SwiftVets.com

[GenrXr]

Symbolic of 60's radicals for their cause is officially dead with G W's dedication to do the right thing in the middle east and his re-election against all odds. I enjoyed reading Thompsons writing becuase he was brilliant, yet he was also a deranged lunatic with a fanatical left wing outlook. If he wasn't so self-absorbed as all lefties are and found something of principle in his life he would have had something to live for.

Thompson killing himself made me think of another self-absorbed person who lacks character, ole Bill Clinton. Once slick realizes he is nothing I wouldn't be surprised if he also takes his life. I forsee Clinton as the first ex-President who commits suicide.

These are sick self interested people. Typical of the left today
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy

[DLI78]

I guess it is Bedtime for Gonzo, then, eh?

He was 67. You know if you hang around long enough, body parts fall off or quit working. Maybe he got tired of that.
_________________
DLI 78
Army Linguist
1978-1986

[GenrXr]

[GM Strong]

The loss of any life is sad, but this is pathetic. Taking one's own life is the worst insult you can make to those who value you. There is nothing heroic or gallant about it. It is a last act of desperation. How empty this guy must have been to commit such an act of self loathing. I can have no sympathy.
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8th Army Korea 68-69

[I B Squidly]

Thirty years ago "Woodstein" sanctified the 5th Estate. Hunter Thompson with that license was the Pied Piper of Gonzo. "Woodstein" had tediously investigated information and had a knowledge base to place that data in context. Journalism students of the '70s wanted only to get their blow dryers and gain fame without the effort. The 'Duke' showed them the way. Gonzo journalism found facts troublesome and laborious. The 'Greater Truth' was to be had by allegory, exaggeration, rank postulation and gratuitous supposition generously sprinkled with outraged and outrageous bombast to curry sympathy and attention. Journalism was transformed from a trade based on acquired knowledge to a profession based on technique. In the case of 'Gonzo' it was a technique without substance or validity among most of it's practitioners. It's a style determined to be polemical, not expository.

Hunter's earlier work was fun to read as personal observations but woefully far from truthful. The surprise is that he was allowed to kill himself and some long aggrieved Hell's Angel hadn't done it for him.

[Tom Poole]

[d19thdoc]

GenrXr wrote:

[scotty61]

From James Lileks.

"HST killed himself. He never would have “turned his life around” – that’s a hard thing to try when the room’s been spinning for 40 years. Depression? Wouldn’t be surprising. A bad verdict from the doc? Wouldn’t be surprising. A great writer in his prime, but the DVD of his career would have the last two decades on the disc reserved for outtakes and bloopers. It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else’s satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right."

I think James has got it right.
_________________
John Kerry. A Neville Chamberlain for our times.

[GM Strong]

This is SICK. Sick people and sick environment.


ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking.
The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier.
But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice.
"It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here."
Anita Thompson also echoes the comments that have been made by Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law: That her husband's suicide did not come from the bottom of the well, but was a gesture of strength and ultimate control made as his life was at a high-water mark.
"This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies.
She added: "He lived a beautiful life and he lived it on his own terms, all the way from the very beginning to the very end."
Anita Thompson, like her husband's other close relatives, understood how Hunter Thompson wanted to make his ultimate exit.
_________________
8th Army Korea 68-69

[I B Squidly]

Russert's replaying a Feb' 03 interview with Hunter:

He prefers the draft to the current mercenary war mongers,

Likes sKerry 'cause he thinks like me,

Rangels his favorite congressman,

Likes Clinton in 'black' sorta way,

he screeches ethereally when he can't find his words...which is often as he's drinking on camera.

He's bearly intelligible and sounds on the incipient edge of serious lung dysfunction. Hunched over his drink in satorial cacophony without socks....Johnny Depp does it better.

[I B Squidly]

Great little post-script on Hunter:

"Fear and Loathing of the Gonzo Establishment"
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/dw20050228.shtml

[GenrXr]

[I B Squidly]

Another Thompson postscript:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/jj20050304.shtml

This one works in a name familiar on this board: