Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

I've loved Hunter S. Thompson since I first read his seminal gonzo-book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas back when I was in college. Thompson is so cool, so great, that not only does Gary Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury feature him as an ongoing character named Duke, but Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam turned Fear and Loathing into a feature film starring Johnny Depp back in 1998--it's quite a good film, too. Indeed, Dr. Thompson is no small inspiration to me in writing Real Art. Really, he's something of a god.

Anyway, I was checking out Rob Salkowitz's Emphasis Added the other day, and I saw that Thompson had a new rambling essay on presidential politics over at RollingStone.com. Salkowitz was shocked (and I was, too, to some extent) by Thompson's assertion that if Richard Nixon was running against Bush for president today, he would vote for him. However, it was this little blurb about my home town that really caught my attention:

Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.

Things haven't changed all that much where George W. Bush comes from. Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

Houston is also the unnatural home of two out of the last three presidents of the United States of America, for good or ill.

That is so, so true.

Thompson doesn't just bash Bush; he also talks about his relationship with John Kerry:

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon -- which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.

Anyway, I don't really have any major points to make about Thompson's latest Fear and Loathing essay: just go read it; it's both funny and thought-provoking. Even more so than the early 70's, America needs journalistic perspectives like Thompson's today.

Click here for the rest.

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