R.I.P. PJ O'Rourke: What Right Wing Humor Is Left

[appalachiablue]

- Daily Kos, Feb. 15, 2022.

In an age when Dennis Miller and Bill Maher traffic in what could be called reactionary humor, PJ O’Rourke was a good writer first, which probably made him more of a centrist in ideology, because often the left lacks a sense of how funny it can be.

P.J. O’Rourke, the satirist, political commentator and best-selling author known for books like “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government,” for outspoken articles in a wide range of magazines, and for appearances on the NPR show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” and many television talk shows, died on Tuesday at his home in Sharon, N.H. He was 74.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Deb Seager, the director of publicity at Grove/Atlantic, Mr. O'Rourke’s publisher.

Mr. O’Rourke, whose political writing was in the caustic tradition of H.L. Mencken, was a proud conservative Republican — one of his books was called “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O’Rourke” — but he was widely admired by readers of many stripes, because of his fearless style and his willingness to mock just about anyone who deserved it, including himself. In “Republican Party Reptile” he recalled his youthful flirtation with Mao.

“But I couldn’t stay a Maoist forever,” he wrote. “I got too fat to wear bell-bottoms. And I realized that communism meant giving my golf clubs to a family in Zaire.” www.nytimes.com/...

- More, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/15/2080537/-R-I-P-PJ-O-Rourke-what-right-wing-humor-is-left

[Hoyt]

1. He endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 by saying.

“She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.”

[appalachiablue]

2. An approval all the same, interesting.