What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?

Last time I logged on I was rambling on about famous authors who were also famous drinkers. I started out with a list of some of the most obvious but I made a glaring omission; what compendium of notoriously alcoholic scribes would be complete without mention of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson.

As I write this, it being Election Day, it’s even more appropriate to pay tribute to the Guru of Gonzo. In rants that ran a wide gamut – exposing everything from the fascist machinations of Tricky Dick Nixon to rabid, incisive attacks on George W’s weak-minded, criminal incumbency – Thompson was never one to shy from a fight. That he was invariably spot on in his observations was just a little icing on the cake; gravy you might say. He saw our country veering into the abyss of unfettered greed and ham-handed country club cronyism long before it became the popular drumbeat of the present day sheep who pontificate on the public stage.

I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I miss the animate idea that Hunter S. Thompson still exists out there in his enclave at Woody Creek. His presence in the world was, to me, similar to the existence of the original Billy Goat Tavern, down on Hubbard Street, or Rosa’s Blues Bar out on Armitage – both storied institutions here in Chicago. I don’t go to either place often enough but I love the thought of them, I’d miss them if they were gone. I miss the fact of Hunter S. Thompson being alive on this earth.

I first read Thompson when I stumbled upon a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the year that I turned eighteen. I was living in a roach infested apartment on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas with three drug addled M.I.T. reprobates who had come seeking relief from the brutal recession that was strangling the northlands. That I’d ridden a Greyhound Bus for twenty-eight dismal hours, straight into the humid clutches of a Texas summer, looking for work, gives you an idea of just how hopeless things were amidst those first, dying spasms of the automobile industries’ demise, a cataclysm that had staggered the small Michigan town where I’d grown up. That that town had put each and every one of their fragile economic eggs into GM’s unsustainable basket gives you an idea of the lack of foresight and imagination that I grew up with; I had to go.

Evidently, things were no better in Massachusetts. Down to my last ten bucks and taking whatever work came my way, I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of one Ed Stolar, his friend Bear, and another drunken affiliate whose name now escapes me. We stumbled upon a camaraderie, as sometimes happens, rented our one bedroom apartment and furnished it with a single kitchen table accompanied by two chairs, and a straggling marijuana plant we coddled in the bedroom where we slept in a haphazard row, in sleeping bags on the floor. One of the lads had Fear and Loathing in his personal effects and I sat, on my scattered days off, beside a languid pool under a blistering Texas sun, guzzling Coors and laughing my ass off. A love affair was born.

After that I read everything that Hunter Thompson wrote. And I can’t help thinking today how much he would have loved all the nonsense that has been this year’s political slapstick. God alone can imagine what caricature he would have made of Sarah Palin’s lipstick smeared pit-bull effigy. Tina Fey’s interpretation is kind; Hunter would have had no mercy. A longtime advocate of weaponry of all calibers Hunter would have hauled out the big guns that Sarah likes to talk about and blasted her into oblivion.

John McCain is a good man, I have no doubt about that, but it’s time to look to something new. No disrespect intended. In fact McCain had my serious consideration until he selected a running mate. It’s hard to beat up on a veteran who’s devoted his life to public service. But the specter of more of Dick Cheney’s big oil money buddies running the show, with their futile and useless refinery platforms stretching out across the Gulf of Mexico would have given Thompson a platform of his own, and Hunter would have been on his way. That would have been an odyssey worth reading.

Hunter’s gone; he blew his head off in the office of his Colorado cabin, when the circumstances of his life got more weird and twisted than even he could bear. These last eight years in the United States have seemed almost unbearably bizarre to me. As we’ve spent countless billions of dollars to invade places we have no place being, killing people – the majority of whom whose only sin was to be born in the wrong place and time – in a fruitless pursuit of an evil minority that would never have bothered us if we’d not interfered with their lives in the first place, it’s time to reassess. It’s quarter past nine on a warm Chicago night and it looks like Barack Obama, a man of African descent, is our next president.

When I was born, even if I don’t remember that era, there were still white and colored designations for drinking fountains in the south. Today a black man has been elected to our nation’s highest office. President Obama probably won’t be able to do half of what he wants to do. And he’ll probably get shut down by selfish, vested interests when he starts to work on the other half – but so what? For a little while the country is infused with optimism. For a small space of time the people are engaged. Will that be enough? Of course not, but it’s a start.

Hunter S. Thompson died on the 20th of February in 2005. His ashes were fired from a cannon over the town of Aspen, Colorado and mingled with the crisp, mountain air. But in his time he took personally the small insults that we all live with every day; he never let the indignities that are fostered upon us go without notice. And even if his methods were sometimes crude, they were never boring or without passion. If there is one thing that we should all aspire to it is to make our passions a part of our lives. There is always the anticipation that new possibilities lie just around every corner, that hope is always a part of every moment of despair.

I hope that the President elect, Obama, can bring a sense of unity back to a country deeply divided. And I hope that there will be someone like Hunter Thompson to call him on it if his bullshit starts to overrun his ass. That’s the thing that keeps me optimistic, keeps me writing. The idea that there’s always a chance to make things better, whether it’s in the narrow focus of my life or the huge stage of what affects us all. And if at the end of the day, I have a few loved ones standing by to shoot my sorry ashes against the horizon – well that’s not a bad way to let the final curtain fall. It’s what Hunter would do.

It’s ten after ten and all the major polls have just declared for Barack Obama. For President of the United States. It’s our future and it’s an historic night. Let’s Roll.

— Ric Hess, Nov 4, 11:49 AM

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