The New York Times
By Dwight Gardner
Nov. 29, 2011
If all of America’s registered Republicans were struck by an ideology-specific bird flu, and 50 among them had to be placed in a secure bunker to repopulate the species entirely, P. J. O’Rourke would hold a place on many people’s list, mine included.
He’s funny. He tends to be against boredom and in favor of the pursuit of nonsobriety. He has a sharp nose for cant and bogusness. His conservatism is rooted in a fondness for ordinary things and a philosophy of individual common sense. It is almost impossible to imagine him as a regular talking head on Fox News.
Mr. O’Rourke spent many years as a dilettantish war correspondent, filing grouchy dispatches from places like South Korea, Nicaragua and the Gaza Strip for magazines that included Rolling Stone and The Atlantic. These were collected in a pretty good book called “Holidays in Hell,” published in 1988. It was filled with sensible advice, like: “Be sure to tip the man who insists, at gunpoint, on guarding your car.”
