On the Wealth of Nations, Peace Kills, Eat the Rich, Holidays in Hell - Economics (2007)

• Report rights infringement
• published: 14 Apr 2015
• views: 395

Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke (/rʊərk/; born November 14, 1947) is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s. He is the author of 20 books, of which his latest, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again), was released January 2014. This was preceded on September 21, 2010, by Don't Vote!-It Just Encourages the Bastards, and on September 1, 2009, Driving Like Crazy with a reprint edition published on May 11, 2010. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations. P. J. O'Rourke was born in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Delphine Loy, a housewife, and Clifford Bronson O'Rourke, a car salesman.[1][2] He attended Toledo's DeVilbiss High School, graduating in 1965. He did his undergraduate work at Miami University, in Ohio, and earned an M.A. in English at Johns Hopkins University while a brother of the Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society. He recounts that during his student days he was a left-leaning hippie, but that in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist with libertarian viewpoints. O'Rourke wrote articles for several publications, including The Rip Off Review of Western Culture an underground magazine/comic book in 1972, entitled A.J. at N.Y.U. and also for the Baltimore underground newspaper Harry and the New York Ace, before joining National Lampoon in 1973, where he served as managing editor among other roles and authored articles such as "Foreigners Around the World" and "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." He received a writing credit for National Lampoon's Lemmings which helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest. He also co-wrote National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney. O'Rourke said later that Kenney brought comedy to the piece and he brought the organization. The Yearbook was a bestseller and some themes were later used in the movie Animal House. Going freelance in 1981, O'Rourke began publishing in magazines such as Playboy, Vanity Fair, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone. He became foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone, where he remained until 2001. In 1996, he served as the conservative commentator in the point-counterpoint segment of 60 Minutes. O'Rourke was married to Amy Lumet, a daughter of movie director Sidney Lumet and a granddaughter of Lena Horne, from 1990 to 1993. Since 1995 he has been married to his second wife, Tina, and they have two daughters, Elizabeth and Olivia, and one son, Clifford. O'Rourke splits his time between the small town of Sharon, New Hampshire, and Washington, D.C. O'Rourke has published 16 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List. O'Rourke was a "Real Time Real Reporter" for Real Time with Bill Maher covering the 2008 Presidential Election. O'Rourke revealed on September 28, 2008, that he has been diagnosed with treatable anal cancer, from which he can expect "a 95% chance of survival." His announcement is typical of his writing in that it handled a very serious subject within his humorous style. In 2009, O'Rourke described the Presidency of Barack Obama as "the Carter administration in better sweaters". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke