Hunter S. Thompson, RIP

One of my dirty little secrets -- I read very few books. In fact, the only time I read books is when I'm traveling, at the airport and on a plane. There are only two authors I have ever gone out of my way to read everything they've written -- Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

As everyone knows, Hunter is gone.

Thompson was known for a style that he described as "gonzo journalism," a form of "new journalism." It was based on the idea that fidelity to fact did not always blaze the way to truth.

Instead, "gonzo journalism" and its practitioners suggested that a deeper truth could be found in the ambiguous zones between fact and fiction.

"Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long," Thompson told interviewers in a characteristic pronouncement on both institutions.

"You can't be objective about Nixon," he said. "How can you be objective about Clinton?"

Hunter S. Thompson -- the world's first blogger.

•  "About when we hit Barstow

  the drugs began to kick in."

  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

  Crazy bad...

  RIP, Hunter S. Thompson

  by tom 47 on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:11:03 AM PDT

  •  in memoriam

    posted this in a diary earlier, but thought, here, too:

    

    A friend had written me the other day (and I hope he doesn't mind my posting this bit of his private email):

    I was fired for finishing Hunter S. Thompson's Chivas and water while doing fine dining in a tuxedo.  Oh, and I was drunk, very drunk.  Again.  Sean Penn and James Carville were crutches for the slumping Hunter who kept shouting, "Stairs.  I didn't come to a restaurant to walk up any fucking...Lights.  Jesus Christ these lights.  Stairs.  Fucking stairs."

    
    introduced for purposes of legacy.

    by mitch2k2 on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:32:08 AM PDT

•  Hunter

  Rest in Peace, you crazy, crazy man.

  The New Democrat

  by demburns on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:11:43 AM PDT

•  I'm wondering....

  ...if Thompson was suffering from a terminal illness.  It seems antithetical to his personality/life to commit suicide for reasons of depression or psychosis.

  I laid awake last night thinking on this.  I live in Oregon, where doctor assisted suicide is legal (and about to be challenged in this term's USSC).

  by Carla on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:12:08 AM PDT

  •  Agreed

    I was thinking about this as well and I really believe that there will be some revelations that come out about this.  I suspect that he had some sort of terminal illness as well, as suicide just doesn't seem like something his personality would allow.

    by romantotale on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:15:26 AM PDT

    •  72 GOP & thomson

      http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022105Z.shtml

      by NeuroticBlonde on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 04:31:32 PM PDT

  •  I have to disagree

    From everything I have read by the Doctor, including his letters, he is the poster child for depression. As someone who can identify with depression, when it becomes unbearable there is no telling what it could drive someone to.

    by calistan on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:21:50 AM PDT

  •  i agree

    Sure the first reaction is bound to be disbelief; but my first thought, too, was that suicide couldn't be the full story.  Lets hope more details surface...

    RIP, HST

    ...and, is it worth noting that Rolling Stone magazine has no mention on its web site (yet?)... maybe they're cooking something up... but ESPN has updated its HST archive page.

    cheers,
    Dan Lesh

    by dlesh on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:52:53 AM PDT

    •  Just a guess...

      ...but, ruling out suicide can anyone think of someone (not employed by a circus or wild west show) more likely to perish in a firearms accident? I'm just throwing that out there.

      by Jumbo on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:39:05 PM PDT

  •  That was one of my first speculations as well.

    by coigue on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:07:50 PM PDT

  •  That's the first thing I thought...

    as well.  I just can't envision HST offing himself for a lesser reason, depressive or not.  He was too ornery to take himself out of this vale of tears for what he would consider a candy-ass reason like depression.  (No disrespect to true depressives everywhere, just trying to echo Hunter's thought processes.)

    by Black Max on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:10:10 PM PDT

  •  HST's health

    These photos appear in the slide show that accompanies the AP story on HST Death being carried by Yahoo! News

    

    There's no date on this photo, but I suspect it's somewhat recent. HST looks old - older than his chronological 67 years, in particular because of the sagging skin around the neck and face.

    I'm also struck by the appearance of his ankles. I've seen the ankles and legs of plenty of people suffering from vascular diseases, and they look like this - dry and discolored. There appears to be a bandage on the lateral aspect of his right ankle, which could be covering an ulceration, a further hint of vascular disease.

    Vascular disease is associated with advanced age (and 67 is not considered advanced in and of itself), and with other conditions like diabetes. Diabetes is about the worse disease you could have, because of the long term effects.

    Whether he was diabetic or not doesn't matter in the bigger picture. HST just got old, like we're all going to get, sooner or later.

    

    Author Hunter S. Thompson, left, is escorted out of the motorcade car of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at Aspen-Pitkin Co./Sardy Field Airport in Aspen, Colo. on Monday, June 21, 2004. The man at right is unidentified.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

    This one is from less than a year ago, and HST similarly appears older than his chronological age, unsteady, even hobbled.

    I also came across one of his ESPN pieces through a link in the thread that ran with the first news of his death last night, courtesy of cat4everrr.

    It's revealing, and then he moves on, in the way only HST could:

    Hi, folks, my name is still Thompson, and I still drink gin with ER Nurses at night -- but in one particular way, I am a New Man, a different man, a more dangerous man than I was the last time we talked. And that was a few weeks ago, eh?

    Indeed, I can walk again, and I like it, because last month I felt an acute spasmodic pain in my spine when I walked. There was nothing cute about it, no socially redeeming factor. It just plain sucked.

    But I have just returned from an extremely intense few weeks at the world-renowned Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Colo. (yes, the same city where Kobe Bryant ...), where I had radical surgery to repair what was beginning to give me some pain. Great pain on some days, and I finally decided to get rid of it.

    I am no stranger to organ replacement, and I always find it refreshing, always a happy improvement over Pain.

    I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing. I once gouged about two-thirds of my hip socket into mush for five consecutive years, until I finally felt enough pain to have the bastard replaced.

    And Titanium turned out to be far more comfortable and flexible than the human spine anyway, especially mine. It is lighter, stronger and far more adaptable, in every way, than bone or steel or anything else in the human body -- and I am installing it in my own body as rapidly as possible without doing anything stupid.

    My alloy spine replacement is about 70 percent finished, and after it's completed, I will take a break. And maybe have a look at this weird and degrading Kobe Bryant story, which interests me. The more I learn about this case, the more I understand that this is not about Rape at all. It is about money, pure money and nothing else. Nobody is going to jail in this case, but some people are going to Pay.

    The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low. You thought O.J. was bad? Wait until we get a taste of the K.B. scandal. It will be like a feeding frenzy and a long parade of cannibals.

    Full text
    

    Maybe it was the result of an old war injury, or of just living too hard too long. But chronic pain will wear you down harder than a jackboot, and you don't want to know what that's like.

    As for his mental health, I think HST considered himself pretty sane. He was certainly astute. But what else besides serious anguish could possibly drive a person to consume what he did, for as long as he did, and as loudly?

    What else, indeed?

    Our only solace is that HST was, and like Arthur Miller probably would best want to be remembered as, a writer.

    He was a writer, and a hoarder of his writings. He probably didn't make a carbon copy of his suicide note, likely the last thing he ever wrote before turning to that big, ugly, nickle-plated gun he had kept, just in case, for the moment he never wanted to face, but finally did.

    We have no right to see that note, but he made copies of everything else, and maybe someday someone will put it all together for us.

    Or not, but what the fuck would it matter? He was here, and now he's not, and we've got to get along without him in the best ways we can.

    He kicks off the first book of his that I read, Hell's Angels, with a lead quote from the French poet, Francois Villon:

    In my own country I am in a far-off land
    I am strong but have no force or power
    I win all yet remain a loser
    At break of dawn I say goodnight
    When I lie down I have a great fear
    of falling.

    RIP HST

    by RubDMC on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 07:59:26 PM PDT

    •  Shades of Kurt Cobain murder conspiracy

      Give it a break, he killed himself.  How his ankles look is not exactly pertinent to cause of death when the police find him with  his brains blown out and a handgun besides him.  He wasn't poisoned, and he's not influential enough to be a target for Bushco, so there is little reason to suspect foul play.

      As far as him having a terminal illness, you are quite right.  He suffered from the terminal illness of life.  

      by Subterranean on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:27:11 AM PDT

      •  Huh?

        I'm not sure what you want me to give a break to.

        Who's talking about poison and foul play?

        I mentioned his ankles because they're there, and they contribute to the overall picture that he looks to me to be in pretty rough shape, older than his years. What a surprise.

        I didn't say he had a terminal illness. I pointed to his own words that talked about his pain.

        Do you really think that life is a terminal illness?

        I prefer to think of it as a tightly written short story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. No pathology, just some interesting characters, and a basic plot that arcs from one point to the other.

        by RubDMC on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 04:47:22 AM PDT

  •  I disagree

    HST exuded depression.  His view of the world was very caustic and dark, and if you read some of his recent material he is clearly depressed over the state of this country.  We can't know what tipped him over the edge, but certainly had a depressive personality.

    HST did have a "tough guy" image, which might lead some people to think he wouldn't off himself.  Exhibit A:  Ernest Hemmingway, who blew his brains out at about the same age as HST.

    Substance abuse is also a risk factor for suicide (or maybe depression is a risk factor for both substance abuse and suicide).

    This makes me sad.  I loved HST's writing, and will miss it dearly.

    by Subterranean on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:15:11 AM PDT

•  RIP...

  ...Dr. Duke!

  by MichaelPH on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:13:59 AM PDT

•  The two best presidential campaign books ever:

  The classic "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail:1972".  And the less well known "Better than Sex; Confessions of a Politcal Junky" which chronicles Clinton's successful 1992 campaign.

  HST was the best politcal reporter of the last fifty years, bar none.

  by Ed in Montana on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:18:23 AM PDT

  •  Absolutely Right...

    Both books, but at least the first, should be required reading if you intend to be in the political world.

    A tragic loss...

    And if depression played a part in his life, ande I don't doubt it may have, then the poster above is right...there's no telling how dark the day can get...no telling how deep the pain becomes...no telling how unending it seems in the middle of it.

    Helluva loss.

    Peace Brother....Dr. HST....

    by BigDog04 on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:49:02 AM PDT

  •  One of the first college papers

    I ever wrote was a "compare and contrast" using Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and Tim Crouse's Boys on the Bus.
    Those two books forever warped and shifted my idea of what political writing was. HST and Crouse both blended into a first-person-diatribical style using facts and real-world observations that my professors didn't understand at first, but grew to appreciate as my writing improved. I ended up working in the biz for the last 17 years, and have always held Hunter in the highest regard. I can never claim to be as great a writer, but I hope that I might make him proud to know that he is my mentor, despite the fact that I'm not a heavy drinkin' gun shootin' bar brawlin' one-man-wreckin' crew.

    by Timroff on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 01:39:53 PM PDT

  •  Right on

    FALOTCT is so incredibly relevant now, still...

    by el fuego on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 04:06:51 PM PDT

  •  I Agree

    Campaign trail 72 was a Life Changing book for me.  His portrayals of Muskie and Humphrey were so dead on.

    by chap on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 09:06:05 AM PDT

•  There's something bizarre ...

  about Hunter and Sandra Dee dying on the same day.

  by BriVT on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:21:34 AM PDT

  •  Don't forget

    baritone John Raitt, father of Bonnie Raitt, also passing away on this day.

    A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. -Adlai Stevenson.

    by barb in albq on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:21:03 AM PDT

    •  And last week...

      Arthur Miller, one of the most revered contemporary American playwrights.

      We've lost some really great, inspirational people so far in 2005.

      by Scoopster on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:13:52 PM PDT

      •  RIP

        ODB

        by Jumbo on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:44:18 PM PDT

•  fuck

  is it too early to drink?

  Safe to say we'll never see his like again. They don't make em like they used to.

  by nota bene on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:23:06 AM PDT

  •  As your attorney

    i advise to start with the ether, and a quarter sheet of blotter.

    by Cache on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:42:33 AM PDT

    •  I didn't realize

      That nota bene was a large Samoan.

      by Ed in Montana on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 07:08:53 PM PDT

      •  What about the great Samoan dream? (nt)

        by BullitNutz on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 09:05:42 PM PDT

  •  Is it too early to drink?

    What would Hunter say to that?  You're talking about a man who rinsed out his morning toothpaste with Chivas Regal.

    by Black Max on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:11:13 PM PDT

    •  LOL

      It was more of a rhetorical question. Guess I'm going to have to make a trip to the store for tequila and rum.

      by nota bene on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:35:50 PM PDT

•  what you are referring to

  here in Thompson and Vonnegut might be desribed as a realization on both their parts (during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, the era of Vietnam, Watergate, cold-war intrigue, the Manson Family, Woodstock) of two essential things about (what Hofstadter called the Paranoid Style in) American power politics, the blood sport:

  1. it is much darker and more sinister than we imagine, because the mainstream press continues to act as if most politicians are normal, law-abiding people, rather than corporate handmaidens or tyrannical thugs

  2. it is much stranger than fiction, and certainly as theatrical: it is intertwined with popular culture because it is ultimately narcissictic, self absorbed, gaudy, and maniacal.

  It is a realization that is also supported by the concept of "deep politics" or "parapolitics" as developed by the writer and poet Peter Dale Scott (a figure whose writings I highly recommend), which offers to chart the power games that are played behind the screen: the dirty tricks and black ops of the CIA, the propaganda machines, the corruption and criminality that festers through modern American politics and the justice system, only occasionally registering in the popular consciousness in all its fucked-up glory.

  William Burroughs once said that everything worth knowing or interesting in America was classified as secret. I think something like the Guckert story offers us a glimpse of how surreal the American political landscape really is.

  by gnat on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:25:17 AM PDT

  •  I'd say

    the mainstream press continues to act as if most politicians are normal, law-abiding people, rather than corporate handmaidens or tyrannical thugs

    More like brilliantly psychopathic maniacs (Rove), or coldly calculating misers (Cheney) if you ask me.
    

    by froggywomp on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:56:49 AM PDT

  •  Guckert!

    Guckert?  Guckert!
    You poor twisted fool.  What will surely come to be known as the Military Studs Affair was tailor-made for Thompson.  He cut his teeth on just this sort of savage weirdness.  If anyone was capable of unearthing the nuggets of reality from the foul-smelling sludge of this, Gannongage, it was Thompson.
    In fact, here at the Public Affairs Desk, we have proof that Thompson had been looking into the story, and had in fact come across some very controversial witnesses to some of Gannon's most blatant acts of libel and sodomy both as a bribed and drugged serf of the GOP at Talon and as a "co-ordinator" at any of the many Gay Dungeon Porn websites he maintained.  

    The hacks in the mainstream press will say that Thomspon imprisoned the three Iraqi "escorts" at his fortified compound, and we won't argue with that, simply because by the time this is done, Thompson's slight breech of etiquette will seem like a fratboy getting a 10-dollar lapdance next to the orgiastic snuff film debaucheries committed so blithely by Gannon and his GOP pressroom "confidantes."
    And I'm guessing that's where the asssassins came in.  Rumor is that they were Red Chinese hired by Rove, crazy fucks who supplemented their betel nut addictions with ibogaine obtained by Rove from the Columbian drug lords. Thompson's military grade surveillance cameras show that it took the assassins with the red stained teeth 36 hours to move the 650 yards from Thompson's propery line into his compound.  The Cali cartel may be murderous thugs, but their ibogaine is of the highest quality.  

    And of course, Thompson's reflexes were not at their best when the Red Chinese finally forced their way into his kitchen; he had just cooked an alkaloid with an intriguing twist in its molecular structure, and the psychoactive was just reaching the base of his medulla.  

    It's said that only heroes are assassinated, and of course that's utter bullshit, suitable for kindergarteners and those working for Fox only, but the two bullets that splintered the Good Doctor's skull can truly be said to be assassin's bullets.  

    Across the sea, a former cocaine buddy of Thompson's by the name of George W Bush was spouting some scurrilous and prerecorded nonsense to Jacques Chirac, when a crystaline beep sounded in his ear.  The president immediately began to  stumble over his words, promising the french a grand new world genocide or some such Freudian slip, but never mind the fucking details that can be ironed out later, the words he heard pleased him.  

    Opponents, especially those not intimadated by the standard tools of savagery and thugdom, are always best when eliminated.

    Son of a bitch. . . .RIP, HST

    by rastro on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 05:09:25 PM PDT

•  The myth of "objectivity"

  It's become a bad joke, now.  When a paid Republican shill gets to call himself a "reporter" isn't it time to abandon the pretence of journalistic objectivity?  It's just more obvious in that particular shill's case.

  The best historians weren't slaves to a phony objectivity.  Thucydides and Tacitus weren't "objective".  William Shirer, the 20th century Tacitus, said bluntly of his own work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, "No doubt my own prejudices, which inevitably spring from my experience and make-up, creep through the pages of this book from time to time.  I detest totalitarian dictatorships in principle and came to loathe this one the more I lived through it and watched its ugly assault on the human spirit."

  Thompson was right.  Phony "objectivity" is half the reason we're where we are now.  This "objectivity" allows the press with a clear conscience to, for example, repeat faithfully the brazen lies from the Swift Boat crowd with the excuse, "We're just reporting the news."  It allows the press to match right-wing venom with a timid centrist response and then congratulate itself for its "balance".

  Divorcing supposedly "objective" reporting from op-ed has also, I suspect, contributed to the intellectual bankruptcy of political punditry.  You get columnists who operate completely free from restraint yet lay claim to objectivity anyway because they're supposedly above the fray.  I haven't worked this idea out yet and maybe it's nonsense.  Anyway I'd rather have everyone jostling together as patently unobjective journalists than pretending to be either objective reporters and objective analysts.
  

  by Ernest Tomlinson on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:29:40 AM PDT

  •  Agreed...

    the first incarnation of my anti-neocon site was an attempt at an "objective" timeline of events surrounding the Iraqi invasion.  It didn't take too long to realize that I couldn't be "objective."  Fact-based, yes, but not objective.  I think that if American mainstream media is to regain its position of relevancy, it's going to have to deal with the fact that no media outlet can be truly objective or non-partisan.  Fox News is successful because of its partisan nature, though it's interesting to note that they still don't have the cojones to come out and admit that they are conservative shills.  Other media outlets are going to have to face up to their own less-than-objective natures, much as most European newspapers and media outlets do today.

    by Black Max on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:16:04 PM PDT

•   .. .. wow.

  .. ..

  God bless you, Dr. Thompson. May your soul find  peace.

  ..

  ..

  Damn.

  <tears>

  by wilderness wench on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:30:51 AM PDT

•  Makes me think of Capt. Grimes...

  
   from Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall," who kept getting into and out of "the soup" -- "one of the immortals."  Or, as Dr. Silenus would have seen it, HST was, indeed, 'dynamic,' not 'static.'

   He's still out there, out here . . .

   BenGoshi
  _________________

  by BenGoshi on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:32:28 AM PDT

•  World's First Blogger?

  Don't know if I would call him the world's first blogger. The pre-Internet version of a blogger would have been a steady columnist and Thompson wasn't a steady columnist throughout his writing career.

  Anyway, sad to see him exit early, but he apparently did it on his own terms.

  by loveliberty on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:36:42 AM PDT

  •  Worlds first blogger:

    Charles Dickens

    I'd like to see Wonkette turn out 32 pages of 50 lines every single month for 2 years, and convince a worldwide audience to pay the equivelent of about 10 dollars a month for it.

    Yea.  Right.

    In fact, I blogged about this very thing.

    by BrodyV on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:48:51 AM PDT

    •  George Orwell

      Flip through any of the four volumes of George Orwell's collected journalism and you'll read his very personal moment-by-moment reactions to everything going on the world--political news, latest books and pamphlets, street life in London, etc. etc.  All with humor, wit, erudition, honesty.  He would have been a great blogger.

      by KWeberLit on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:13:59 PM PDT

  •  no.....Thompson was blunt....street....that's why.

    That's why he might be deemed the world's first blogger.  His style was blogger-esque.  It was like the early version of the Rude Pundit - minus some of the F-bombs.  

    That's how I think of him, anyways, and I've only read like, one article of his, maybe - on accident - no reputation knowledge preceeded my reading of the article...think it was on Salon or something....maybe it was a sports article....but must've left a heck of an impression...

    by shmooth on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:50:34 AM PDT

  •  No, no, no

    It isn't about how much work you push out or how often - it's the Gonzo!

    Democracy is what you and I do collectively to solve problems, so journalism that's about what you and I do should have YOU AND I in it!  That's the promise of blogs - not quantity or frequency of information.

    And in that sense, Thompson (re-)introduced it.

    When bloggers blog from the conventions or protests or inaugerations or whatever, it isn't that we want to read five hundred little articles just like what we'll see in the Times or the Post - it's that we want to know the personal stuff - to get re-involved in the process.  We want to get past the demogogues and the tailored speeches and be a part of our system again  That's what Kos and Jerome and all the rest are doing for us, and it's what all of your diaries and personal blogs and comments do (and thank you all!).

    Just like Thompson put us on the plane with Nixon or in the motor cycle gangs of California in the Sixties.

    It's the revolution that we need.  I've very sad to see Thompson go, because his honesty and his hope and his brilliance may never come again in one person.  But I think the wheels are in motion, and I think we can all do it together.

    by fricto on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:55:01 AM PDT

  •  LOL, most bloggers are anything but steady.

    The "gold standards" of liberal blogs such as DK, Americablog, Atrios, TPM, and others are, of course, maintained 24/7 by whatever wonderfully obsessed people keep them going.  But I learned quickly enough not to expect every blog to keep up with itself and its visitors on a regular, timely basis.

    by Black Max on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:18:07 PM PDT

•  When he was right

  he was very right:          

  So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

  I rode the San Francisco/Berkeley/Santa Cruz axis in the mid-sixties. Though it was forty years ago (How the Hell did I get so old?) when I look with the right kind off eyes I can still see the ineffable high water mark where that wave broke.

  Godspeed, Hunter.

  by dazedagain on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:38:19 AM PDT

  •  No matter how weird it got...

    ...it never got weird enough for me. http://hisnameistimmy.com/music/expecting_to_fly.mp3 We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

    by San Francisco Liberal on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:57:45 AM PDT

    •  Not Quite Sure

      what your point is. I never met Tim Leary. Most of the folks I knew back then regarded him as a poseur - much like the nice people from Marin who would swarm the place on weekends dressed in IMagnin or Lord & Taylor Hippy Gear. I did know some who felt that enlightenment could be achieved via drugs but most of them either burned out or realized that their three bucks bought them a buzz and little else. Many of us sat zazen for hours and most of us weren't enlightened. You could tell when it was over (Took about two years in all) and when it was I joined the Navy and went to the Mekong Delta (Talk about your grim, meathook realities). I wasn't enlightened there either.
      Lamentably, most of the stuff written about those days has been written by people who weren't actually there.

      by dazedagain on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:40:49 AM PDT

      •  Formatting issue

        My message formatting didn't come through (is there a guide on DKos for how to format messages?) and as such it probably didn't make much sense. Here is how it should have looked:
        
        ---
        
        "No matter how weird it got, it never got weird enough for me."
        -H.S.T.
        
        A snippet from Fear and Loathing:
        
        Expecting to Fly
        
        The "light at the end of the tunnel" part was particularly poignant, IMHO.
        
        I'm sad he's gone.
        
        

        by San Francisco Liberal on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:09:52 PM PDT

  •  The thing about waves

    is that they keep coming.  Each one carries away a little more, until continents are reshaped.  Hunter S. Thompson's wave might've broken, but there's always a new one building.

    by contraption on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:49:38 AM PDT

  •  Only one speed... pedal to the metal. R.I.P.

    I had the weird experience of listening to HST rave in the flesh as an undergrad in the late 70's; and the following were probably the first two quotes I typed into a computer to save...

    "Ten years before - even five - I had been the same way.  I wanted it all and I wanted it fast and no obstacle was big enough to put me off.  Since then I had learned that some things were bigger than they looked from a distance, and now I was not so sure anymore just what I was going to get or even what I deserved."  -- Hunter S. Thomson 1964

    "The Edge...  There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.  The others - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later." -- Hunter S. Thomson 1965

    I don't even understand how I've survived this long; let alone how he did.

    by guildfordnz on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 01:58:10 PM PDT

  •  Best clip

    I usually mention this chapter (#8 of LALILV, I recall?) in arguments about Thompson's importance as a writer.  His pinnacle.

    And if I don't win on this citation, I talk about how he lost money betting on Jack Germond in a footrace.  All our lives should be so weird.

    by el fuego on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 04:13:13 PM PDT

•  Colorado will be a much

  more boring place.

  And this type of crap really Pisses Me Off! (from today's Rocky Mountain News, the more Republican Denver rag):
  

  But a source close to the family, who spoke to the Rocky Mountain News on the condition of anonymity, said she saw the day coming when Thompson's longstanding addiction to drugs and guns would culminate in a tragic ending.
  She said he had "hinted" at suicide many times. "I knew this call was coming," she said from her Aspen home Sunday night. "He was a raging addict and an abusive man. He had so many guns and they were always loaded."

  Have a feeling Uncle Duke didn't think much of this person.

  by Frankenoid on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:44:55 AM PDT

  •  Well I think

    she's probably right about him. These things take their toll. But that doesn't take away from his talent. He was simply willing to pay the price for excess, and the price reported became very clear in his last years. This was not a nice man. No surprise there.

    A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. -Adlai Stevenson.

    by barb in albq on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:23:12 AM PDT

  •  The interview I just read

    quotes him as really detesting the Uncle Duke character and Msieur Trudeau for creating it.  Just another example of his un-pigeonholiness.

    by moltar on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 03:28:08 PM PDT

  •  She probably dead-on

    But this isn't the time to say such things.  The man just died, and his family is probably under severe duress.  

    It's one thing to remark that HST had been hinting at suicide, but to dump on the guy for guns and drugs is just cruel.  Of course HST isn't the sort of man you want your mother to marry, but people worship his writing, not his qualities as a family man.

    Why is it that when someone dies "naturally", it is considered taboo to denigrate them, but if a person dies of depression, all manner of scalding comments are directed at him?

    by Subterranean on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:35:40 AM PDT

•  A Loss.

  Two of my favorites, also. Vonnegut, Jr. and the mad man. May Heaven survive his wit.

  by Brother Artemis on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:48:31 AM PDT

•  He always spoke the drug induced truth but

  still the truth as he saw the unfolding of evil and role of "journalists" to turn their eyes from the darkness and not report the true truth.

  God rest his soul (or at least cut him wide berth in the here-after!)

  by ArkansasJoseph on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:49:36 AM PDT

•  Not fade away...

  
  ...there goes a free man.

  by markitos on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:51:11 AM PDT

•  It's interesting that he had a quote about....

  ...objective journalism being a root cause of corruption in American politics. Oddly, it was Reagan who lifted the equal-time rule on the media, which led to the conservative rise in the media, which has in turn led to us, the independent electronic people's media, to lash back with all our collective force.

  You've got to wonder here if Reagan might actually have done a good thing, since so many more citizens have become actively involved.

  BTW, one of my favorite quotes from F&L:

  And that, I think, was the handle---that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting---on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark---the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

  by Scoopster on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:52:24 AM PDT

•  The best of HST...a mottto to remember...

  When The Going Gets Weird,
          The Weird Turn Pro

  And the going got weird a long, long time ago.

  by BigDog04 on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:52:34 AM PDT

•  William Rivers Pitt today

  The Proverbial 'Live Boy'

  Hunter Thompson is the reason I write politics. Period. He was the most honest man in the business. Everyone else had and has an angle, a reputation, or a source to protect. Hunter stripped it down to the raw throbbing nerve and let it fly. How is this for prose:

  "How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me at the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same."
  

  by bumblebums on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:56:02 AM PDT

  •  Another great quote

    from Pitt's article:

    "The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place."

    
    

    by wilderness wench on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:22:53 AM PDT

    •  and his closing words.

      Rest in peace, Hunter. Thank you for everything. We're going to deal with this Gannon/Guckert/Whoever person, and then move down the line and deal with the rest of the whores. You died on the eve of the birth of a new journalism, populist in nature, beholden to the truth and thanking the Google gods every step of the way. I wish you had stuck around to see it, but I'll tell you all about it when we meet at that clearing at the end of the path. Until then...

      by bumblebums on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:37:31 PM PDT

  •  Anybody wanna talk about

    Nader? Come on you fucks, get me started...

    by Earl on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:58:58 AM PDT

    •  I forgot to

      <snark>

      by Earl on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:59:27 AM PDT

  •  Terrific article.

    by Black Max on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:22:15 PM PDT

•  Blame Bush

  It has to be have been so much harder for people like Hunter, who lived thru Nixon and Reagan, only to see the same evil fucks who enabled them, rise up again like so many vampires.

  I think the loathing finally got him.

  Fear not, R.I.P.

  by meade on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:00:35 AM PDT

•  RIP Hunter S. Thompson...

  My thoughts go out to his family and friends in this difficult time. He will be missed.

  by EsnRedshirt on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:03:22 AM PDT

  •  Jefferson

    Could you please source your Jefferson tag? I've never seen it and it doesn't seem correct, thanks.

    by brutus on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:25:59 AM PDT

•  Nixon couldn't get'im

  But the prospect of four more years of cheap piety and expensive wars under W did'im in.

  by doug on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:05:05 AM PDT

•  Reposting from the other diary...

  ...because it's important.

  I had the opportunity to sit with Thompson and his wife some eighteen months ago, and we talked politics for hours. The guy was SHARP as a whip, right there with his A-game, completely hinged and writing some total genius for Playboy's 50th Anniversay issue about the Democrats being the modern day equivalent of the House of David, the all-white basketball team who the Globetrotters used to carry around to help them look good. I tell you, it was the night of my life.

  So why did he kill himself? Did he even?

  Yeah, I reckon so. There's long been rumors that he once held a party that George W Bush attended, where the cocaine was flowing like Coca Cola, but I can't imagine Dumbya had reason to off the Doc.

  (NOTE: There's a great reply to this in the other diary, which seems to me to be a great example of gonzo at it's finest. Lamont Cranston wrote "I don't have the exact quote with me right now, but it was something along the lines of first meeting Dubya in a Houston hotel in '73, where Dubya tagged along with a drug-dealer Hunter was meeting at his hotel room. Dubya apparently wound up using most of the stuff Hunter was buying and ended up passing out in the bathtub, the dealer and Hunter left him there, locked the room up and checked out of the hotel without paying the bill.")

  No, I honestly think it was good old fashioned "I'm ready" time. Thompson's hero was Hemingway, and Hemingway took his life the same way, at about the same point in his career. There's no way HST would have wanted to kick on through illness, or with his body starting to give out, and he'd been in hospital for extended stays twice in the last couple of years.

  He was only 67, but his body was 108. His brain, sadly, was still 32.

  Regardless of how or why he died, he had one passion in life, and you'll find it here. Lisl Auman is a Denver girl who was riding in a car with a guy she barely knew, who turned out to be a wanted psycho driving a stolen car, and wielding a rifle. Auman had accepted the guy's help to move her things out of an abusive boyfriend's apartment, but before long he was speeding away from the law and readying his rifle.

  The car pulled over and the guy ran, leaving Auman to be arrested, cuffed, put in the back of a cruiser, and driven a short distance to keep her clear of any gunfire. While in the car she gave a description of the guy, and his gun.

  While Auman was sitting in that cruiser, the guy shot a police office. And some weeks later, Auman was charged with felony murder as an accessory... A murder that had taken place while she was cuffed in a police cruiser.

  She's doing life. Thompson had struck up a correspondence with her when she wrote him a fan mail and he explored her situation. He was VERY much passionate about getting justice for this girl, wrote a long piece about her situation for Vanity Fair, and asked me more than once to spread the word. So if you want to pay tribute to the Doc, please go visit the site, read up, and do what you can to help.

  The last words Thompson ever spoke to me were, "I did my part... now you do yours."

  Those words weren't meant for me. They were meant for all of us.

  by HollywoodOz on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:05:43 AM PDT

  •  I can't imagine Dumbya had reason to off the Doc.

    I can.

    In his 6 April 2004 column, Thompson wrote:

    http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/040406

    "The 2004 presidential election will be a matter of life or death for the whole nation. We are sick today, and we will be even sicker tomorrow if this wretched half-bright swine of a president gets re-elected in November. Take my word for it."

    I remember thinking, when I read them, that these words might well earn him vengeance from the twisted and crooked Bush mafia family. It was my instant thought when I heard he had 'committed suicide' while his wife was out. Yeah, sure.

    by idlex on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:28:32 AM PDT

    •  For chrissakes people

      He died at home. He lived in the middle of nowhere. He kept lots of guns around. I'm starting to think it was more like an accident because suicide is so utterly unlike the man. Much more likely than the Bush admin putting a hit on him is that his spinal problems were getting to him. The idea that this was some sort of FBI hit or something is fucking loony, I'd appreciate it if everybody could have at least a smidgen of evidence before making such a wild assertion.

      Not trying to pick on you, you're not the only one who's said that.

      by nota bene on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:38:24 AM PDT

      •  Backing off.

        I saw Thompson's cartoonist Ralph Steadman tonight say that Thompson had told him that he would shoot himself, and the news of his death was no surprise to him. Steadman said that Thompson had two broken hips and couldn't walk, and was in a fix. So if Steadman accepts it was suicide, I will too.

        That said, I wouldn't put political murder past what Steadman so accurately described as a "wretched half-bright swine of a president".

        by idlex on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:44:51 PM PDT

        •  Thompson's description,

          not Steadman's.

          by idlex on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:46:50 PM PDT

          •  When the body goes ...

            That can be the last straw, I guess.  Spalding Gray dealt with depression most of his adult life, but it was his injuries in a car accident that enabled the depression to send him over the rails of the Staten Island Ferry.  May be similar with HST.

            by infodog on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 01:59:08 PM PDT

        •  HST is small fry to Bushco

          Ok, Paul Wellstone, maybe.  He had the power to thwart Bushco's agenda.  HST has no power, and little influence on America.  It is silly to think that murdering him would somehow enable the Bush agenda.

          People, your belief systems are being threatened.  You have a notion that good, brave souls don't kill themselves.  Now you are faced with the fact that HST killed himself, and you have three options:

          1.  Deny the fact and replace it with an imagined one that fits into your belief system.  "he was murdered!"

          2. Accept the fact, and change your appraisal of HST.  "he's a coward!"

          3.  Accept the fact, and alter your belief system to accomodate the reality of HST blowing his brains out.  "depression can be a terminal illness."

          Don't think like Freeper.  Accept reality and run with it.

          by Subterranean on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:45:05 AM PDT

    •  although my sense

      is that some sort of illness was probably to blame, I have to admit that I got a chill when I heard the news because over the last couple of years as I have seriously tried to judge how close we are to fascism, and anticipate the warning signs, I have often thought: "the first one they come for will be Hunter S. Thompson". I guess that's a complementary epitaph from me to him, if nothing else. He didn't have a weak-ass liberal bone in his body- he was a Radical in the best sense. I miss him terribly already. Like Abbie Hoffman, when we or our children slay the dragon, he'll be there, although he'd piss on my sentimentality for saying so.

      by faugh a ballagh on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:21:19 AM PDT

  •  Butt-boy Bush, passed out in Thompson's bathtub

    Thompson writes in the Independent, Oct 31, 2004:

    
    The first time I noticed George W Bush was when he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a guy who had come to sell--

    Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes.

    I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away.

    If George W Bush wins again, the United States faces utter disaster. If this president is re-elected, we are facing the total death of the American Dream as I know it, and I have spent a lot of time knowing it. I would tell them that if this gang of criminals get in once more, we will be in the position of a family who have sent the Hell's Angels written invitations to their Thanksgiving party.

    Such a decision represents a serious error of judgment. Because certain people never leave.
    

    by patop on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 01:57:26 AM PDT

•  RIP HST

  energy never dies.  see ya in the next round, uncle gonzo.  

  by x on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:09:24 AM PDT

•  My idea of heaven

  HST on a typewriter, Bill Hicks at a microphone, Jimi Hendrix on guitar, and Socrates doing a Q&A session.

  sigh

  Godspeed, Hunter. May you find peace and may your death bring fond remembrances.

  by JamesC on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:11:57 AM PDT

  •  amen

    I find much more to be spiritual - nay, even religious - in writing, humor, music, etc., than I will ever find in a building supposedly constructed to the glory of the creator/God/blah blah blah.

    To paraphrase Bill, people show up once in a while to remind us that life is just a ride. And we kill those people.

    Whether HST died at his own hand or by another person or entity, he was killed by a culture that did not accept his message.

    Enjoy the rest of the universe, HST.

    by everything that rises on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 12:01:31 PM PDT

  •  sounds good to me....

    much better than "streets paved in gold" and a bunch of judgmental baptists and pentecostals telling me to cover up my tits!

    Have a great trip, Hunter, we'll see you next time around!

    by lezlie on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:27:06 AM PDT

•  Hunter Thompson/Rude Pundit

  Here is an email I sent today to the Rude Pundit regarding his post (linked text) regarding Hunter Thompson's death. Since I am going to post something similar on my own blog soon (linked text) I may as well lay it in here as well.
  =================

  Y'missed it, Rude...

  And it's right there in your post.

  Maybe he was sick, maybe not.

  Maybe he got fucked up one too many times...maybe he actually sobered up enough to see the truth.

  But the REAL reason he took himself out has to be shame.

  Pure and simple shame.

  Shame at having bet on Small K kerry.

  Shame at having finally lost his perfect pitch.

  Shame at having copped out to substance abuse once too often.,

  In the Rolling Stone article to which you link, he said: "Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart --"

  Well, that "good man with a brave heart" slunk away to Europe when John Conyers and a few other truly brave people  attempted to apply the heat to this latest theft of the United States government by the use of massive vote fraud in Ohio and Florida,  and before that kerry literally blew  the election...one that was almost impossible to  lose given the plain, simple and completely provable criminality of his opponents and their financial supporters...by sheer lack of will.

  He was SO incompetent during the campaign...from his choice of a jive-ass John Ritter lookalike as a running mate right on through to that farce of a convention he allowed to happen in Boston and his lack of balls enough to stand up and publicly tell the Swift Boat boys to go fuck themselves...that it is almost impossible to believe that he did not purposely throw the election. If he did NOT, then he is simply another rich asshole whose money and power led others to believe that he had something happening.

  And Mr. Thompson fell for it.

  One too many Wild Turkeys back there somewhere, one too many brain cells lost even for someone with so many to spare, one too many nights spent hobnobbing with rich sycophants, one too many columns about trivial pursuits.

  RIP, Hunter.

  You had a good run there, for a while.

  Next time around...lay off the sauces.

  In the end, they always cover up the taste of the truth.

  J. F.
  

  by jessfine on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:16:25 AM PDT

  •  I don't troll rate and...

    for you I should make an exception - but how's a good "Fuck you, you pusilanimous little bastard!" You are a judgemental fuckwad and you and your ilk will be the first to die whent the revolution comes.
    you sound like a smug little bastard - the good Doctor would have hated you!
     FOAD!

    by karlpk on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:40:49 AM PDT

    •  Maybe he would have...

      but there won't BE any "revolution" if all the "revolutionaries" get so polluted that they think living the high life in Aspen is anything more than jerking off.

      Sorry, man...sometimes judgements have to be made.

      He had some shit happening...more than almost any other American writer of his time short of William Burroughs (and Mailer and Breslin on their good days) as far as I'm concerned...but he pissed it away.

      And...ain't no "trolling" going on here.

      I'm new to this site, and fairly new to the blogging world.

      But I'm no troll.

      Just someone who sees some things differently than you do.

      Later...

         J. F

      by jessfine on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 11:54:38 AM PDT

      •  sorry

        I got so pissed at you - HST meant and means a lot to me and reading some pissant's opinion about how he chose to live just makes me angry -
        - I disagree about judgements and who gets to make the call - guys like HST are lightning rods and they do what they do so we don't have to - he led the way when it mattered (He took on Nixon when no one else would) - the rest of us could merely marvel at his courage, laugh out loud at his outrageousness, and enjoy the good work he did produce - Lots of great writers have dealt with their demons in unconventional ways - Unless your ass is out there and on the line you don't get to make that call -
        I mean are you going to sit in your chair and tell me Faulkner and Hemminhway and Carver should have been tea-totalers - The good Doctor was just being himself, and good for him, and lucky for us

        by karlpk on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 03:02:46 PM PDT

        •  Let me ask you a question.

          How do you know I am a "pissant"?

          Answer: Because I think Hunter Thompson drank and drugged away his enormous talent.

          Must be that, because you have no OTHER idea about who I am.

          This is star-fucker America at its worst.

          You say "guys like HST are lightning rods and they do what they do so we don't have to."

          And there it is.

          Later you accuse ME of sitting in my chair, and you seem to be saying that  if you don't know who or what I am then I must be nothing; I must have DONE nothing.

          Rolling Stone starfuckery at its worst.

          But you already stated YOUR position in the equation.

          You let Thompson do it while you sat back and played it safe.

          Well...you are wrong about me.

          I wrote for Rat newspaper when the shit was REALLY coming down on the Lower East Side in the '60s; I had my own run-ins w/the Angels and had I pursued writing instead of the art I did pursue, maybe you'd know who I am too.

          But that doesn't matter.

          What matters is that Hunter Thompson wrote an ENORMOUS amount of self indulgent, helplessly stoned, wildly funny, ultimately useless, meaningless crap as well as a few good books and articles, and he did so because he caved in to his own despair and his sadly addictive personality.

          I know a HUNDRED Hunter Thompsons. They are a dime a dozen in the jazz world. (I'm a NYC jazz musician.)

          The classic outrageously stoned, outrageously talented  tenor player who eventually gives up, loses his chops and rants on about how unfair the world is.

          What matters is that Thompson copped out and wrote for Rolling Stone, the Time magazine for the unconscious, hypnotized, follow-the-leader hipster herd, a magazine that has done more to help debase American culture than Walt Disney and the Fox Network combined.

          He wrote for BIG bucks, a place in overpriced Aspen, the best drugs money could buy and a chance to drop names like "Kerry" in his writing.

          He took on Nixon?

          EVERYBODY took on Nixon.

          That was like opposing Satan.

          You want to read a real thinker...? Read Burroughs. Next to him THOMPSON is the "pissant".

          And by the way...

          My ass IS "out there and on the line" and HAS been for 35 years.

          And I DO get to make the call.

          I feel bad for him.

          Just like I've felt bad for all those crazy tenor players and other musicians.

          For Ben Webster rotting away in Copenhagen.

          For Charlie Parker, 33 years old, strung out and dying on some emigre countess's dingy sofa watching the "Tommy Dorsey Show" on a black and white TV.

          But the ones who really DID something with their genius...The Duke Ellingtons and Gil Evanses and even coke addicted Miles Davis...the ones who left something of real value, a lifework...I don't feel anything but joy for them.

          It ain't about the drugs...it's about how you HANDLE them.

          And he caved in.

          Sorry if you disagree.

          But don't tell me not to think.

          And don't assume that because you don't know someone they have lived a life like yours.

          A Rolling Stone imprimatur only means that someone can be easily marketed.

          Not that they have their shit together.

          J.F.

          by jessfine on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:18:49 PM PDT

          •  it was his talent...

             to "piss away" if he chose... who the hell appointed you judge of the world?  Hunter S. Thompson did far more than "piss away" his talent... he shared it with all of us, even unappreciative, judgmental little pricks like you. obviously, you don't understand art... it often comes from a very tortured place... it may not be pretty, but it's life and it's real... get real,or go back to your own blog.

            by lezlie on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 12:37:36 AM PDT

            •  lezlie...

              I mourn his death with the rest of you.

              I just mourn his life as well.

              Allen Ginsberg pinned it in "Howl".
              _________________

              I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

              dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

              angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

              who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...

              ---snip---
              _________________

              1956.

              Hunter Thompson was what...19 years old?

              And Ginsberg warned him. He used the word "destroyed".

              "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" he said.

              "Howl" is not an encomium in praise of self-destruction. It is literally a howl of grief.

              I can relate. I have personally witnessed way too many Hunter Thompsons go down.

              Dodged that particular bullet myself, in fact. (Just received a fairly superficial flesh wound, actually...healing these 22 years and counting.)

              I know art is not pretty, and I know that often artists are not operating out of some Mom and Pop candy store on the corner of life as well. But there comes a crux point in every artist's life where that person must decide...is he going to lay down the toys of childhood and get on with the business at hand or is he going to become some kind of caricature of himself and go smoking off into the sunset, into that not-so-good night?

              Well...Mr. Thompson eventually ran out of road AND drugs, and he ended up smoking himself.

              As I said...RIP, Hunter S. Thompson.

              And RIP that peculiarly American dream of a drug-fueled enlightenment.

              It ain't happening.

              If Hunter Thompson left us ANYTHING, it's that lesson.

              Or, as another artist once put it:
              ________________

              "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

               For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

              1 Corinthians 13
              ________________

              This passage goes on to speak of charity as the greatest of all virtues.

              Well...I feel a certain charity towards Mr. Hunter.

              He tried mightily, and in the end, he failed.

              Done in by the easy endorphins that America in its own childhood made easily available and glorified as "the truth".

              I post these words in the spirit of charity.

              In charity towards some one possible reader who might read them and realize where his own howling life is headed.

              If they make you angry, I am sorry.

              We are a young culture.

              A VERY young culture.

              When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied "I think it would be a very good idea."

              He had people like Hunter Thompson in mind, I am sure.

              Brilliant lives wasted because there is no valid philosophical structure around which they can form.

              On which they can lean when the going REALLY gets tough.

              Hunter Thompson's most often quoted aphorism is "When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro."

              Well, when the going got tough Mr. Thompson just filled another glass.

              Another pipe.

              Dropped another pill.

              And I am here to tell you...it doesn't work.

              Those"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" who "hollow-eyed and high" sit up "smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz" generally burn up WELL before they manage to make that ancient heavenly connection.

              "Hollow-eyed and high."

              The very DESCIPTION of Hunter S. Thompson.

              

              ________________

              I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

              dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix...
              _________________

              Yup.

              So rest in peace, Hunter.

              You SURE as hell didn't find much while you were alive.

              Later...

              J. F.

              by jessfine on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 07:32:16 AM PDT

          •  ...and you're windy too!

            Firstly, I think you're a pissant not because of worthless opinion about how HST conducted his life - "Because I think Hunter Thompson drank and drugged away his enormous talent." - but because you are just one of many crowing from the bleachers -

            The "star-fucker," comment is just proof I was right in my rather hasty judgement of you
            - I've done things too - entertained people - knocked a few out of their seats once or twice and I've been around at least as long as you but unlike I don't elevate myself to HST's stature because I never reached as many people - I didn't invent a whole new genre of journalism - like it or not drugs and alcohol played a part -

            "star fucker"??? what does that even mean? I never read HST's columns in Rolling Stone - I read them in his books - His appeal had nothing to do with that mag - they were just people smart enough to put up with his eccentricities otherwise a lot of good things would never have gotten published -

            Yeah his salary was from a mainstream mag - but he led - It's the rest of us who didn't follow - He bucked the establishment - he took on Nixon 1st - Nixon may have been Satan but no one but HST was willing to stand up and say so - until after Watergate that is - every one did not take on Nixon - get your fact straight 'cause I was there too - read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and tell me he pissed away his talent - long after those of us in the bleachers have been laid to rest they will still be reading HST
            - so get over yourself and your own addictions - and you don't know one HST let alone a HUNDRED - did your friends invent new styles of jazz that reached people from coast to coast? - they share nothing with HST just because they share a prediliction for doing drugs or drink - It's obvious writing this that you know nothing about Hunter - so stuff your opinions and your holier than thou attitude and piss off - don't bother me again with you tripe

            Oh, and dragging Kerry into your obit thoughts about HST was particulary revolting - I couldn't be bothered to mention it before but I will now because you are and have always been a pissant -

            sincerely, karlpk

            by karlpk on Tue Feb 22, 2005 at 08:16:23 PM PDT

            •  The rest might be considerered valid

              from one point of view...but how does "dragging Kerry" into it make things worse?

              HST's support of Small K kerry was all the evidence one might need that he had lost that fine edge he once had, and my point is that it was his addictions that put him in that sad condition in the first place.

              He didn't have intelligence and talent because of his addictions...he had those qualities IN SPITE of them.

              And the addictions took him down.

              Early and often.

              Hard and early and often.

              I don't want to get into whether the people I know and with whom I have worked invented "new styles of jazz that reached people from coast to coast"...they did, actually, but that is not germane to the argument. Even if I was NOT personally involved in anything like that, the point remains that HST's "invention" was not of a genre, merely of a character.

              Hunter S. Thompson, stoner extraordinaire.

              A great and memorable character, to be sure.

              But he lost sight of that fiction and began to believe it to be fact.

              You say "Nixon may have been Satan but no one but HST was willing to stand up and say so".

              Bullshit.

              "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" was written in 1972.

              Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin ran for Mayor and City Council President of NYC in 1969...walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.

              People had been pinning Nixon at least since the Checkers speech in 1952.

              Since before THAT, when he was an integral part of the McCarthy thing.

              An entire generation saw him for what he was when he made the mistake of standing next to JFK in front of TV cameras during the debates of 1960.

              What do I mean by "star fucker"?

              I think the whole latterday cult of HST worship is starfucking.

              He was a CREATED CELEBRITY, karlpk.

              And whether you read him in books or in Rolling Stone, it was Rolling Stone that created and celebrated the myth. Along with a couple of hundred OTHER myths regarding people of varying degrees of talent.

              They were an equal opportunity starfucker service. It made no difference if people had their shit together or not...if they fit a certain "countercultural" profile, they were hyped to the skies.

              And HST bought into it.

              You say he "bucked the establishment."

              I say he BECAME the establishment.

              Left wing version.

              The kerry endorsement is simply my proof.

              And you know what?

              The whole kerry debacle...,because that's what it was, a fucking tragedy that pretty much sealed the deal for the fascists who are now on the verge of being able to close us down and lock us up...the whole kerry thing could very easily be traced right back to the Rolling Stone "counterculture".

              INCLUDING Hunter S. Thompson.

              The people who so virulently hated kerry...what MANY of them really hated was the empty, drug addled, starfucker ersatz "counterculture" of which HST had become such a sterling example.

              They were working people, karlpk.

              Working people.

              And they voted in DROVES against kerry because they smelled the rat smell of the bullshit counterculture emanating off of him. They essentially voted against their own interests because emotionally they simply could not handle that elitist "I'm against it" act.

              The Rovesters simply spun the game in that direction.

              Game, set and match.

              You imply I elevate myself to HST's stature even though I haven't created a genre that reached millions of people.

              Well...there's your American starfucking right there.

              You're damned right I think I'm as good as Hunter S. Thompson.

              Better even, because I didn't cop out to my addictions and I didn't let the "counterculture" bullshitize me into an early impotence and tragic death.

              I could think Mr. Hunter right under the table (If hew wasn't under the table already, of course...), and so could a couple of million other people, I am sure.

              Just because you don't know "who they are"...because you haven't been spoonfed their legend...doesn't mean SHIT.

              Used to be a guy walked up and down Broadway in the Times Square/theater district area. He'd walk right up to people, get  in their face and demand to know "Are you somebody?"

              Well...as far as you know, I'm "nobody", so I dare not criticize someone who you have been told IS somebody.

              THAT'S starfucking,'bro.

              You say I'm "windy"?

              I just have a lot to say, and you don't like what it is I'm saying.

              If I had been windy enough to write several books, a couple of hundred articles, and pawn myself off as some kind of stoned hero to a parasitic loser like Jann Wenner, you'd be a >fan.

              Because you were told to be.

              And I will NOT piss off, go away and leave you alone.

              Deal with it.

              Go read the entire works of William Burroughs and get back to me.

              Hunter Thompson my ASS.

              Later...

              J.F.

              by jessfine on Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 03:55:29 AM PDT

              •  sophistry

                is what you're good at - maybe you could write for a right wing blog - and self-aggrandizing too!

                "I could think Mr. Hunter right under the table (If hew wasn't under the table already, of course...), and so could a couple of million other people, I am sure."

                Who cares if you could? You didn't invent a whole new style of journalism or genre of music since that's what you want to brag about- you and your friends didn't make millions of people laugh - didn't move people to change the way they looked at things -
                 Who hangs on your every word? You're just enjoying putting him down for his very human failings - so what he had failings - the work he did produce was great and that's what should be celebrated - why don't you take time to trash Faulkner and Hemmingway and Phillip K Dick to name but three - go read, Under the Volcano - go read -

                HST worship? Fuck you! I merely admired the man and especially the spirit. His writings have made me laugh out loud, in fact, once 'til I cried - that has happened only a few times in my life -
                 You haven't read him - you're a liar if you say you have. You saw the movie? Read one of his books - BFD! You know nothing - you are American culture all over: big tough opinions

                As for Kerry - FUCK YOU - People swallowed the lies about him - The media put that SBV crap front and center and people boought into it- Counterculture my hairy ass - The man was a conservative - In a more interesting time he could have been a candidate for the repugs - They didn't vote against their better interests - quite the opposite - they voted for what they saw, and the press pushed as their better interests - mainly Bush for all his stumbling was tough against terra' and that's what was needed -

                Sounds like you bought it too - Hunter rooted for the Dem candidate - good reason to revile him

                Look - Fuck off! I mean it - you are an idiot - you are a troll - you are a judgmental asshole who hasn't got a clue what shinola is - It's not about daring to criticize Hunter - that's pretty easy to do - It's about celebrating and remembering the good things he did accomplish as a writer - And if he got caught up in his own mythos, well he isn't the first person to do that and it doesn't diminish his work - you diminish yourself with your vitriolic attempts to defend your idiot posting on a thread that was there for those of us who did enjoy his work - And stoned or not if your writing moved me then indeed, I'd be a fan - as it stands though, I think you are an asshole -

                 No one told me to read HST ( never bought a single issue of Rolling Stone in my life) - I'm old enough to have been reading HST since the 60's - read the book he wrote about the Hell's Angels - straight narrative - pretty good book - what you'll notice is his courage - so piss off - stuff your opinions and your starfucking bullshit up your ass - And by the by I have taken the time to read Burroughs Queer and Naked Lunch - uh, your point? Actually I don't care - you go tell all your friends how brave you were for saying HST was drug addled and puff yourself up like the big brave man or woman you are -
                

                by karlpk on Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 02:47:54 PM PDT

                •  As you wish...

                  I've had my say.

                  And it makes sense to me.

                  You call names well, though.

                  Later...

                  J.F.

                  by jessfine on Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 07:54:11 PM PDT

                •  P.S.

                  You seem to enjoy being angry.

                  Come check out my blog, It's Jes' Fine Out Here.

                  Lots more things for you to blow up about.

                  Glad to oblige, although that certainly wasn't my intention.

                  J.F.

                  P.P.S. By the way... about Small K.

                  Are you are saying that it was the right wing's nasty spirited spin campaign that made him concede defeat before all the votes were counted and then scurry off to Europe while a few brave souls tried to make things clear to the American public about just exactly what had happened in Ohio and elsewhere?

                  That's some heavy spin, bubba...

                  I hear the skiing in Gstaad is lovely this time of year.

                  by jessfine on Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 08:06:12 PM PDT

      •  Pretty Pompous...

        Of you to talk shit about Hunter not starting a revolution while your lazy ass sits at home "surfing the web".  It sure is easy to criticizing another for "not doing enough" when you haven't done shit.  What have you done for a revolution?  The man did more for a "revolution" in one book than you ever will do in your entire life. Shut the hell up already.

        When you point a finger at someone you have 3 other fingers pointing back at you.

        by FtheNaysayers on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 06:11:38 PM PDT

        •  And here it is again...

          MY lazy ass?

          Real artists ARE the revolution, bubba.

          I know several hundred of them.

          People who work 12, 14 hours a day at their art, their craft.

          Not posing somewhere in the mountains outside their palatial country house with a shotgun, a glass of Wild Turkey and a snout full of speed.

          He was just another talented celeb, baby.

          A counter-culture celebrity.

          Sorry to say it, because I dug his stuff out front.

          But that's all that was left of him.

          And...exactly what "revolution" did Hunter Thompson manage to start?

          The Rolling Stone revolution?

          Please.

          A magazine named for a bunch of no-playing motherfuckers (that's a jazz technical  term) who couldn't even tune their own guitars.

          The end result of THAT "revolution" is right where we are now.

          Bush and the Boys, on tour.

          Lip synching.

          Next stop...Tehran.

          Get real.

          He stoned himself to death.

          Get real.

          J.F.

          by jessfine on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 10:37:25 PM PDT

•  Bummer

   First read Thompson on a long bus ride in the 70s.  I know the people on the bus thought I was totally deranged as I couldn't keep from hooting loudly with laughter.  I hate that he committed suicide, my prayers go out to his family and him.  My brother committed suicide and I know how difficult it is for those left behind.  

  by otis704 on Mon Feb 21, 2005 at 1