The conservative writer and humorist PJ O’Rourke, whose acerbic wit and writings often won admiration on both sides of America’s political divide, has died, media reports and colleagues said. He was 74 years old.
Peter Sagal, O’Rourke’s colleague and host of the NPR radio show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, said on Twitter: “I’m afraid it’s true. Our panelist and my dear friend PJ O’Rourke has passed away.”
The CNN host Jake Tapper reported that O’Rourke had died of cancer. “Our dear friend and cherished Grove Atlantic author P.J O’Rourke passed away this morning from complications of lung cancer,” Tapper quoted O’Rourke’s publisher as saying.
O’Rourke was one of the most quoted writers in America, dissecting US politics and culture with a withering disdain and a powerful line in put-downs – often laced with a warm, self-deprecating humanity.
He held a variety of roles that showcased his writing, commentary and reportage – and most importantly his humor. They included stints as editor in chief of National Lampoon and Rolling Stone’s foreign affairs desk chief.
His targets featured government and politicians in works like Parliament of Whores and Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards but also ranged towards foreign reporting such as his war correspondent book Holidays in Hell. Nearly all his work was laced with tales from his own life and joy of hard partying, at least in his early writing.
Though he was notably – and briefly – a hippy in the late 196os and early 1970s O’Rourke found his home on the right of the political spectrum, though far from the conservative social values that many in the Republican party embraced. One of his best-known works was titled Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and Outrages of PJ O’Rourke.
Though O’Rourke often reserved his sharpest barbs for the left and Democrats, he admitted that in 2016’s election he would be supporting Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters,” he said.
O’Rourke was from Toledo, Ohio, born the son of a car salesman. He went to university in Ohio and, later, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was married twice, latterly moving to New Hampshire with his second spouse, Tina Mallon, with whom he had three children.
Numerous friends and former colleagues paid tribute to him.
“PJ was special. When he came by the office, the fun and wit went up a notch, sparks were in the air, and we all felt a certain joie de vivre. I cherish the memories,” wrote the conservative writer Bill Kristol of a shared time at the rightwing the Weekly Standard.
“PJ O’Rourke was one of the nicest writers I ever had the pleasure of meeting and drinking and (very rarely) corresponding with. No reason whatsoever for him to be decent to some junior editor at one of the many outlets he wrote for, and yet. What a loss,” posted Sunny Bunch, culture editor at the Bulwark.