[BraveMan]

Continuing with the "All Thompson, All The Time" theme this week on FR, here is yet another article. Love 'em or hate 'em, Fred has a unique way of interpreting the view through the looking glass.

Apologies if this has been previously posted; I looked & looked (still don't believe it hasn't already been posted . . .)

[jocon307]

"When it was over, everybody went into a law firm."

So that explains it.

[thoughtomator]

Pfft! I could replace HST in a trigger-click. Just send me an eyedropper full of pure LSD, 40 cases of cheap beer, and a copy of the latest Maureen Dowd column so I'd have something to get pissed off about and send me on some wild tangent that ends up who-knows-where. My first column will be called "Fear and Loathing in _____________ ". (I'll fill in the blank around hour 16.)

[MrNatural]

..Nixon is back in the White House, Rumsnamara risen from the dead, bombs falling on other peoples’ suburbs. The Pentagon is lying again and democracy stalks yet another helpless country. This time the young are already dead and there will be no joyous anarchy. The press, housebroken, pees where it is told...

You are a brave man to post this junk here.

If Fred thinks the kids (including my sons) are dead because they are not long-haired bums, he has been 'off the beaten track' a little too long. Sit back down, Fred.

Oh, and Fred? .. kiss my @$$.

[Fester Chugabrew]

There was only one Hunter Thompson.

Sure. But there are a gonzillion nut cases well-qualified to take his place.

[martian_22]

Every time I feel nostalgic about the '60s I remember that the "Cultural Revolution" of sex,drugs and rock&roll was engineered in Soviet think tanks with the express purpose of cutting-short out best and brightest youth. Soviet agents funded and organized this "new" marxist symphony on campuses and in the various media outlets to achieve the desired effect. Social(ist) change was inevitable.

I saw what we were and what we had become after the intervention of "great minds" to misuse social change.

I won't miss gonzo or his ilk. I just hate dealing with the droppings they've left behind.

[anonymous_user]

In the three-TV-channel world of the 60's, HST took a mundane event, mixed in personal absurdity, a grain of truth, and a lot of opinion and called it "gonzo journalism."

Today we call it "reality TV", celebrity poker, CBS's RaTHergate, The Daily Show, talk radio and 'bloggers.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

[kittymyrib]

The day we bury the last decrepid flower child will be the day the air gets fresher in America. What a pampered bunch of weirdos, coddled by their clueless parents and never asked to grow up! Drugs made them feel important, and obviously caused the brain damage that still makes them feel that way.

[Don Corleone]

When Thompson blew his brains out, a door closed somewhere and you could hear the latch click.

And sane people everywhere gave a sigh of relief!

[G.Mason]

This pap, written by "Fred", has the same consistancy, texture, and importance as anything written by any mad man.

Hunter Thompson, for example.

[Bommer]

Fred has a unique way of interpreting the view through the looking glass.

Only because Fred's view, the looking glass a his head are all up his ass! Funny how Nixon is in the White house, but it was Johnson that started the war. Democraps get the pass, while Republicans have to clean up their dogs mess in our lawn!

[GOP_Raider]

There was only one Hunter Thompson.

And for that, we're all grateful.

[SerpentDove]

Hippies stink.

[rcocean]

I love Some of HST writing, Hells Angels, F&L Las Vegas, and F&L 72.

But he was a self-indulgent baby-boomer who had good luck to be born at the right time. He was too old for Vietnam, too young for Korea and WWII. The economy and housing prices allowed him (and fellow boomers) to spend the 60's and 70's taking drugs and having fun.

In the 80's reality set in, and HST couldn't do anything except rewrite the same old nonsense.

Physically he died last week, but his writing ability and politics died of old age 25 years ago

[rcocean]

I love Some of HST writing, Hells Angels, F&L Las Vegas, and F&L 72.

But he was a self-indulgent baby-boomer who had good luck to be born at the right time. He was too old for Vietnam, too young for Korea and WWII. The economy and housing prices allowed him (and fellow boomers) to spend the 60's and 70's taking drugs and having fun.

In the 80's reality set in, and HST couldn't do anything except rewrite the same old nonsense.

Physically he died last week, but his writing ability and politics died of old age 25 years ago

[nothingnew]

A murky sun hung in an aluminum sky like a fried egg waiting to fall and mesquite bushes pocked the dry sand with blue mortar bursts.

Just one example of the terribly bad writing in this article, which I suspect was on purpose by Fred. I don't know if he was joking or not.

FMCDH(BITS)

[squirt-gun]

A recent WSJ piece by Tom Wolfe praised this self absorbed lunatic, proving once again that even great writers sometimes slip on the ice of reality.

[Caleb1411]

Starting around 1964, a restlessness came over the land, an itch. Kids trickled and later flooded onto the highways as if called by something. I can’t explain it. Few had done it before. Few do it now. They—we--set forth and created the only country in which Thompson could have made sense. It wasn’t the war, at first. Nor was it only the usual impatience of youth with authority. Nor was it even that we were young and the world was wide. There was a revulsion against suburban emptiness, against the eight-to-five Ozzie and Harriet gig, a rejection of the Establishment, which meant boring jobs and singing commercials.
We discovered drugs, then regarded as worse than virgin sacrifices to Moloch, and looked through a window we could never name. If the times were out of joint, we were seldom out of joints. Chemistry defined the life. You found a freak in some rotting slum and said, “Hey, man, got some shit?” You toked up. You got the munchies, the skitters, the fears. Parents really didn’t understand. Dope, we said, will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope. It did.
Thompson, a savage writer, a grand middle finger raised against the sky, essayed drugs and found them good. And said so, and we loved him. When he wrote of getting wacked out of his mind on seven illicit pharmaceuticals, and wandering in puzzled paranoia through the lobby of existence, we shrieked with laughter.

Sure, Fred. Solipsistic, narcissistic, drug-addled self-promotion is a ticket to immortality . . . to everyone whose glands define his existence, anyway.

[The Great RJ]

If you remember the drug laden Haight Ashbury and Woodstock events of the 1960's you probably weren't there.

[cyncooper]

Fred has a unique way of interpreting the view through the looking glass.

Actually Fred sounds banal with a strong desire to be unique but falling short. Well short.

[doug from upland]

I never heard of this jackass before.

FRED Donate
Or don't. I don't know. But it would sure help. Panhandling is not particularly pleasant, or I'd be sitting outside the subway jiggling a McDonald's cup seeded with bait change. Fact is, though, costs attach to producing these eruptions of outrage and sedition -- not much more than $1K a year in direct costs, but lots more in time which, for a freelance purveyor of lies and distortion, is money lost. Granted, you didn't ask me to do it. You don't owe me anything. On the other hand, these curiosities seem to amuse a lot of people, who of course may have too much time on their hands.
This isn't a strong-arm approach. The column will continue anyway. I'm not actually dying. Why, you might ask, should you pay for my hobby when I don't pay for your hang-gliding? Think about something else. But in a moment of reduced alertness, especially if you are filthy rich from exploiting orphans and oppressing children in iron lungs, a few small bucks would sure help. That funny-looking little button below that says "Donate" works. Or send a massive check to Fred Reed, 10560 Main Street, Suite 211, Fairfax, Virginia, 22030. Your children probably don't need to go to college anyway.