Remembering P. J.

Political satirist P. J. O'Rourke passed away earlier this week. He was considered a libertarian conservative, which are my favorite types of libertarians and conservatives. He wasn't entirely a political commentator, having done car reviews and writing about fishing and other subjects.

But on his political wit he was known, and I found his wit inspired. "Giving Congress money is like giving teenage boys whiskey and car keys," he once opined. He called out a New York Times book reviewer for lamenting the 'anomie' caused by 'the anonymity of modern modern life'. The reviewer was reviewing a cookbook. P. J. found that hilarious, a profound overstatement, particularly considering how that worry could ever relate to a book full of food recipes. He remarked further in asking, who the hell knows what anomie means anyway?

It is the 'lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group' by the way. How a cookbook can even pretend to approach such profound failure is as foreign to me as it was to O'Rourke.

He argued that we ought to drill more oil. "Fat lot of good it did sitting in the ground for billions of years," he quipped. I like that attitude.

Ironically, in actively trying to pass himself off as a curmudgeon he was actually uproariously funny and, in fact, really one to look at the brighter side of things. One of his main themes was that life really isn't so bad as too many of us seem to think it is. The world on the whole, modern life, really isn't that terrible at all. If we look for and at the good about it.

I think that's what I like best about him. Godspeed, P. J.