PJ O’Rourke died today, and I am sad. He was 74. I discovered his writing in 1991 when in the Army, and I bet I read and re-read Parliament of Whores 20 times over the course of my tour on active duty. There was always a paperback copy in my dufflebag, because he was that funny I could read it over and over and over again. For young right-wingers who weren’t all in to the social bullshit, he was a genius. Witty, charming, self-deprecating, and man could he turn a phrase. I remember reading him one day and he mentioned Parliament of Funk (I think this was in Republican Party Reptile), and I thought to myself “Oh, hey, I’m not the only one who likes P-Funk).
He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea politically, but he didn’t only write political satire. Some of his stuff for Car and Driver in the 80’s is some of the best shit out there, and still is. PJ became clearly disillusioned with the current GOP, and part of that is because PJ was an asshole, but he wasn’t that kind of asshole.
He did benefit from writing from the right during a period when Republicans only wanted to beat Democrats at the ballot box, not exterminate them from the planet, so he did have that working for him. Even so, you could take every single one of today’s modern right wing “humorists” and you couldn’t cobble together the skill PJ had in one finger.
I will miss him.
Omnes Omnibus
Bachelor’s Home Companion was brilliant. The Yes, Maybe, No Lists for spaghetti sauce with the advice to just add all the No items like whiskey and tobacco when making chili. The description of taking a handful of diet pills and whiskey to stay up all night with a pistol to solve a rat problem. Then there was “How to Drive Fast on Drugs…” I’ve never been a right winger, but he definitely had a some great moments.
NotMax
Never paid him much mind following his National Lampoon days.
Misterpuff
But those National Lampoon days were glorious.
eclare
I also enjoyed his writing, especially his travel writing.
Hungry Joe
He wrote some really vile stuff in “Holidays in Hell,” reveling in the misery of desperately poor people living in failed, un-democratic countries. I was never able to get past that.
NotMax
OT.
The new version of Nightmare Alley is airing on Hulu.
I’ll still take the original, thank you very much. Trim and compact film noir, clocking in at 40 minutes less running time than the new one. While the sets in the recent version are gorgeous, they distract from the story.
Mike G
I first became a fan of his brilliant stuff in Car and Driver in the early 80s – driving cross country in a Ferrari 308, a contrived “off-road” race between journalists down the west coast, an ode to the Subaru wagon — and followed him through the mid-90s when his books on travel and the machinations of government started selling big. In the Gingrich era he became a Republican Party shill, too obviously pulling his punches and recycling the same tired political material, and I went sour on him after that.
divF
@Hungry Joe:
He almost redeems himself in his essay about visiting apartheid-era South Africa, though. With considerable effort he managed to get into Soweto.
where he is greeted in a highly friendly fashion. He concludes
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: I still have my copy of Bachelor’s Home Companion around here somewhere. It was my introduction to P.J. O’Rourke, and it was funny, and he was (as far as I could tell) honest about his own motives, which got him some points. He said he intended to use the gifts of rage & rhetoric he’d inherited from his Irish ancestors to ‘marry up’, which he eventually did — not everyone can succeed like that. IMO it made his humor softer and crueler, but he didn’t ask my opinion. I sincerely hope he was happy with his choices.
Jager
He reported for Car and Driver from Moscow after the Soviet Union crashed…”A Mexican with a timing light and a screwdriver could become a ruble millionaire overnight.”
HumboldtBlue
@Jager:
Hahahaha, I remember reading that line.
Quinerly
I was catching up on some news and hit his Wiki page which no one has updated re his death but it does mention that his first wife was Lena Horne’s granddaughter and Sidney Lumet’s daughter.
NPR said death was due to lung cancer. I think the last time l saw him was on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show a few months back. He looked rough.
frosty
I will miss him too. I ran across him in National Lampoon especially the brilliant “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.”
My takeaway, that I repeat to this day:
Q: What kind of car handles best?
A: A *rented* car.
Quinerly
I was catching up on news and hit his Wiki page which no one has updated re his death but it does mention that his first wife was Lena Horne’s granddaughter and Sidney Lumet’s daughter. Never knew
Edit.. That was odd. Tried to post first comment several times. Wouldn’t post, then delete itself. So l redid it here and it posted. No clue.
frosty
@Quinerly: The other ones are all there too. Repeat after me: FYWP!!!!!
HumboldtBlue
I wonder if Quinerly ever caught up.
Quinerly
@HumboldtBlue: crazy… I give up. In a hotel room in Oklahoma City and phone acting up. Wind has JoJo las Orejas very riled up. I’m ih the middle of this move to new house in Santa Fe.
Horrible moving experience for part of my stuff. Colonial Van Lines. I swear l think it’s a front for the Serbian mob. I kid you not.
Sorry for the multiple posts. Need to sleep but too stirred up over the experience Sat. Driving today forced me to think about it.
Quinerly
@frosty: sorry. I swear it wouldn’t post. Then disappeared. Then came back in multiples. Tonight is the first time l have looked at any comments on BJ for 3 weeks.
Ruckus
@Quinerly:
Late at night is often when website server farms are updated. BJ locked up on me a few minutes ago, which is normal when servers are being worked on in one way or another. At least that’s what my landlord once told me and their company owned the building my bike shop was in and they provided high security web services to government entities and had a very large server room.
Quinerly
@Ruckus: thanks. I comment so rarely that it was so weird. And, l never knew the Sidney Lumet, Lena Horne, PJ connection guess l was eager to share. As a child, l adored Lena.
frosty
@Quinerly: No need to apologize. Good to see you here and I hope the rest of the move goes well.
We’re in Florida now for awhile then westbound in mid-March. Going thru NM around Lordsburg not further north. Maybe someday we’ll cross paths.
Anne Laurie
@Quinerly: The BJ server hamsters, if they’re gonna lock up, do so right around 2am Eastern time. (Sunday morning in particular, in my experience.)
I could comment here at that time, but I couldn’t access the ‘dashboard’ to work on my nightly Covid update.
Took out your extra comments, but I’m leaving the follow-ups here. Hope your situation & your mood improve as you & JoJo move into your new home!
Quinerly
This one is for Cole.
https://www.thebulwark.com/why-writers-loved-p-j-orourke/
Traveller
Mr. Cole made me laugh the way PJ used to do with this line…because it seemed so true:
.”…part of that is because PJ was an asshole, but he wasn’t that kind of asshole.”
But I came to Mr. O’Rourke early with National Lampoon and Holidays in Hell….he was the best. And can any one that smart really be an Asshole?
In the end Mr O’Rourke did come around
in 2016, he endorsed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. O’Rourke stated that his endorsement included her “lies and empty promises,” and said, “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
So there is that ever in his favor.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Quinerly
@Anne Laurie: thanks. Love the new house. Very lucky and fortunate to be able to do this at age 60. I doubt l would have done something as drastic but for Covid Times. Felt so unsettled and claustrophobic in St. Louis from 3/2020 (when l returned from that NM trip and the side trip to Canyon de Chelly when Covid was hitting) until l did that big driving trip starting this past Sept. I literally bought a house while on vacation. And love that l did. St Louis folks don’t know what to make of it. Getting some odd feedback from people l have considered friends for 30 years. It’s not like l picked a strange place… At least l know tons of people in SF, know the area… Been spending a lot of time out there last 10 years.
Mo Salad
RIP, Maria Teresa Spermatazoa.
Quinerly
@frosty: I truly would love to meet you and your wife. I sincerely mean that. My door will always be open for you. Please feel free to get my email info from a front pager… Come visit after l am settled.
frosty
@Quinerly: I’ll definitely try to do that. You’re welcome to visit any time too.
Quinerly
@frosty: if you get over Deming way you must check out the Adobe Deli. A place like no other (although not as great in Dec as it was a few years back when l sought it out.. Covid changes everything ) Literally in the middle of nowhere. Think that Quentin Tarantino movie “From Dusk to Dawn.”
2 great state parks near Deming. Were really beautiful in December.
opiejeanne
@Mo Salad: Can you explain who that is? Is that a National Lampoon thing?
Elizabelle
RIP, PJ. Not surprised it was lung cancer, because the man was seriously addicted to tobacco. I worried about him, as I do about Dennis O’Leary, Benecio del Toro, Leo DiCaprio…
Did not follow his career once we got to this century. Always took him more for a razor-wit glibertarian than for one of the John Bircher Q stooges prevalent in his party today.
I wonder what he thought of its devolution, and if he ever wrote honestly about it. I knew he was once married to Lena Horne’s granddaughter, and so what did he have to say about the “modern” GOP bringing back Jim Crow? About “legitimate rape”? About the worship of actual foreign dictators? The small-mindedness?
I know he was not enamored of the evangelical set (who could be?) — one of his “Holidays in Hell” was set in Jim and Tammy Faye’s theme park, right?
He bet so hard on the wrong horse, and maybe he acknowledged that personally. I think John Cole has had the more courageous character arc.
Good to hear he also wrote for Car and Driver, etc.
I wonder how his 1980s satire will read today? That actually could make for a good book club type blogpost, in a few months. Lot of PJ fans here.
Anyway, RIP, and thanks for the laughs. During the Reagan and Clinton administrations …
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: Good luck with your move West. Santa Fe is a way better place for you, and JoJo.
It is amazing to be able to make such a huge life change (with dog). Glad you went for it.
Mustang Bobby
I liked his equal-opportunity skewering and sense of wit in just about everything, including “Wait… Wait.” My one connection with him was that his family owned a Buick dealership in Toledo and I remember the commercials on the radio. Peace, Friend.
The Thin Black Duke
I hated his politics but loved his writing. I enjoyed his occasional appearances on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, and when he wasn’t punching down, he was damned good. And his vote for Clinton might be enough to get him past St. Peter at the gates. RIP, PJ.
Steeplejack (phone)
@opiejeanne:
She is a character from National Lampoon‘s 1964 high school yearbook. If memory serves, it was for Estes Kefauver High School in Dacron, OH. I think it was a special edition of the magazine.
Wag
PJ was their life long Democrat’s kind of Republican. Sure he could be an asshole, but he was a well meaning kind of asshole. I was just perusing twitter, and came across the post from Peter Sagle from Wait, Wait… with a letter written to Peter from PJ, on the occasion of the death of Peter’s mother. The writing and heart in the letter is beautiful. A reflection of an asshole of honor.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack (phone):
Every page of it is comedic perfection. I think (hope) I still own a copy tucked away somewhere. Just looked it up online, and copies in halfway decent condition are going for $290 and up.
evap
I only know him from National Lampoon. I am laughing just thinking about “Night of a Thousand Fires” (I think it was called this, the one about drinking and “booting” at Dartmouth college) and the absolutely brilliant high school yearbook parody mentioned above. If you read through the names of the students, there are some real gems: Buster Hymen e.g. Wasn’t that crew responsible for Bored of the Rings? And who remembers the National Lampoon Radio Hour? with the fake game shows: Land a Million etc.
In retrospect, I guess they were a bunch of misogynists and a lot of the NL stuff would make me cringe now, but I didn’t notice that back then.
Betty Cracker
@Wag: Wow, what a beautiful letter. Thanks for sharing that link.
@Elizabelle: I also remember the evangelical theme park visit in Holidays in Hell, which I read decades ago. I think O’Rourke started off by saying that he came away converted but to satanism rather than Christianity so he could avoid the evangelical heaven or something like that. He was funny.
evap
The theme song for the National Lampoon Radio hour just popped into my head. “We could say we’re smoking reefer on the radio, when we’re really eating cookies and you’d never know. We could say we’re really great, when we only overweight, ’cause you don’t have to look at pictures on the radio”
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
Exactly! I listen to that show regularly and just a couple of weeks ago was wondering why he wasn’t on anymore. P.J. made me laugh despite my hatred of his views, though his vocal “dislike” of Trump was very welcome.
debbie
@Wag:
He was old-style Republican, like Bill Buckley, but very funny.
Mo Salad
@SiubhanDuinne: https://gonzotoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/National_Lampoon_1964_High_School_Yearbook_Parody_1979.pdf.
A link to an instant download of the .pdf. I used it to remember the name correctly.
The young associate pastor at my church loaned this 15 year old his copy. ’70s Lutherans were awesome. Okay, maybe not Missouri Synod.
JML
English professor of mine turned me on to O’Rourke (he was an interesting duck: an ex-hippie in many ways who turned semi-republican after a religious conversion, but was unfailingly kind to students). We used to argue politics and free speech and so forth, so he got me to read Parliament of Whores. I retaliated with Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, and we continued on in that vein for some time.
O’Rourke was a good writer.
BethanyAnne
I remember one of his books, but not which one, that had explanations of different types of governments. Each chapter was a type of government, with his stories about visiting that place. But it wasn’t just “Socialism” or “Capitalism”. It was “Good Socialism (Sweden)” and “Bad Socialism (Cuba)”. Good Capitalism was Hong Kong, I think, and Bad Capitalism was Albania. The details are lost in my head, but remembering that government type isn’t enough without knowing who is trying that type stuck with me.
Another Scott
@Quinerly: It seems like some backup job or database compactor or something runs on the B-J server at 2 AM Eastern time every morning. Things are always squirrelly if I try to post around then. It’s usually normal again by 15+ minutes later.
Just a guess.
Cheers,
Scott.
...now I try to be amused
Parliament of Whores is a classic, and downright educational. I like how O’Rourke came to sympathize with the regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (they’re car nuts like him) and members of Congress.
This lazy reader also appreciated his book On The Wealth of Nations. P.J. reads Adam Smith so you don’t have to, as it says on the tin. I learned from that book that Smith considered himself a moral philosopher first and an economist second.
SW
He was a good person and in the end that is what matters.
Elizabelle
Yep. Bottom line. We will miss PJ O’Rourke.
nclurker
i’ve used this here before ,but,
”if it floats ,flys ,or fucks,rent it”.
rip p.j.o.
jimmiraybob
I’m way late to this thread but I just wanted to second the shout out to the P Funk. And of course, a shout out to PJ and satire.
PS, if you are in STL, Tower of Power will be playing Lindenwood University on March 19.
Burnspbesq
Imagine the Heavenly conversations between PJ and Molly Ivins..
Mike in NC
I always despised that piece of shit. Good riddance.
Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the passing of another piece of shit, Rush Limbaugh.
dnfree
@Quinerly: probably late to this thread, but good luck! A former coworker a little older than you (probably closer to 70) moved to New Mexico from northwest Illinois a couple of years ago and he seems to be enjoying it. He’s a photographer and posts beautiful photos of balloons and mountains and cactus. And chiles.
JustRuss
I remember that, his car stuff was pretty good. And Parliament of Whores is quite good. I saw him speak once, in 1984, and he was pretty funny. Certainly had issues, but he was willing to challenge his assumptions, which is not nothing.
Chip Daniels
I was a young Republican in the 80s-90s and liked PJ’S snarky outsider personnae because it matched mine at the time.
But like a lot of people, I discovered the limitations of that, how it made it difficult to process genuine emotion and suffering and how it blocked our ability to be empathetic.
I’ve heard he got less sarcastic and funny ad he matured, which seems to speak well of him.
Ida Slapter
@Mo Salad:
“Are you SURE you washed them?”
I think Doug Kenney posed as Maria Theresa Spermatozoa, but I loved PJ and the other original National Lampoon writers too!
billcinsd
@Mike in NC: I’m with you. The stuff of his I saw was always punch-down, frat boy humor that I hated then and haven’t developed a taste for since then
concerned citizen
good interview
https://reason.com/2022/02/16/p-j-orourke-r-i-p/
Mo Salad
@Ida Slapter: I thought Doug posed as the dead student in the “In Memoriam” at the front. Could be both. Could be neither.
RE: Doug. If interested, I highly recommend Netflix’s A Futile and Stupid Gesture.
TriassicSands
I never liked O’Rourke at all. Just not my cup of tea. Unlike Cole, I wasn’t a Republican when encountering O’Rourke. Much of my exposure was hearing him on the radio. I found him obnoxious and annoying. He always seemed to think he was a lot funnier than I found him to be. Humor is very subjective.
If only he were the worst the American Right had to offer. Does anyone know what his take was on the current Republican Fascist Party?
RIP.
smintheus
Based upon his writings, I would never have guessed he had a reputation for being funny.
TriassicSands
@TriassicSands: That said, he died too young. I certainly get no pleasure from his death. Condolences to all who loved him.
grumbles
I enjoyed reading him.
Actually, now that I think about it, I think he’s the only funny conservative I can name off the top of my head. (But then I don’t watch comedy, and don’t go out of my way looking for funny books.)