(person) by hesby Wed Nov 14 2001 at 19:32:34

Born November 14, 1947 in Toledo, OH. His father was a car salesman and his mother was a clerk at a grade school. Patrick Jake O'Rourke has two younger sisters, Delphine and Cathleen. After completing his undergraduate studies at Miami University in Oxford, OH, he won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, where he received his MA in English. While many men would be content with the steady stream of booze, drugs and nubile co-eds available in the late 1960s to a leftist English grad major, O'Rourke expanded his partying potential even further by writing for various underground newspapers, including one called Harry. O'Rourke adopted the pen name P.J. once he started writing, but initially thought it sounded odd when people actually started addressing him as P.J. as a result.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of O'Rourke's career is his gradual transformation from bleeding-heart liberal to cigar-chomping conservative/libertarian. Fortunately, his razor-sharp wit clearly survived the move, and, like a true curmudgeon, he spares no one from the ridicule they deserve.

O'Rourke has written countless articles for a wide variety of magazines since leaving his editor-in-chief post at National Lampoon in 1981. Whether reminiscing about various absurd feats of hedonism of his youth, railing against the powers that be, or breaking the complex factors of international politics into witty comedic jabs, O'Rourke has proven himself a world-class satirist and social commentator. The libertarian Cato Institute has named him their Mencken Research Fellow, which provided O'Rourke with much of the research ammunition behind his cynical take on economics, Eat The Rich.

In 1995, he married Tina, a PR executive from Oglivy, Adams, and Reinhard. They now have two children and alternate between homes in New Hampshire and Washington, D.C..

Books

Forewords and Excerpts

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