American political satirist PJ O’Rourke has died aged 74.
Washington:
American political satirist PJ O’Rourke, who punctured Democrats and his fellow Republicans alike with tantalizing works, including “Republican Party Reptilians,” has died at age 74, the writer’s friends and employers said Tuesday.
O’Rourke also wrote about his experiences in various countries and conflict zones around the world as Rolling Stone magazine’s chief foreign correspondent in the 1980s and 1990s, most notably in his best-selling books “Holidays in Hell” and “Give War a Chance.” ,” and was a prominent part of American talk shows and the commentary circuit for decades.
The irreverent, cigar-chewing humor often contrasted his own youthful flirtation with the Left with his later persona as a biting conservative in books like “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut.”
He once wrote of the two dominant political factions of the United States: “The Democrats are the party that says the government will make you smarter, taller, richer and get rid of the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says that the government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”
In 2016, however, he announced that he had voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton instead of Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying that winning her would be “the second worst thing that could happen to this country. But she is way behind. second place.”
O’Rourke cut his teeth as a satirist writing for National Lampoon magazine in New York in the 1970s, becoming the publication’s editor.
In later years, he appeared regularly on the humorous radio news quiz show “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” whose longtime host Peter Sagal mourned his death on Twitter Tuesday.
“Most famous people try to be nicer in public than they are in private,” he wrote. “PJ was the only man I knew was the complete opposite.”
DailyExpertNews reported that O’Rourke had died of complications from lung cancer.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
