P.J. O’Rourke Dies: Satirist, Author & NPR Panelist Was 74

By Greg Evans

P. J. O’Rourke, the political satirist, NPR panelist and bestselling author whose early work with National Lampoon included contributions to the influential Lemmings show, died today of lung cancer. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by his publisher Grove Atlantic, United Talent Agency and by Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me program. O’Rourke served as a regular panelist on the NPR program.

O’Rourke, who began his journalism career as a left-leaning Gonzo journalist before moving toward conservative libertarianism during the 1980s, wrote for such publications as Playboy, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, where he served for a time as foreign-affairs desk chief. In 1996, he was the conservative commentator in the point-counterpoint segment of 60 Minutes.

In 2008, O’Rourke covered the presidential election as a “Real Time Real Reporter” for HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. 

In recent years, O’Rourke wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, Car and Driver and The Daily Beast.

Early in his writing career, O’Rourke contributed to the 1973 stage revue National Lampoon’s Lemmings, which featured a pre-Saturday Night Live line-up of Chevy Chase and John Belushi, as well as Christopher Guest. Also that year, he served as co-editor (with Doug Kenney) of the humor book National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, which became a source of inspiration for National Lampoon’s Animal House in 1978.

O’Rourke was the author of more than 20 books, covering such subjects as politics, economics and automobiles, including the bestsellers Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance. He was a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, an H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute  and editor-in-chief of the web magazine American Consequences.

O’Rourke, who was married for several years in the 1990s to Amy Lumet, daughter of film director Sidney Lumet, is survived by wife Tina O’Rourke and three children.