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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 02/21/2005 : 08:15:09
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Honest journalists are a dying breed and now, we have lost one of the best. Hunter S. Thompson has commited suicide.
quote:
Aspen - Hunter Stockton Thompson, who coined the term "gonzo journalism" to describe the unique and furiously personal approach to reportage exemplified in his 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," died Sunday night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Woody Creek home. He was 67, family members said.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a friend of Thompson's, confirmed the death. Thompson's son, Juan, discovered his body Sunday evening.
"Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head. ... The family will provide more information about (a) memorial service ... shortly. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan and Anita Thompson, Hunter Thompson's wife, said in a statement.
A great writer; a superb intellect; a ready wit. We'll miss you, old friend.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2005 : 08:59:38 [Permalink]
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| I saw that... very sad news indeed. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2005 : 11:24:08 [Permalink]
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Beyond making me laugh more than any other author, he had an ability to cut through to the core the madness of our political system and American values in general. By way of his hilarious paranoiac exaggerations, side trips, and a balls to the wall bias, he showed a real empathy for of those of us who face the everyday with a hard to put a finger on, let alone define, feeling of powerlessness in the face of so much madness. His laugh out loud bullshit shed a brighter light on more of the truths of our times than most of our much more refined social critics have ever managed to do.
Thank you, Doc. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2005 : 11:59:36 [Permalink]
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The Rude Pundit:
"Hunter S. Thompson called out evil and insanity by getting down in the gutter with it and daring it to fuck with him. Sure, sure, all the wannabe hipsters carry Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in their backpacks (right alongside the one used Bukowoski they could afford and that copy of something by Chomsky that they never read past the first ten pages), but they only read the Thompson book because Johnny Depp made a movie. For Thompson in his purest form, check out Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, his account of the 1972 presidential campaign that rips the guts out of high-handed political rhetoric and drags it down to the sewer where it belongs. America is a civilization on the brink of doom in that book, and it is frightening and exhilirating to read.
For sheer crazed anger and vindictive hatred, read his 1994 "obituary" of Richard Nixon, a hurricane-force blast of anguish that defined, for the Rude Pundit, just how personal the political actually is. Thompson concludes, "He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream." For his destruction of the Reagan-Bush years in a single magazine article, read 1992's "Fear and Loathing in Elko," about a drug-fueled, alcohol-hazed drive through the desert with Clarence Thomas (known as "the Judge" in the piece). No one could call the enemy by its name like Thompson.
We can speculate, and the Rude Pundit's sure that all of Blogsylvania will be ablaze with theories, as to why Thompson took his own life by eating lead from one of his beloved guns. Chances are it's the same old story - depression, disease, drugs, or some combination thereof. But the Rude Pundit would like to find something Greek and noble and tragic here. In an interview before the election, Thompson said of the Bush II administration, "This is the darkest hour that I have seen in my long experience as an American. This is evil." His Rolling Stone article on Bush and Kerry said, directly, that Bush was worse than Nixon, which, for anyone who read Thompson for a long time, was quite a startling belief. So the romantic, fall-upon-one's-sword version of Thompson's suicide is this: all Thompson saw in America was that we were on a never-ending spiral towards madness that even he couldn't envision, that the worst things he could imagine about this country were coming true and more, that the only possible things to do when the monsters are knocking are to stand and fight or cut and run. And he had fought far, far too long already."
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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TG
Skeptic Friend
USA
121 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2005 : 15:00:51 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the laughs and insight, Doc. After "Fear and Loathing ..." I'd pretty much moved on, but after buying a Ducati 900SS in the mid 90's a friend pointed me to an issue of Cycle World in which H.S. had written a "road test" of one ... as only H.S. could have written it. More a commentary on life than anything else.
Every car or bike road test I've read since has seemed incredibly dry and boring by comparison. |
| Edited by - TG on 02/21/2005 15:28:40 |
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Wendy
SFN Regular
USA
614 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2005 : 07:41:19 [Permalink]
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| Kudos to The Daily Show for making Hunter S. Thompson last night's "Moment of Zen". |
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2005 : 17:59:04 [Permalink]
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"I piss down the throats of these nazis!" -- Hunter S. Thompson
quote:
Let's face it, the yo-yo president of the U.S.A. knows nothing. He is a dunce. He does what
he is told to do, says what he is told to say, poses the way he is told to pose. He is a fool.
No. Nonsense. The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time, when the last
living vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus
rich kid in charge of the White House.
Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters, it is where the heart of America lives.
So if the president lies and acts giddy about other people's lives, if he wantonly and stupidly
endorses mass murder by definition, a loud and meaningless animal with no functional
intelligence and no balls.
To say this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer
of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.
Oh, what we have lost! Especally now with the Guckert/Gannon infamy proving him right all down the line.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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