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Washed-Up Lefty Loser Offs Self
February 21, 2005
He'd become well-nigh unreadable by the mid-80s and yesterday, "gonzo journalist," celebrity drunkard and famous psychoactive drug-guzzler Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. Here are some heart-warming reminiscences from today's SF Chron story about the man whose last published book was titled "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, The Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness." Jeanette Etheredge, another close friend of Thompson and owner of the North Beach fixture, Tosca, said he knew where every ice machine was at every motel in San Francisco. Wow. Gonzo! Chronicle Executive News Editor Jay Johnson, who also edited Thompson's columns when he wrote for the Examiner, said Thompson could not dictate over the phone, so he filed his stories page by page over the fax, sending multiple revisions as the two spent many hours throughout the night and into the morning "wrestling the column to the ground." A good binge was a sacred thing to Hunter, see. She said he was always a gentleman. One time after hanging out at his hotel all night and into the morning, she told him that she had to go home. It was about 5 a.m. and he insisted on escorting her in a taxi. But when they were walking through the hotel lobby to get into a cab, she noticed he was wearing just underwear. And when they reached her house, she had to give him money to get back to the hotel. Sunday night, she was shocked by the death of someone who was so vibrant. Shocked? I only wonder what took him so long. Thompson was clearly in his own "downward spiral of dumbness" and self-loathing. That this washed-up icon of incoherence should remain a folk hero to the American Left only underscores the growing marginality of liberaldom here. Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 21, 2005 09:26 AM Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: Comments:
I neither miss nor mourn him. Posted by: Rod Stanton at February 22, 2005 12:39 PMThompson was a strong supporter and member of the NRA. Perhaps not so much lefty? Posted by: Sam at February 22, 2005 12:40 PMMaybe not in that respect Sam, true. Altho,a number of the recent obits are quick to note he was not exactly "conservative" in his use of firearms and explosives; firing his guns high in the air, across the road where he lived, when traffic irritated him; and blowing up a vehicle on his acreage, just for kicks. Posted by: Matt R. at February 22, 2005 11:18 PMHunter Thompson was an anarchist: he beleived that any man who paid his bills on time and didn't throw the first punch had the right to live as he damn well pleased. Sure, he outlasted his talent, but all American writers do. Nevertheless, "Hell's Angels" (1966) ranks among the classics of sociological reporting. And "On the Campaign Trail in '72" (1973) is still one of the funniest books ever about politics. What could bring a man who loved sports, liquor, parties and firearms to take permanent leave of all four? I think it was the times: he lived long enough to see one President rocket a pharmaceutical plant into ashes to keep an illict blowjob out of the headlines, while another, whose military skills included prolonged invisibilty, rode to nomination by rumor-mongering that his POW/war hero opponent had a negro love-child, and to re-election by having his henchmen trash the reputation of an honest-to-God combat veteran. I'm deeply sorry that Mr. Thompson turned the gun on himself - I can think of several other, better, targets. Posted by: McGarvey Park at February 23, 2005 06:40 PMPost a comment
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