absorbed whole — daft notions, vexed supporters and all — by the largest political organization in the United States. He was turning into a pol, another spoils-mongering highbinder and wire-puller, one more bum on the plush. And this was heartwarming.

I met him once, in Austin. He spoke for an hour about politics around the world. He then took questions for an hour. I’ll always remember his answer to mine. I asked him how the world had changed since the end of the Cold War. He replied that when the Soviet Union fell, two-thirds of the world’s civil wars ended. I spoke to him while he signed my book and I’m sure I sounded stupid, but he was charming and had an unmistakable twinkle in his eye.

My dad, however, was luckier. He ran into P.J. O’Rourke at a book signing at a hole-in-the-wall bookstore in New Orleans. My dad hadn’t read him, but knew I was a big fan. No one was around so they hung out for quite some time. They even exchanged cigars. My dad said he was a great guy who talked about how wrong he was about politics when he was younger.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

As you can probably tell, P.J. O’Rourke’s vision of politics heavily influenced my vision of politics. His style of writing influenced my style of writing. And today, while the news circulated, I saw libertarians, conservatives and liberals all citing his work and quoting his best lines. That, as much as anything, shows the broad influence he had.

RIP, P.J.

1. This did not, of course, stop him, for jibing that when Jesse Jackson retired from activism, it was to spend time with his families.