Godspeed, P.J. O'Rourke

Remembering an icon of political journalism and a hell of a funny guy

Last week, we lost an icon of political journalism and commentary with the death of P.J. O’Rourke. There is probably not a bigger influence in my own thinking and writing than O’Rourke. He was a massively talented writer and there are remembrances aplenty popping up from every corner of the political sphere. I add my own to these to honor the man and to mark what a difference a writer can make to a young mind.

My political awakening can be traced precisely to November 8th, 1994, the night that the Republicans took control of the Senate and Congress for the first time in almost 40 years. I had never seen my dad so excited as when he watched the electoral return that evening. There was yelling and clapping, a regular hoopin-and-hollerin night. My sister says Dad jumped over the sofa, though I don’t hold this specific image in my head. That was when my interest in politics took its first root, more in the interest of knowing what the hell was going on than for any ideological reason.

Dad had a library to envy and that was my natural starting point for any investigation into the world. He had endless tomes of theology and biblical commentary, long shelves of fiction and poetry, many volumes of modernist literature that I would appreciate as a young man but found indecipherable as a teenage boy.

Due to my largely undiagnosed ADHD, I vastly preferred anything that could be read and understood in discreet chunks that would not tax my attention span. Proverbs was my favorite book the Bible. Though Dad had many books from popular conservative writers (William F. Buckley, George Will, Thomas Sowell, Cal Thomas), it was the column compilations that most appealed to me because the chapters were short.

I read a lot of those books, but the one I still read, the one I have in my library today, the one that I’m reading tonight, was from P.J. O’Rourke.

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut is a compilation masterpiece, a hurricane ride through a quarter-century of writing from a man who decided to publish a book containing both the passionate, angry, stupid young man hopped up on drugs and railing against the Man, and the wiser, smarter, annoyed old coot who is hoping we can take his early work as an exhortation to skip the dumb parts of youth and jump directly into single malt scotch, quality cigars, and a deep skepticism of every politician and government action.