P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke
Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourkeis an American political satirist and journalist. 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!. Since 2011 O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth14 November 1947
CountryUnited States of America
The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it...
Journalists are notoriously easy to kid. All you have to do is speak to a journalist in a very serious tone of voice, and he will be certain that you are either telling the truth or a big, important lie.
Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.
In Washington journalists can afford to live almost as well as people who work for a living.
I'm here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures.
Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.
You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.
There was an austerely dignified award ceremony. By that I mean we had to buy our own drinks - in clear violation of the international journalists'code of truth, fairness and an open bar.
I'm a member of the working press; you'd think I'd know better than to listen to journalists.
I arrived in the middle of a press conference - as boring a thing to sit through if you don't know the language as it is if you do.
Generally it's not a good idea to wear Banana Republic - type khaki journalist clothes in a war zone. You might look too much like something that's supposed to be shot, such as a journalist.
The day was warm and clear. Kids were playing soccer in the parking lots and women were sunning their babies and having their tea all over the lawns. The scene was entirely too cheery for journalism.
Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.