P.J. O’Rourke comments on presidential candidates during National Press Club Book Rap

Noted humorist and author P.J. O’Rourke came to the National Press Club's Book Rap on Nov. 10 with his book, Thrown Under the Omnibus, a collection of excerpts from his previous 16 books, but he didn't read from it.

Instead of reading from his book, O'Rourke opted to talk about the presidential candidates.

“My new book is an anthology full of material from my old books and I’ve read them already," O'Rourke said. "What reporter could resist this presidential campaign.”

O'Rourke spared no one. He poked fun at every candidate, Republican and Democrat, leaving none unscathed with satire and humor. “This campaign is fully satirizing and I am a political commentator and I can’t get a word in when Donald Trump is around,” he said.

O'Rourke ran through the list of all the candidates and said, “That is not a list of presidential candidates. It is the worst law firm ever. Are they receiving radio broadcasts on their teeth fillings?”

Should Bush and Clinton be the two candidates squaring off, when voters go into the voting booth, they would pause and say, “Gosh, I’m getting forgetful. And (then voters would leave) with the ballot being unmarked with the voter turnout being six percent,” O'Rourke suggested.

O'Rourke commentary kept the audience laughing.

At one point, O'Rourke mentioned his experience in Manila, Philippines, and he took a deeply serious tone about the poverty he encountered there.

As a self-described Libertarian, O’Rourke is an H.L. Mencken Fellow at the Cato Institute and has been a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!". Since 2011, O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast, has written for National Lampoon and was an editor for Rolling Stone. In the United Kingdom, he was known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.

One reviewer commented on his book: “For the first time Thrown Under the Omnibus brings together his funniest, most-outrageous, most-controversial and most-loved pieces in the definitive P.J. reader. Handpicked and introduced by the humorist himself, Thrown Under the Omnibus is the essential P.J. O’Rourke anthology.”

The was sponsored by the NPC's Book & Author Committee. Committee member Joe Luchok introduced O'Rourke. Proceeds from the event benefit the National Journalism Institute.