Wild Life Observer

 I should have sensed trouble when my father-in-law asked me if I had read the most recent column from P.J. O'Rourke. This was several years ago, before the Dark Days of the Game Show Host. I had been made aware, over the transom, that Mister O'Rourke had given in and joined the Red Side. A conservative commentator who skewed toward libertarianism, he was a clever foil for those less incisive Blues who might have been run in front of him on a panel or radio show. All of this making mincemeat of less-prepared liberals came after the time that I welcomed him into my life.

Those were the seventies, the time of "me," a decade perfectly suited for the trajectory of P.J. I looked forward to my next issue of National Lampoon appearing in the mailbox. This was where I first encountered the raucous and ribald style that fueled my adolescence. Aside from being Editor In Chief of "NatLamp" as I liked to call it, P.J. O'Rourke's credits back then included the Broadway production Lemmings, which helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest and Chevy Chase, he was also co-conspirator on the magazine's High School Yearbook Parody. 

To say that there was an anti-authority streak in P.J. O'Rourke's work would be doing a disservice to the word "streak." Instead, it would be more appropriate to say that there was a streak of respectability in the anarchic middle finger he was happily waving at the powers-that-be. In 1981, after my subscription lapsed, he moved on to freelance work, ultimately landing at the National Affairs desk at Rolling Stone. He stayed there for twenty years, poking holes in well-intentioned promises and policies. He wrote books with titles like Parliament of Whores and Give War A Chance. He referred to the Obama Presidency as "the Carter administration in better sweaters."

It was about this time that I had to leap off the O'Rourke express. My bleeding heart couldn't take it anymore. While I was living in my twenties, trying to live up to the wild lifestyle inspired by the writings of a thirty-something who had moved up the food chain, P.J. was taking on bigger targets. Not the ones I felt comfortable ridiculing myself. We parted ways when he became too far removed from our youthful adventures, inspired and otherwise. 

P.J. O'Rourke died of lung cancer this past week. There is not doubt that he stomped on the Terra in ways that only oversized personalities like his and Hunter Thompson could. The fact that he wore a tie, around his neck and not as a headband, made him a hero for the button-down types who were still tied to that group of country club fussbudgets lampooned in Caddyshack. But that's another story for another time. Aloha, P.J. Thanks for the fires you set. Most of them, anyway.