P.J.O'R: O.G. GOP

     P.J. O’Rourke has spent the better part of his career trying to make Republicanism fun. Ironic, considering that he freely admits starting out as a far-left hippie.

     Winston Churchill famously remarked that, "A man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, a man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brain."

     O’Rourke describes the process of how age changes one’s politics in the introduction to his book Age and Guile, Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut thusly, "It is, I guess, interesting to watch the leftist grub weaving itself into the pupa of satire and then emerging a resplendent conservative blowfly." This lack of reverence for his conservative ideals is typical for the man who wrote the book Republican Party Reptile, a collection of columns about reconciling his Republican beliefs with his, um, lets say "libertine lifestyle."

     Born in Toledo Ohio, in 1947, Patrick Jake O’Rourke is a scion of our nation’s heartland, reared in its conservative traditions and mores. While attending college at Miami University (in Oxford Ohio) during the late 1960's O’Rourke was galvanized by the radical new politics of the era...for a while at least. "I went from Republican to communist and right back to Republican" O’Rourke was quoted as saying, adding that, "At least I was never a liberal."

     O’Rourke’s first national exposure came in the early 1970's when he was hired on at the notorious National Lampoon magazine. The Natlamp brand is mostly remembered today for slapstick Chevy Chase movies but the magazine, moldering copies of which can still be found in the less-reputable used book stores, was legendary for its writers’ willingness to offend every possible demographic. O’Rourke’s article, "Foreigners Around The World," in which he describes all the different nations on Earth solely in terms of their particular ethnic stereo-types, was a good example of a typical National Lampoon article.

     After his stint at National Lampoon, O’Rourke went on to write about cars for the automotive press. He described later how getting paid to drive and review exotic sports and luxury cars made him realize how journalism could make the world a better place. His world that is.

     According to his website, O’Rourke has been published in: Automobile, The Weekly Standard, House and Garden (!), Foreign Policy, The New York Times Book Review, Forbes FYI, World Affairs, and the Atlantic Monthly. O’Rourke also wrote for Rolling Stone, where he said his job was to be the "house Republican."

     It was at Rolling Stone that O’Rourke began his career as an international correspondent. O’Rourke made a point of going to every foreign war zone he could find. He has covered the overthrow of Marcos in the Philippines, the U.S. intervention in Somalia, The Nicaraguan civil war and the first and the current Iraq war among many others.

     O’Rourke is a contemporary and friend of writers like Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe and his style reflects their vision of the "new journalism." His war reporting is Gonzo Journalism at its finest. It is written in the first person and generally begins by describing how he finagled his way into the country. The stories O’Rourke files from the front lines are sharply opinionated and full of cynical, black humor. He has published his war reporting over the years in books including: Give War a Chance, Peace Kills, and Holidays in Hell.

     O’Rourke is a modern H.L. Mencken, a sharp-tongued iconoclast who not only can see the emperor’s nudity, but delights in calling attention to it. Despite his oft professed devotion to the GOP, he has never endorsed a specific candidate, he instead holds to Mencken’s maxim that "The only way a journalist should look at a politician is down."