His death is reported here.
My son John collects some of his quotes at Facebook. Excerpt:
"Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it."
"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."
"Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay."
Here's something of his that I quoted in May 2016:
"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
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He started off as a fairly funny, mostly libertarian-leaning guy.
But he seemed to get more and more squishy as time went on...
One story mentions lung cancer...
I used to say I learned everything about the political dynamic from Orwell and O’Rourke. TDS must be a helluva drug. RIP, nonetheless.
"She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
He got that wrong, which is a shame, because he was doing so well up to then. My favorite quote from him is "Life is full of little ironies, for stupid people.'
I happen to have a copy of the National Lampoon from May 1976 in my office. I pulled it out and started perusing PJ's "Guide to Foreigners Around the World". Too rude to occur today, I did like the part on Russians
Good Points: They aren't allowed to leave their Country"!
He got reflective with age, but had always been wry and kind in reality to regular joes.
PJ O'Rourke was 74? Damn we're all getting old. S
Sorta liked him in my conservative "Libertarians are our allies" phase in the 90s. Had some of his books, but when I tried to re-read them a couple years ago, they seemed so dated and unfunny. The book's were probably still funny, its just my tastes had changed. Gave them to the local library.
Can't say I read or saw much of him for the last 10-12 years, although I assume he was still active somewhere.
I first encountered him when someone gave me a copy of his book "Holidays in Hell." Hopefully he is not researching a sequel, "Retirements in Hell."
Oh! I'd been wondering what had happened to him. I always liked him, and he had a good and interesting interest in cars too.
RIP.
My favorite quote(from recall, so may not be word for word):
"Giving money and power to the government is like giving your car keys and whiskey to teenage boys."
I was repeatedly shocked by his racist, ill informed and arrogant (American (white)-centric)comments.
American Libtard on Twitter.
I loved the way he sounded every bit as sarcastic as his writing.
He had a nice-sounding magazine piece (discussed with him on Imus) about walking the Central Park jogging path smoking an area-clearing cigar, for the expected reaction from health nuts.
Apparently in later years he turned into a never-Trumper, not a good sign.
A sense of humor is a terrible thing to waste.
I love P.J. O'Rourke! But he's wrong about Hillary.
"...She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.""
She was the champion of the deep state (think judges and unelected bureaucrats), so her wrongness would have been efficiently (by government standards anyway) enacted. Trump had some wild ideas (none of which would go anywhere) and a bunch of pretty mainstream conservative ideas, which would be reliably opposed and delayed by the deep state. But some of them would get through. And in so doing, they would both improve the country in general and weaken the deep state. Both of these being good things.
O'Rourke came to my University to give a talk--which I suppose was the first time I'd seen a professional stand-up comedian, live. He killed. I was kind of surprised, at the time, by how young he looked--I'd been reading his work for more than a decade by then and thought he would be old. From the rear-view mirror of being much older now, than he was then, he looked about right for a 35 year old.
Bastard surely cared a lot about the economic well-being of the common man, didn’t he? The trouble with being an atheist is that I think this guy belongs down in Hell, but I don’t believe Hell exists. Sad.
It's says something that even PJO couldn't fathom the depths of Hillary's malevolence.
Can we have a link to the Althouse post that included the 2016 quote?
I like looking through old threads re this blog. That post probably resulted in something interesting re the comments. If nothing else it’s sometimes worthwhile to read the stuff from commenters long gone from this place.
IMHO.
P.S.
I just now read the latest version of the disclaimer re what will be allowed re comments.
“unknown” is currently a bad thing here. The ever changing rules re what will be allowed re comments is interesting and funny to me. I’d assume there’s no record of it, but I’d love to see the ever-changing commenting rules that have been implemented here. Being able to read all of them, one after the other in chronological order would be cool. It’d be a deeply deep insight into the (real or imagined?) drama that takes space between Althouse’s ears.
Anywho, carry on.
I was a huge fan of pj back in the 60s through the 90s.
Then he turned into a country club LLC and just was no fun anymore.
I'll miss him but I've missed him for years.
He and Monkee Mike Nesmith got into offload auto racing together. He wrote a book about it perhaps 15 years ago. No politics or much social commentary. Just cars and racing. It was pretty good.
I'm gonna read one of hours books tonight. Perhaps Parliament of Whores.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Two of his best pieces may be overlooked - the National Lampoon Yearbook and the NatLamp Sunday paper.
Rest in Peace Miss Marilyn Armbruster.
I enjoyed reading PJ O'Rourke for years. Just this past weekend I was wearing one of my favorite t-shirts around the house. I got it years ago at a Cato Institute gathering, where PJ O'Rourke was the featured speaker. The PJ quote on the front of the shirt says, "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
His humor will be missed. RIP.
My favorite was him at the 1988 GOP convention. GHWB vowed to imprison drug dealers for life, to which O'Rourke quipped, "Even if they're good quality at a fair price?"
He was a genius until he failed to fall for the Trump con along with you people. The Scientology shun. I would say that he was dead to you but that's all too obvious now.
RIP, P.J. O'Rourke.
Now that we have that out of the way, that last paragraph... Well, that was before we knew about the DNC and the FBI colluding to spy on Trump at Hillary's behest, wasn't it? Nixon on steroids isn't "wrong within normal parameters." And the last year has shown that having Trump as President was far from the worst thing that could befall this country. Let's Go Brandon!
Like Hunter Thompson, he was great when he was young but as he got older, be got lost in the formula. Better that he quit long before he did, long before he disgraced himself with his endorsement of Hillary. Still, he was brilliant when young.
Howard said...He was a genius until he failed to fall for the Trump con along with you people. The Scientology shun. I would say that he was dead to you but that's all too obvious now.
Whereas he was dead to you UNTIL he fell for the TDS con. But we all know Howard--the right is required to love or hate unconditionally. We're not allowed to be our own people and have values. Granted, he's a liberal, so he probably has no idea what those things are...
In Parliament of Whores, P.J. described the sorts of people who attended protest rallies. The chapter was titled "Among the Compassion Fascists." Tell me if these descriptions from 30+ years ago still don't ring true:
World Council of Churches sensible-shoe types who have self-righteousness the way some people have bad breath
Angry black poverty pests making a life and a living off the misfortunes of others
Even angrier feminists doing their best to feminize poverty before the blacks use it all up
Earnest neophyte Marxists, eyes glazed from dialectical epiphanies and hands grubby from littering the Mall with ill-Xeroxed tracts
College bohos dressed in black to show how gloomy the world is when you're a nineteen-year-old rich kid
Young would-be hippies dressed exactly like old hippies used to dress (remarkable how behind the times the avant-garde has gotten)
And some of those old hippies themselves, faded jeans straining beneath increasing paunches, hair still tied into a ponytail in the back but gone forever from the top
And if you walk the streets of Madison today, you still see all those folks.
Note to a few readers: mortuis nihil nisi bonum
Another one of my role models bites the dust. PJ was born a year before me. We both grew up in the same part of Toledo OH. We probably would have met in HS or at Miami University, OH (my dad's alma mater) if the family hadn't moved to CA. We shared the same sense of humor and being appalled by the Bush years. But he was very wrong about Hillary because she is, and always has been far outside of normal anything.
My first thought was, wow, thinking him to be a young guy. Then about a second later, I realized he's actually been around a long time, so maybe not so young. And yet, you wouldn't think so in the same way that it blows you away that the 1980s were FORTY YEARS ago.
Anyway, I then guessed he was 75 and, thus, not so young and, thus, death not shocking by whatever cause. Looked it up and he was 74. Same diff.
Death comes for us all. Yea, even for kings.
For those of a certain age, it will come faster and faster for the people they know or know of.
"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
Good at satire.
But obviously proven wrong here.
He was as wrong as Ann was.
They all tried voting for a corrupt criminal and trying to do it in a way that proved they were smarter than the rubes voting for Trump.
You were wrong and your aren't smarter than us.
Deal with it.
Howard said...
He was a genius until he failed to fall for the Trump con along with you people. The Scientology shun. I would say that he was dead to you but that's all too obvious now.
Limited people make the world binary.
Agh. I've used one of PJ's similes to describe hundreds of clusterfucks: "Like monkeys at a salad bar." First caught him in the mid-70s in Nat'l Lampoon. Got several of his books and saw him speak 15 years ago at the SF Commwealth Club. Always made me laugh. Good guy.
Holidays In Hell is a great book. And it doesn't really touch on American Politics that much.
"Pant splitting Kimchi farts" is part of my marital lexicon.
Václav Patrik Šulik said...
Two of his best pieces may be overlooked - the National Lampoon Yearbook and the NatLamp Sunday paper.
The Yearbook was PJ and Doug Kenney. It don't get no better than that!
my first introduction was holiday in hell, sort of a poor man's tom friedman survey, like one line about a phillipine militia leader 'compact like an attack chipmunk' not quite standard fare but very entertaining and informative
Parliament of Whores was the first political theme book I ever bought.
Funny stuff.
Ususual. P. j. O'Rokorke went out praising local elitist sounding rejected by his elite peers. Good riddance to deaf poor and defy Dickiksensian
Inging we had a real FBI, he'd slowly mouldering in contadictons.
Can't Write simple words after ten tries. This.website is.being hacked.
Howard is bitter today. Is it because Biden's wag-the-dog war with Putin didn't work out the way Biden wanted? What's he going to do about his approval ratings now?
… bonum, especially.
Amen.
Eat The Rich should be a required high-school text, about why some countries suck, and some don't. Brilliant summary, delivered humorously.
O'Rourke is one of two guys I loved to read in college, but became disappointments as we all aged. (Jonah Goldberg was the other)
I have quoted him entirely too much over the years.
Others have offered other quotes, so I'll go with this, from the acknowledgments to All the Trouble in the World. PJ, on form:
"I'd like to thank Vice President Al Gore for being the perfect straw man on such subjects as the environment, ecology, and population. Sorry, Al, for repeatedly calling you a fascist twinkie and intellectual dolt. It's nothing personal. I just think you have repulsive totalitarian inclinations and the brains of a King Charles spaniel."
Oh, and, Tim Maguire, he didn't disgrace himself. I disagreed with him then (I heard it on the radio) and now, but that was the cruelest endorsement I've ever heard. I still laugh hearing him endorse "all her lies, and all her empty promises."
Funny guy. Satirists and curmudgeons do valuable work, but the exaggeration inherent in their writing makes me reluctant to take them entirely seriously.
Is Hillary (or Biden) corrupt within normal parameters? I can see PJ'S point about Trump in 2016, but what Trump did as President in terms of policy did fit "within normal parameters," and even overperformed.
"Then he turned into a country club LLC and just was no fun anymore." Yeah, pretty much this. I read the salad years of National Lampoon from 1974-79 way before I understood all the humor and remember him fondly.
Alas, by 2002 of the few articles or essays I could find, his tone reminded me of a stuck up Tom Friedman trying to be funny. He fled to the hills after 9/11 and retreated unto some farm. I expected him to be jaunty and defiant but instead he sounded like a frightened fop. Was it because he got remarried to a much younger wife? He seemed really neutered to me.
He voted for Obama as well as Hillary and it seemed so incongruent for the guy that penned 'Parliament of Whores'. Disappointing on so many levels.
Evenso, I am saddened by his passing and glad his illness was short and final.
Blogger Howard said...
He was a genius until he failed to fall for the Trump con along with you people.
That was the problem of old age and should worry you, Howard. New ideas frighten you and PJ.
Damn why are these guys dying so young.
I mean 74 is young, right?
Right?
Memory Eternal PJ. You were funny, once...
Trump broke a lot of people, and O'Rourke was definitely one of them. He lost me with his rant against Ted Cruz, which was revealing. He seemed to like Republicanism in theory, but when people actually implemented conservative ideas, it revealed what he, and others like him, really thought. He was, in the end, unfortunately, one of the establishment GOP amicable losers we've all come to know and despise.
This is a shame, because in simpler times, his books were both informative and hilarious.
He was an interesting and funny speaker on our campus about the time of Daddy WarBush's War; it must have been before the 96-hour blitz because I asked if he saw any evidence that the Saudis (for instance) could or would fight on his recent trip there. He said the Saudis probably wouldn't have to, and that their few capable forces were well-paid mercenaries for regime protection anyway. If infidel suckers wanted to defend them, well, allahu akbar.
He was one of the Nat Lamp greats and remained entertaining for a long time, but the young counter-cultural curmudgeon turned into an old wiseacre and lost relevance. His late preference for the comfortable known disappoints, but it doesn't invalidate his best work.
74 ain't old. R.I.P.
I have to admit that most of my exposure to PJ's work was via National Lampoon. On that basis alone, I thought he was brilliant. RIP PJ.
on the 2016 thread there is a commenter = 'Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together'
how come???
Lung cancer also felled PJ's dad.
A sad ending to a too-brief life.
Funny man. I had to stop reading Holidays in Hell in bed, as my laughing was keeping my wife up.
His late 90s piece on Sweden was both funny and true; it certainly jibed with my own observations; and my many Swedish friends and relatives thought it was spot on.
And unlike the writers at WAPO and the NYT who treat a trip out to a place like Wisconsin, outside of Dane County, of course, like a trip to darkest Africa, he didn’t hate the subjects he poked fun at.
My favorite is the following, from the hard to find article Foreigners Around the World, in which he describes the characteristics of a number of prominent ethnic groups:
“An Anecdote Illustrating Something of the Irish Character:
There was an Irishman who got so drunk on his trip to Rome that he kissed his wife and hit the Pope’s foot with a coal shovel.”
Or his description of the English: “Once ruled half the world, but can’t figure out central heating “
I’d heard he’d gotten Trump Derangement Syndrome in later life, which made me sad.
He made me laugh a lot, though. RIP, Peej.
Eat the Rich will have relevance for a long while.
It looked like he had found his people when I saw him around Hanover a few times. He did a handful academic videos at Tuck where he played it straight. I wanted a few pithy one liners mixed in.
I liked his writing in "Car and Driver." One of his best quotes is in this article.
Porsche - "Ass engine Nazi slot car"
Excellent
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15142347/ferrari-reinvents-manifest-destiny-pj-orourke-and-a-ferrari-308gts-archived-feature/
On the subject of the commenter named 'Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together', it looks like when a commenter changes their name but not their login information, the name changes retroactively. Judging by the profile photo, this was the user named "president pee pee tape". Which makes perfect sense...
I also used to laugh out loud reading PJ. He was still entertaining on NPR's "Wait wait Don't Tell Me", but yes, he went soft in his old age. Maybe it happens to all of us eventually. I've watched it happen to my father, but to be fair, he is now 98 years old. 74 seems a bit young to go weak.
Hillary Clinton is second worst to no one. HC is the best worst person there is.
Having read at least half his books, my favorite is Give War a Chance.
RIP.
Not even embarrassed that the "pee pee tapes" story was a lie he believed, he now believes the lie, from the same people, that Trump said to drink bleach. It's amazing. I just hope he is not actually that stupid, but just thinks we are that stupid, for his sake.
News of P.J. O'Rourke's passing sent me to my copy of Parliament of Whores to see his comments on various people, but the book has no index. I suspect that the lack of an index was the result of some very interesting conversations.
My favorite P.J. piece was about driving a Ferrari cross-country. Gold in every paragraph. Car and Driver re-printed the article
Rest in Peace.
How to flush it all down the toilet? Endorse Hillary.
O'Rourke represented a sort of Gerald Ford Libertarianism. Open Borders, Free Trade, Socially liberal. Liked Big Business and hated taxes. Also made a big deal of liking guns and wars. You can see why he hated Trump. His early writings had a Hunter Thompson "Wild and crazy guy" style to it.
Too bad he died of lung cancer, but that's what you get from smoking for 50 years.
My favourite PJ quote, which I've repeated many times to the younger folk around me who express a desire for strong government intervention in various businesses to suit their preferences, goes something like this:
"When you give politicians the power to decide what gets bought and sold, the first thing that gets bought and sold is politicians."
This is not an original idea of course, but probably one of the most clear and compact expressions of it that I've ever read.
It's odd to me that someone as smart as O'Rourke, and as devoted to freedom as he was (at least in his earlier days) could not foresee what a significant rise in statism would have occurred had Hillary Clinton defeated Trump and taken the White House. Trump had his statist side, but he was Adam Smith (whom "Peej" wrote an admiring book about) compared to Granny Maojackets.
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