P.J. O'Rourke


P.J. O'Rourke speaks at a January 2007 event at the Cato Institute about his latest book.

Patrick Jake O'Rourke (born November 14, 1947 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American political satirist, journalist, and writer. He was educated at Miami University and Johns Hopkins University.

He confesses that during his student days he was a left-leaning hippie, but that in the 1970s his political views underwent a complete volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist with definite libertarian, sometimes conservative, and decidedly anti-leftist viewpoints.

O'Rourke wrote articles for several publications before joining National Lampoon in 1973, where he served as managing editor among other roles and authored articles such as "Foreigners Around the World." Going freelance in 1981, O'Rourke began publishing in magazines such as Playboy, Vanity Fair, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone. He later became the foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone, where he remained until 2001. In 1996, he served as the conservative commentator in the point-counterpoint segment of 60 Minutes.

An early proponent of gonzo journalism, O'Rourke's nascent master-work in the genre was a National Lampoon article, appearing in March of 1979 "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." The article later appeared in his third book, Republican Party Reptile (1987), which became a bestseller. As the book's title implies, O'Rourke espoused economic and geopolitical views that were notably libertarian, including his views on sex and drugs. He is the author of 13 books, most recently On The Wealth of Nations, a commentary on Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It is the first book in The Atlantic Monthly's "Books That Changed The World" series.

O'Rourke can best be described as a libertarian (and has, in fact, sarcastically proposed two other American political parties: one to cater for those with his peculiar mixture of views, and another for those who hold the opposite mixture). According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in the The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.

O'Rourke is H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He is perhaps best known in the United Kingdom as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s. He has appeared on the long-running British comedy panel game Have I Got News For You twice, in 1995 and 2004.

A self-confessed luddite, O'Rourke still types his manuscripts on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
O'Rourke has been married twice and has three children — two daughters and one son, the most recent born in 2003.