"He Was a Crook" by Hunter S. Thompson

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Richard Nixon resigned forty years ago today. Hunter S. Thompson wrote a great deal about Nixon. I'd highly recommend the anthology "The Great Shark Hunt" as well as "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72." Thompson wrote this upon Nixon's death in 1994. The compete piece is at: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm . Note that Hunter reads the final two paragraphs in a techno-music piece by Paul Oakenfold called "Nixon's Spirit."

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man s**tting in his own nest. But he also s**t in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[randys1]

2. Hunter was a genius, and a scary dude.

I wish he had been more actively involved in writing during the crimes of the W administration...

I havent read much of his during that time, is there any one particular thing I should read?

I have of course read the early, great stuff.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

3. There is a 4-Volume Anthology of Thompson called "The Gonzo Papers"

Any of those is a great place to start. Volume 1, "The Great Shark Hunt" covers the early -mid 70s. "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" provides a lot of insight into the folks who would later be players in Watergate, and is widely excerpted in "The Great Shark Hunt"

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a wickedly funny and insighful, albeit hard to follow at times, piece of work by Thompson. It is considered by many to be a masterpiece.

[hifiguy]

6. Definitely agree!

The Great Shark Hunt contains most of his acidly brilliant writing on Watergate (which is also immensely funny) and some pieces about the early stages of the 1976 election. Required reading, as is Fear and Loathing 1972.

[rhett o rick]

4. I disagree with Mr. Thompson to a degree.

Giving Nixon the credit for spoiling the politics game is giving him personally too much credit. Corruption existed long before Tricky Dick. If he did anything, his bungling exposed the corruption that was burbling under the surface for decades.

Some will say that it is good, exposure is the first step to correcting the problems, while others will recognize that exposure was the first step in normalization. The Patriot Act was a big stem and now Pres Obama's rationalization and minimization of torture is further normalization.

We need to face up to the fact that our "Constitutionally controlled Democratic Republic" is dead and it's not Nixon's fault.

[colsohlibgal]

5. He Nailed it With Tricky Dick

I have most of Thompson's books, great reading and often hilarious. I remember in his piece about Nixon's death he said Nixon should be flushed down the sewers.

The scary thing, looking at current times, is the joke that has too much truth in it, that our last liberal president was Richard Nixon.

[hifiguy]

7. The good doctor also had some observations on the Reagan administration

of which this one is the best and most pungent:

“I believe that Ed Meese- being a person without any honor, a fat bastard, really a congenital cheap pig in the style of and on the level of Richard Nixon- should be locked in a concrete basement with an elk. And the elk should be ram-fed full of acid before he’s put in there”