Journalist and bestselling author P.J. O’Rourke visited Columbus last week as part of Mississippi University for Women’s Eudora Welty Series and spoke at the Welty Gala on Friday.
The gala was at 7 p.m. in the Pope Banquet Hall on MUW’s campus. Over 100 people attended a presentation by O’Rourke, who used his usual sardonic humor to rip into politicians, despite several being in attendance.
A frequent columnist for The Daily Beast and a former editor of the National Lampoon in the late 1970s, O’Rourke is a humorist known for his libertarian views and merciless criticism of both the Republican and Democratic parties. He has written 16 books and a plethora of columns and articles offering usually biting commentary on current events.
At the gala Friday, he called politicians “the pigherders tending that sow who eats her young, the welfare state;” “mud-dwelling bottom feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate;” and “the ditch carp in the great river of democracy.”
That was right after saying he liked politicians.
He also talked about how he used humor in journalism, particularly when covering national politics. Humor is a way to make sense of serious issues, he said.
“I’ve covered…six wars, two revolutions…seven or eight third-world election campaigns, which are worse than any of those previous things, and they combine the worst aspects of combat and civil disturbance and Donald Trump,” he said. “Plus, I’ve covered any other number of places exhibiting garden variety terrorism, hatred and oppression and I found all this humorous. Because humor has nothing to do with the charming or the cheerful. Humor is how we cope with violated taboos and rising anxieties.”
After the gala, O’Rourke signed copies of his books which were on sale at the event.
Pre gala chat
In a laid-back interview with reporters Friday afternoon, O’Rourke talked about topics ranging from the 2016 presidential campaign to how cook game bird. He complimented Eudora Welty, MUW’s most famous alumna, whose own writings inspired the Welty Series. Welty is one of the few writers who mastered the short story, O’Rourke said.
“There are only about 10 really good short stories,” he said. “The short story is a tricky form. Some people, like (Raymond) Carver, I think are just terrible. I think there are very few real masters of the form. You sort of start out with O’Henry in English … who perfected the original form of the short story. Of course, they also used up all the plots…That left all short story writers thereafter with a huge disadvantage, but (Welty) was able to overcome that and become a real master of the form.”
Though he had never been to Columbus before, O’Rourke is familiar with Mississippi politics due to his friendship with former Gov. Haley Barbour. He even talked about their friendship during the years when Barbour was thinking about running for president.
“I said, ‘In return for a small ambassador ship to an unimportant country with warm weather, I will go around with you and translate. Anytime you’re out of the South, I will translate for you,'” O’Rourke recalled. “He said, ‘P.J., you know what you can do to really help my campaign for the presidency? You can stay the h*** away.'”
“I think Mississippi politics, if you wanted a really good example of how it may differ from a certain unnamed next-door neighbor, (look at) the Katrina recovery on the Gulf Coast here Mississippi verses Katrina recovery in a nearby unnamed state,” he added.
During the interview, O’Rourke also touched on farming and hunting, two of his favorite pastimes, and predicted that Jeb Bush will emerge as the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election, despite his currently unimpressive poll numbers.
After his meeting with journalists, he met with MUW students to talk about journalism and its importance in a free society.
“What we do is sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful and what we do is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but the institution is extremely important,” he said. “And our ability to exercise that, free exercise of that institution is incredibly important. And all we have to do to realize how important it is, is look at places where it can’t be done or where it’s mortally dangerous to do. However dissatisfied people get with their news outlets — and they get continually dissatisfied — they want to check them against the news outlets in North Korea.”
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