A conciliatory P.J. O’Rourke is not the satirist we know and love

There was an acidic bravura and beauty in P.J. O’Rourke’s early journalism and a gleefulness in the ease with which it raised ire. Hitherto, satirists — and especially American ones — had tended to come from the left, none more so than O’Rourke’s mentor Hunter S. Thompson, who campaigned long and hard for George McGovern in 1972.

Not Patrick Jake. He sprung like a jubilant, potty-mouthed leprechaun from a country which had fallen back in love with itself after the self-flagellating miseries of Vietnam, Watergate and Tehran. Under Ronald Reagan, the economy flourished, the Cold War was won and while the left still carped and cavilled, aghast at the demise of the Soviet Union and the triumph of the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, O’Rourke’s banner read simply: ‘Told you so. We were right.’ It was a blast of libertarian braggadocio in which the left, and indeed the rest of the world, were ridiculed for their stupidity and backwardness, just as Belinda Carlisle got to number 1 with ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’, that heaven being the USA.

None were derided more than the Yerpeans, with their awful plumbing, bad teeth, joyless food, remiss personal hygiene and affections for such outré concepts as the mixed economy and the welfare state. O’Rourke wrote with wit, chutzpah and in a manner unfamiliar to American conservatives. Whatever Ayn Rand’s strengths, she never delivered an essay entitled ‘How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.’ Not least, one supposes, because she did not have a wing-wang. But you take my point.