The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

[HAL9000]

AP News Alert

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

[huac]

I just don't like people that talk down on my President


He didn't have a problem with Presidents. He was kind to Clinton. He had a problem with Republican Presidents. He was vicious towards them.

[huac]

Yeah, it's funny how these ghouls come out just to tell you how they don't care. If they don't care, why are they on the thread?

Perhaps he was making a comment by being sarcastic. Mr. Thompson was much less kind to those conservatives or Republicans who he viciously attacked. Many feel that Mr. Thompson was a venomous partisan, not worthy of praise just because he happened to be a talented writer. Some might think that Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin are talented actors. It stil doesn't justify their political beliefs.

[A Jovial Cad]

By-the-by...here's a quote all of you trolls handing out the hankies over the demise of Gonzo Hunter will never be able to explain away:

"Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?" he writes, referring to the people currently occupying the White House. "They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis."

--Hunter Thompson, from a 2003 www.Salon.com interview.

The "who" he refers to is US, my genuine fellow FReepers--WE are the ones who voted for those folks he so disdained. And we are the ones he was addressing in those comments...Still proud of your hero Thompson?

If so, open wide, and drink up...

[Pharmboy]

He always struck me as bipolar--and people with that diagnosis have a VERY high suicide rate.

Well, whatever, his torment is over. RIP.

[huac]

He was a self-indulgent minor talent who fried his brains on acid years ago. A permanent adolescent whose reputation was built on an ability to figuratively moon in public on a perpetual basis.

Like literary Stern - a shock-jock. Nothing less.

Nothing more.


Best summary I've seen.

[A Jovial Cad]

Link, if anyone's interested in perusing what "Gonzo" thought about conservatives:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson

[Viking2002]

In his ESPN articles, he was always saying 'big darkness soon come'. I always thought he was referring to Bush's international policies. Guess there was a hidden meaning, after all. I'm sure his motivation will become public knowledge soon.

[huac]

Mr. J. Cad, you are on the right side of this argument, literally and figuratively.

[Petronius]

I could care less what he thought about Bush (or Nixon). He wasn't a brilliant political analyst. I admired his prose and he was funny (and that is a subjective value, you must admit). He's not my "hero."

I'm straining to think of American writers from the last 50 years who _I_ laughed as hard at. John Kennedy Toole, perhaps...

Clearly, you don't care for HST. Duly noted. I'll even put that in my diary. There's something deliciously stupid about a man trying to convince others that they shouldn't enjoy what they do, in fact, enjoy--whether it pertains to writers or ice-cream flavors ;>)

[beyond the sea]

Wow. Gonzo Journalism is dead.

H.S. Thompson: "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."

Hunter has gone over, by his own hand. I will miss him.

[A Jovial Cad]

Thanks...I often seem to be the lonely conservative on this thread at FRee Republic regarding a doctrinaire leftist whom hated nearly everything we stand for...

That has struck me as odd, as this thread has progressed. But thank you for your support.

[beyond the sea]

I'm kind of hoping it's one of his wacked out pranks but I don't think so.

No prank unfortunately.

H.S.T.: "The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs."

This guy was one great writer. He was a trip.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

While his politics were (obviously) infantile, at best: the man was a brilliant wordsmith, and a matchless prose stylist. His passing is a genuine tragedy, by any sane and informed measure.

Rest in peace, Hunter S. Thompson.

[beyond the sea]

While HST was a drug-soaked, ranting liberal, he was also a genius (in his own crazy way)--an incredibly original, fearless, and prolific writer. Unfortunately, his "fear and loathing" finally got the best of him. Very sad--he will be missed.

Well said!

[rcocean]

I think you're misunderstanding a lot of people.

Hunter Thompson wrote some very entertaining stuff. He wasn't a great artist and he didn't say anything profound.

His politics were terrible and for the last 25 years he didn't write anything worth reading. Hard to get upset at someone whose political views were so stupid.

See The Bleat (Lileiks) for his take on HST. Its very good.

[A Jovial Cad]

Not really interested in what you have to say about this, or anything else, really, Petronius. Your posts on so many subjects amount to so much rank nonsense that I have long ago ceased reading anything you post unless, of course, you post directly to me. And it is equally dismissed. Get lost.

[livius]

Thompson sought – successfully I think – to subvert or at least put into question the categorical distinction between fiction and non-fiction writing.

And therein lies the problem. It's a direct line from HST to Dan Rather. Reporters have always been biased, but at one time it was considered a little over the edge to make yourself the focus of the reporting and actively muck around with what you were supposed to be merely observing. HST was a leader in doing away with that nicety.

However, in his defense, he was more than anything else an expression of the Zeitgeist, a distillation of the fast and loose and politically motivated manipulation of the truth that had taken over the academy in the 1960s - an expression of the Marxist or Marxist-lite formation of many intellectuals at that point. But this new Marxist approach to "truth" combined the narcissistic media projection of the 1960s and 60s, and we are still living with its results.

Good article, in any case.

[A Jovial Cad]

I love Lilek's commentary, and "The Bleat": it's listed in my favorites. But that was NEVER the original point, and has been lost as this thread has degenerated into a flame war. You need to go back and read the original posts that got us here--it was NEVER really about Hunter Thompson, but rather about some isolated FReeper's hair triggers on the old thread flame thrower...

[beyond the sea]

This a good article describing HST's style.

Yes, here's a bit of it.

***

During one of Thompson’s infamous digressions, he relates a story from the ’68 presidential campaign in which Lyndon Johnson “told his manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.” The campaign manager protests that nobody will believe that the guy’s a “pigfucker.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

[johnb838]

think he was a very GOOD gonzo journalist in the 70's, but Tom Wolfe mastered the "self referential journalism" thing. Thompson's stuff is exciting but there is a sameness about much of it because it's all about him eventually... into this "personal journalism" crap which made the writer the center of the story.

Just like the way the MSM operates today. Oh well, at least he was a supporter of the RKBA. He had an I-don't-give-a-sh~t attitude that I've always found appealing... anti-authoritarian, ya know? Suicide ultimately negates everything an individual represented, e.g., he was a looser in the end.