Posted on 02/24/2005 10:50:30 AM PST by Former Military Chick
This week, an homage de blog. Or would that be homage du blog? James Taranto will know. It's good to have an editor, especially one I would characterize as a nonintrusive stickler. He always knows my topic, doesn't know my view, corrects my spelling and grammar. [De? Du? It's all Greek to me!--ed.] Today I post thoughts blog-style. There is, however, a theme. Find it.
Hunter Thompson, RIP. Tom Wolfe, a genius, goes over the top in his praise of Thompson. Wolfe and Thompson were of the same journalistic generation, and we are all chauvinists for our era. But Hunter Thompson was not Mark Twain, who was a genius, nor was he the great comic voice of America in the 20th century.
He was a reporter/diarist who helped create a new journalistic form, to which 30 years ago he gave the even then embarrassingly corny name "gonzo journalism." It was highly personal, eccentric, with the writer at the center of the story, and it had its moments, the best of which was "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which had a different sound, a different attitude, and a whiff of anarchy that seemed liberating.
In time Thompson's swashbuckling came to seem joyless, aggressive and half dead. What he thought fed his gift (drugs, alcohol) killed it. He must have been very scared to get tanked like that to write. The empty page, the blank screen, is scary. But so is a mortgage. So is the stillness of a courtroom before you make the closing argument. And so is a broken leg that needs fixing fast. We all have jobs. You take a bad turn when you start to think your next work must be marked by genius because you are a genius.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
yes - this lady can write - I guess that's how she got a gig as presidential speechwriter
True. If you have not read any of her books I encourage you to do so, then give them as gifts to family and friends!
I mean, whatever the hell got into her?
What a great writer! The column she wrote immediately after 9/11, about watching firemen and policemen and construction workers, was her greatest.
Well, I do agree with her on this one. I thought Tom Wolfe went "over the top" with his praise for Hunter Thompson, too.
Thompson was a freak show - which is fine, every age probably needs its freak show - but he somehow convinced the gullible that journalism was really nothing but the journalist's personal freak show. In other words, it was all about the journalist, his powers to shock and disgust, and manipulate what he saw; and nothing about reporting.
When I read that Hunter Thompson killed himself by sticking a pistol in his mouth while on the phone with his ex-wife and son, I knew that all we were dealing with was a massive out-of-control ego that could have eaten Manhattan. I hope he repented between the saddle and the ground.
A college president of our acquaintance once said that people in academia get so hot and bothered about situations like this because the stakes are so low.
But Thompson was at least honest. He knew he was at the center of his little journalistic universe and did not try to hide behind false objectivity like the Old Media does.
He was a brilliant man. I wish he had won the struggle with his demons. But he did not. RIP.
Why is St. Joseph Cupertino the obvious patron saint of the Internet? Because he flew through the air, lifted by truth. Because no establishment could keep him down. Because he empowered common people. Because they in fact saw his power before the elites of the time did. And because it could not be an accident that the center of the invention of the Internet, ground zero of Silicon Valley, is Cupertino, Calif., named for the saint centuries ago.
But the real reason was listed in the paragraph previous. Once you get hooked into the internet you never leave your cell
Yeah like how he accused Muskie of doing drugs during the 72 campaign.
Noonan mentions "God" eleven times in this article! That's too much "God".
The gonzocalypse had actually ended some time ago. If there is a lesson to be learned, perhaps it is that if you open the doors to the unconscious too widely you can encounter unfortunate and tragic things. Whatever inner demons were haunting the guy, they caught ip with him.
He could be pretty funny sometimes. A sad ending.
She'll make a great blogger!
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