P.J. O'Rourke

1947 - 2022

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade staff writer

P.J. O'Rourke, a product of West Toledo and DeVilbiss High School turned nationally known satirist who aimed his barbed wit at liberal pretension and government overreach, but also fellow conservatives, his Baby Boom generation, and his hometown, died Tuesday in his Sharon, N.H., home. 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 had been at work for more than two decades on a book with the working title, A History of Toledo, Ohio: From the Beginning of Time Til the End of the Universe.

"I didn't want to write a history about someplace famous or allegedly important," Mr. O'Rourke told The Blade in 1999.

"I want to write a history of ordinary existence, and having come from Toledo, I thought, what could possibly be more ordinary," he said then. "Practically everything that's happened in American history has happened in Toledo too. Usually in a minor key. Often in a comic way. But it's happened."

Morgan Entrekin, publisher and president of Grove Atlantic, said in an email: "He was proud of being from Toledo. He kept putting the Toledo book aside as events intervened and he did other books but we were going back to it this year with hopes of finishing."

Toledo proved early inspiration. When a National Lampoon writer in the 1970s - of which he eventually later became editor-in-chief - he edited a mock yearbook of a high school that resembled DeVilbiss and a parody Sunday edition of the newspaper in "Dacron, Ohio."

He wrote for Rolling Stone, holding the title of "foreign affairs desk chief," reporting from abroad, occasionally from war zones, including in the early 1990s from the former Yugoslavia. His book, Holidays in Hell, included many of his dispatches for the magazine.

Editors who worked with him at Rolling Stone said his copy came in so clean, it almost went straight to type. Fact checkers at the magazine fought over getting to work on his stories because his research materials were organized so thoroughly - everything annotated and color-coded.

His bestselling books included Parliament of Whores and Give War A Chance, and he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly. He offered his particular conservative perspective to the 60 Minutes segment, "Point/Counterpoint." NPR listeners got to know his ripostes as a panelist on the news quiz, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!"

"Most well-known people try to be nicer than they are in public than they are in private life. PJ was the only man I knew to be the opposite. He was a deeply kind and generous man who pretended to be a curmudgeon for public consumption," tweeted Peter Sagal, the program's host. "He told the best stories. He had the most remarkable friends. And he devoted himself to them and his family in a way that would have totally ruined his shtick had anyone ever found out."

He saved his greatest disdain for the government, regardless of party or administration.

In a 2018 column for a venerable conservative publication, the Weekly Standard, he wrote of Washington's gentrification: "People are flocking to the seat of government power. One would say 'dogs returning to their vomit' except that's too hard on dogs. Too hard on people, also. They come to Washington because they have no choice - diligent working breeds compelled to eat their regurgitated tax dollars."

Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said that Mr. O'Rourke "will be remembered as one of the important voices, particularly of the Baby Boom generation.

"That transition from antiwar leftist to common sense conservative actually is a path many Baby Boomers took," Mr. Kapszukiewicz said. "He helped popularize a style of writing about national affairs that wasn't dry and boring."

He added that Mr. O'Rourke was among those "to help turn Toledo into a national punchline. When I think of him, to be honest, I think of how he helped change national thinking of Toledo, not necessarily in a positive way, and he used humor and wit.

"If you read between the lines, you could tell there was love for his hometown," the mayor said.

Mr. O'Rourke's contribution to a 2007 collection of essays by Ohio-born writers was titled, "Why It's good to Come from Nowhere," and opened - after a stanza of "We're Strong For Toledo":

"Toledo doesn't look like much. And looks do not deceive," Mr. O'Rourke wrote. Later in the essay, he wrote, "I may be making Toledo sound dull, and it is. That's a godsend. Toledoans don't have to look long at the exciting events of history to realize how little those excitements contributed to human felicity."

He titled a longer essay published online in 2019 by American Consequences, "Toledo, Ohio - A Lesson in Successful Failure."

While doing research for his Toledo book, Mr. O'Rourke visited regularly, speaking at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library's Authors! Authors! series and at the University of Toledo law school, and appearing at local benefits.

Patrick Jake O'Rourke was born Nov. 14, 1947, to Delpine and Clifford O'Rourke. His twin sisters Delphine and Kathleen followed. As he wrote in 2007, he grew up in the Jermain Park neighborhood and attended McKinley School before DeVilbiss. His father worked for the family Buick dealership in East Toledo, and his mother was the school secretary at Whittier School.

He was a 1965 graduate of DeVilbiss. He received his undergraduate degree in 1969 from Miami University and received a master's degree in English in 1970 from Johns Hopkins University.

As he grew up, the late Blade columnist Seymour Rothman was a neighbor. After Mr. Rothman's death in 2013, Mr. O'Rourke wrote to The Blade Readers' Forum, "He was a great guy, and the fun I saw him having as a reporter probably saved me from a life as a bad poet or a worse novelist."

He was formerly married to Amy Lumet.

Survivors include his wife, the former Tina Mallon, whom he married in 1995; son, Clifford, and daughters Olivia and Elizabeth.

Arrangements were not announced.

Information from The Blade's news services was used in this report.