KultureDrome

Hunter S. Thompson Dead

There are those of us for which pornography was our sex education and Hunter S. Thompson was our intro to drug culture. But drug culture is not just about getting stoned. It is a culture with as broad, if not broader, implications as any other culture. There is an esthetic, and there is, most definitely, a politics. Like any great writer, Thompson had a genius for lying. It is not easy to get the world’s attention or to hold it. But, Thompson was more than just a really good liar. No matter how spectacular, the fish story only gets you so far. Thompson knew how to hold our attention. But he was about much more important issues. The inventor of gonzo journalism was able to give us genuine political insight about a world that was going through radical changes. From the start these were books that were filled with the heartbreak of an idealist who saw one of the only and biggest chances for real political, social, and cultural change wasted and finally exhausted. By the time the movie version of Fear and Loathing came out in 1998 the depiction of optimistic excess gone sour looked more like your average anti-drug campaign. The uniquely American politics of individual sovereignty as the basis for all of our freedom had been replaced by a new standard of witch-hunts at the highest levels of government, laws that did not apply to everyone equally, etc. One can only hope that Thompson is not the last of his breed.