Hunter S. Thompson, George W. Bush and the Free Republic

[indigobusiness]

Last month, after the Drudge Report linked to a recent Hunter S. Thompson article http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/040518 an editor at ESPN asked that an inflammatory statement be removed. "Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did," Thompson’s sentence read, before eventually being scrubbed.

snip

And while the musings of zealots on an Internet message board might not amount to a hill of beans in this world, the fact that similar diversionary tactics are used on talk radio, TV and in Op-ed pages everywhere is problematic. Before the war, you most undoubtedly recall, discussion and debate were squelched through attacking people’s patriotism, a mode that’s become less popular now that many of the Bush administration’s deceptions have been unearthed. Nevertheless, the national dialogue is as sickly as ever, and the following ploys guarantee that it won't recover anytime soon:

1. Attack the messenger

Exhibit A: "maybe Hunter is an anti-semite." -- Free Republic post #8
Exhibit B: " . . this is just an opportunity for these absurd products of the zeitgeist -- women clearly in the grip of the delusion that they know something, have some policy, and wisdom not given to the rest of us to know -- to grab the spotlight. again, and repeat, again, the same tripe before a national audience." -- Wall Street Journal pundit Dorothy Rabinowitz on the 9/11 widows
2. Curse the venue

Exhibit A: "Disney-ESPN saw fit to give him a column to spew his hate." -- Free Republic post #19
Exhibit B: "For all that, what makes Krugman so devastating and dangerous is the fact he operates from the pages of America's "newspaper of record." -- Donald Luskin, National Review Online
3. Disparage the messenger’s credibility

Exhibit A: "His credibility left with his brain cells" -- Free Republic Post #23
Exhibit B: "People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid." -- Paul Zahn, CNN , Sept. 2002.
4. Speculate on the messenger’s hidden agenda (without offering substantial proof)

Exhibit A: "This business of equating merely abusive American practices with blood thirsty genocidal murder commited by the Nazis does nothing but obscure the reality of what the Nazis did. People who do that on a regular basis can be fairly said to be holocaust deniers. Hunter probably has some anti-semitic friends in Europe he's laying down cover for." -- Free Republic post #8
Exhibit B: " Moyers and his friends have betrayed the citizens of this country in their battle to advance an anti-capitalist, anti-American agenda. . ." -- Front Page Magazine, March 2003
5. Accuse the messenger of bias (without offering substantial proof)

Exhibit A: "He somehow could find NOTHING to criticize in 8 years of Clinton. He re-discovered his political voice only after Jan 2001, when the Clintons were out of the WH." -- Free Republic Post # 23
Exhibit B: "The failure of chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to inform the U.N. Security Council of the discovery of an Iraqi drone with a 24-foot wingspan, during his oral presentation yesterday, has outraged U.S. officials and cast serious doubt about his objectivity." -- Newsmax, March 2003
6. Try to intimidate the messenger

Exhibit A: "Hunter can join his friend Garry "Mr. Jane Pauley" Trudeau on the sh*t list. . . If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list..." -- Free Republic post #33
Exhibit B: "Inexplicably, more than 1,000 theaters have indicated they will proudly broadcast what The Guardian calls an "anti-war/anti-Bush" film. . . HOW TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST MICHAEL MOORE: "Move America Forward . . . has compiled contact information for the leading movie executives in the business. If you don’t want to see them promoting anti-American propaganda then tell these executives so directly." -- Newsmax, June, 2004 (*Ties between "Move America Forward" and GOP activists have since been uncovered and some movie theater owners are reportedly receiving death threats.)
7. Question the messenger’s sanity (a variation on the pre-war theme of the questioning people’s patriotism):

Exhibit A: " is so warped he is interesting but I wouldn't take anything he said seriously. This is bat country you know!!!" -- Free Republic post -#26
Exhibit B: "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again." -- Charles Krauthammer, FOX News "Special Report" May 26, 2004 (*While commenting on Howard Dean in Dec. 2003, Krauthammer also suggested "it’s time to check the thorazine supplies," and in Dec, 2002 declared, "I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera" but nevertheless decided that Al Gore "could use a little help").
Not surprisingly, conservative pundits have long perpetuated the "loony left" theme, while the folks at the Free Republic have also chimed in on the latest attacks against Vice President Gore.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand. Just how drug addled and out of touch is Hunter S. Thompson? Sifting through past columns, it’s easy to see why Freepers don’t care for him. Far from being incoherent and wrong, he’s often quite lucid and right. And, even when he’s not, as an ESPN editor concluded at the start of one column: "The opinions voiced below are those of the infamous Doctor Thompson and are absolutely not the views of this network or the editors. That is free journalism."

And so, in the interest of free journalism, free speech and a truly free republic (and as a reminder that nothing is ever as absolute as strident right wingers try to make seem) the following is a brief retrospective of some of Dr. Thompson’s more recent hits:

‘The Fix is In,’ Nov. 27, 2000

"There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. . .Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory. . . Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV. The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's."
‘Fear & Loathing in America,’ Sept.12, 2001

"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives."
"It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. . . We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows"?
"This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now."
‘When War Drums Roll,’ Sept. 17, 2001


"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear -- fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."
‘Love in a Time of War,’ March 31, 2003

snip

"What the hell is going on here? How could this once-proud nation have changed so much, so drastically, in only a little more than two years. In what seems like the blink of an eye, this George Bush has brought us from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war."
‘Big Darkness,’ July 22, 2003

"But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. . . The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it."
‘The Nation's Capital,’ July 29, 2003

"The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me. . . The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it."
‘Nightmare in La-La-Land,’ August 17, 2003

2004, Maureen Farrell



http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/06/far04020.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. kick n/t

[dweller]

2. well, someone has done a tidy job

spellchecking the Freep quotes.

all i have to say, rock on Gonzo.
dp

[indigobusiness]

7. They were thorough n/t

http://sludgereport.blogspot.com/

[mike_c]

3. "like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in....

...its mouth."

HST is the best.

[seventhson]

4. everyone at du should read this

nt

[Journeyman]

5. Thompson's observations on the present madness. . .

that Farrell collects at the end of the article are quite perceptive.

[indigobusiness]

6. Searingly so

As is this:

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

[indigobusiness]

8. more HST

Big Darkness Soon Come...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bush family reeks of fraud and bad karma. But even worse than our wretched, gibbling president are the cowardly whores in Hollywood who are currently smearing film stars and music people like Johnny Depp by calling them unpatriotic Americans who righteously question the wisdom of invading a whole nation of Islam -- 1.8 billion worshipers -- which is a dangerously stupid idea. Disagreeing with Donald Rumsfeld about bombing anybody who gets in our way is not a crime in this country. It is a wise and honorable idea that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin risked their lives for. These thieves in the White House are so crazy with greed and power, and they are causing so much drastic damage to the world we live in, that they are the ones who should be put on trial for treason.
---Hunter S. Thompson---

[indigobusiness]

9. new book

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/040714

t is no accident that this column is titled "Hey, Rube." That is what's called my "Standing Head" in the arcane jargon of Journalism, and it will not change anytime soon.


"Hey Rube" is an old-timey phrase, coined in the merciless culture of the traveling carnival gangs that roamed from town to town in the early 20th century. Every stop on the circuit was just another chance to fleece a crowd of free-spending rubes, suckers, hicks, yokels, johns, fish, marks, bums, losers, day traders in Portland, fools who buy diamonds from gypsies, and anyone else over the age of none in this country who still believes in his heart that all cops are honest and would never lie in a courtroom.

These people are everywhere. They are legion, soon to be a majority; and 10,000 more are being born every day. P.T. Barnum, the circus man, explained the real secret of his commercial success by repeating his now-famous motto, "There's a sucker born every minute." His job was to keep them amused. Which he did -- with a zeal that has never been equaled in the history of American show business. Barnum knew exactly what people wanted: freaks, clowns and wild animals. The Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town only once a year, and those days were marked as sacred holidays on the John Deere calendars of every rube in America. Those dates were special; many schools were closed when the circus came to town, and not every student returned when the public frenzy was over. "Running away with the circus" was the dream of every schoolboy and the nightmare of every mother with a bored and beautiful daughter.



We all worry about losing our fine and beautiful daughters to some filthy circus tramp who catches her in a weak moment; and sometimes, it actually happens.

* * * * *



Anita woke me up at noon with a whoop and a squeal that shocked me. "Look what DHL just delivered," she giggled, showing me a small box of brightly-colored hardcover books. "This is our final reward! I love it! Finally! Our favorite columns are all bound into a book! George Bush isn't going to like this one, is he?"