TWO EULOGIES FOR HUNTER S. THOMPSON

First, a Clarence Page essay syndicated in the Houston Chronicle:

Dr. Gonzo's high-wire trip comes to a crashing finish

Even in his 1971 drug-crazed classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, originally serialized in Rolling Stone, he reaches with some profoundly unflattering conclusions about the biggest scam of the 1960s, the notion that hallucinogenic drugs would fling open our doors of perception.

In a sober and prophetic sermon-rant in his book's final chapters, he writes: "We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the '60s. That was the fatal flaw in (LSD guru) Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling 'consciousness expansion' without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. ... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped to create ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody ... or at least some force — is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel."

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And from AlterNet:

Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

Hunter was a drunk and a drug-sucker. He would go to cover an event and slather himself with LSD. He went to the '72 GOP convention as a wild-eyed liberal and elbowed his way into the activist bullpen, grabbing a sign reading 'Garbage Men Demand Equal Pay' before charging the floor with the Nixon-shouters to howl "Four More Years!" at John Chancellor. He wanted to write about motorcycle gangs, so he went out and joined the worst of them, and got his ass stomped in. And wrote about it.

Hunter Thompson is the reason I write politics. Period. He was the most honest man in the business. Everyone else had and has an angle, a reputation, or a source to protect. Hunter stripped it down to the raw throbbing nerve and let it fly.

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