the death of Gonzo

by gonzo is technically enhanced journalism Mon Feb 21, 2005 16:44

went on a pilgrimage in 1990 to the woody creek tavern outside aspen hoping to meet king gonzo. he wasn't there.

i had the pleasure later on the same trip to be represented in a court of law by one of his local lawyers

he bought a few pitchers of margeritas for the gang with the tiny fee i was able to offer and told us a couple of stories about defending king gonzo

his latest case had been defending king gonzo on an illegal discharge of firearms charge

he'd been on one of the local golf courses having a bad round

he lost his patience and teed up, produced a double barrel shotgun from his golfbag and let the ball have it with both barrels

he did his research for FALILV with a bunch of the just coming on the market minaturised battery powered tape recorders

one in every pocket and plenty of hidden mics and tapes

you didn't think he took notes on paper or remembered all that shit did you?

by eeekkkk Mon Feb 21, 2005 16:57

"The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.

The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it. "

HST JULY 2003

by redjade Mon Feb 21, 2005 16:57

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the
whole world--a nation of bullies and bastards who
would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not
just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with
hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and
that is how history will judge us . . . No redeeming
social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or
we'll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who
among us can be happy and proud of having this
innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine?
These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and
fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali
locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for
all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the
American character. They are the racists and hate
mongers among us--they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss
down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it
or not. Fuck them.

-Hunter S. Thompson
http://amsam.org/2005/02/hst.html

by eeekkk Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:13

.

by gonzo is . . . . Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:22

.

by from an american fan somewhere Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:28

i remember seeing him serendipitously on letterman in the mid 1980s. he was doing columns for the SF Examiner (will hearst had begged him to do some regular writing; i still have tons of clips from those days).

HST came out, completely shitfaced, holding a glass. he proceeded to make a mockery of the interview, in true HST style. at which point, letterman says "you know, some people publicly worry that you might have a drinking problem."

to which HST jutted that glass out into the camera's foreground and announced, 'well, it's right here in front of us, now, isn't it?"

by redjade Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:36

I just want to be the first on the internet to say this.

The CIA/Mossad/Bilderbergers allied with the Medien Cartel and a number of others did it.

HST would have wanted it that way.

no need to kill yourself. asshole.

by jeff Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:37

Dr. Gonzo gets a respectful eulogy here on a otherwise conservative, Bush supporting site.

This guy was a legend, no one could pigeonhole him. When conservatives liked him, they called him libertarian. When they didn't, they called him a drug fiend, immoral, you get the picture.

The left loved him, but his endorsement of the second amendment made them nervous.

Another legend lost. I only hope the 21st century does not create a situation where great minds like Gonzos are stifled...

Rest Well, my friend...

by redjade Mon Feb 21, 2005 17:40

An interview with australian broadcaster

http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/hunter_s_thompson-911.mp3

by barry Mon Feb 21, 2005 20:34

i'm pissed, pissed that he's dead, he's been too quiet for too long...

Really pissed if this is true.


"politics is the art of controling your environment"
I only quoted that today

of all the recent threads, let this one live ;)

by Bottle Blonde Tue Feb 22, 2005 01:01 bb at peroxide dot ie

is also short for narcissist. You should read what Sonny Barger - a real Hell's Angel - has to say about this narcissist wimp who hid behind drugs, booze and most of all, guns. Guns, guns, guns. Yes, he was the Countess markievicz of his day who, without having the benefit of a gun to hand, crumbled when confronted by real men. Jerry Garcia meets Saddam Hussein in drag.

What did he give us? Hundreds of crap headlines in student newspapers the world over - "Fear and Loathing at USI COngress in Wexford", "Fear and Loathing at Justin Barrett Debate". Good riddance. How appropriate he topped himself on President's Day in the USA. The "counterculture" is being countered by culture every day. Bush wins, gay marriage rolls back, God eliminates Gonzo - you are all going to lose....

by redjade Tue Feb 22, 2005 01:18

It was in the heat of deadline that gonzo journalism was born while he was writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine, he recounted years later in an interview in Playboy magazine.

"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."

[....]

He went on to become a counter cultural hero with books and articles that skewered America's hypocrisy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/national/21hunter.html

-- -- --

He was quoted as saying 9/11 had caused a "nationwide nervous breakdown" and "let the Bush crowd loot the country and savage American democracy", according to an interview published by salon.com in February 2003.

Thompson, who regarded himself as a patriot, said civil liberties had been compromised for what he called "the illusion of security".

That, he said was "a disaster of unthinkable proportions" and "part of the downward spiral of dumbness" he believed was plaguing the country.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/67D36E3F-9D1E-4E17-8938-5624B812897C.htm

-- -- --

My hero died tonight. He was a flawed man, a maniac, in so many ways the antithesis of what a journalist is supposed to be. Worst of all, he told the truth. There is now one less warrior on this planet filled with Guckert clones, drones who get fed shit and regurgitate it wholesale for the masses because that is what we are trained to eat.

Rest in peace, Hunter. Thank you for everything. We're going to deal with this Gannon/Guckert/Whoever person, and then move down the line and deal with the rest of the whores. You died on the eve of the birth of a new journalism, populist in nature, beholden to the truth and thanking the Google gods every step of the way. I wish you had stuck around to see it, but I'll tell you all about it when we meet at that clearing at the end of the path.

Until then...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022105Z.shtml

by redjade Tue Feb 22, 2005 14:34

Thompson’s personal life was not as grounded as his work, but as Dr. Gonzo often observed, via Dr. Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”  In the end, it seems, the pain caught up with him out on Owl Farm. Like a Chekhov story, the firearms he favored during a turbulent life figured in the manner of his untimely exit.

http://jerrybrown.typepad.com/jerry/2005/02/rip_hunter_s_th.html

by jeff Tue Feb 22, 2005 17:16

you wrote

"Bush wins, gay marriage rolls back, God eliminates Gonzo - you are all going to lose...."

Cheer up. Whilre it is different to be the only one who wants to walk on Gonzo's grave, I would remind you that history repeats itself. In fact, one might say that Bush winning, gay marriage rolling back, etc, this is all the last gasp of conservatism. Look at history, the liberal 20s, the wretched thirties, then the 40s fight against fascism turned into the McCarthy fifties, but then the sixties and seventies happened.

History repeats itself because it is written by fickle human kind. If we were to believe that we were going to lose, then we'd cease to function. Let the con-servatives have their present merry jig, they'll soon find it is lonely at the top. Assert oneself always. No-one shall lose, struggle is eternal. Just because the Gonzo has been demised only means there is now more room for other, newer, better gonzos. Long live crap student headlines.May Gonzo take his place amongst the Gods.

Your boss at work wants you to believe you will lose-control is a handy mechanism for profits, nothing personal like.

The only alternative is death i.e; becoming a sensible, carbon copy of a good grade, perfectionist machine of a young Fianna Fail member. Truth or no truth, I don't want that.

And who cares what Sonny Barger said about HS Thompson. Barger was a scumbag of the lowest order, and Thompson made that clear about the Hells Angels. I, for one, am not going to be dissuaded about Mr Gonzo just because some illliterate criminal says I should.

Hate is a positive thing. Keep on hating. Spit on anyone who tells you you are going to lose. Especially young conservatives...

by redjade Wed Feb 23, 2005 13:45

His style of excess and self-indulgence (and I’m talking about his writing, mostly) is out-of-fashion now, not just a result of the conservatism of the mainstream but the ultra-democratic aesthetic prejudices on the web.  Fuck ‘em all.  I’m going to go reread Fear and Loathing…

http://counterculturethroughtheages.com/blog/index.php?p=79

by redjade Wed Feb 23, 2005 13:50

Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1109007855114&has-player=false

Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, I had a quick little rendezvous with him on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. As we rode to the event, I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

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.

by jeff Wed Feb 23, 2005 15:13

Conservatives are still scum-the respectful eulogy penned by one has been removed from the U.S Neo-con website, right nation, whose url I gave earlier. Some people are just stinks.

But that might be a good thing-why let those scumbags claim the memory of a genius? Let them keep their pseudo-intellectual saps, with their " intellectual" " foundationds ", and " institutes", etc.. Gimps.

by mise Sat Feb 26, 2005 16:32

Gonzo thinks 911 is an inside job

http://www.libertythink.com/2005/02/hunter-s-thompson-thought-911-inside.html

What Gonzo thinks of Bush:

"Let's face it, the yo-yo president of the U.S.A. knows nothing. He is a dunce. He does what he is told to do, says what he is told to say, poses the way he is told to pose. He is a fool."

http://www.hempfarm.org/Papers/Kingdom_of_Fear.html

"The Bush administration is a heap of Nazi shit. Bullshit. Yeah, you can put it that way. I don't know what your audience is ready for. What kind of target."

http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=287


Gonzo shoots himself while chatting to wife on phone

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/25/thompsondeath.wife.ap/index.html

by king jonah Sun Feb 27, 2005 15:59

i was very sad when i heard about HST,
but as a friend pointed out to me the other night, it's kind of like Hunter S. Thompson saying to God:

"FUCK OFF, I QUIT!!!"

by toneore Tue Mar 01, 2005 05:32 toneore at eircom dot net

Get over it. This circus act may have once been relevant, but he had little more credibility than John Lydon or Kevin Myers has. Your blessed "Hunter" was a cartoon punk who ended up writing about GOLF for espn.com.

These overwrought, indiscriminate nature of the various Thompson obituaries and appreciations are mirror images of his own work. In a Feb. 2001 ESPN.com column typical of his later oeuvre, he compared the shock of US race car driver Dale Earnhardt's accidental death with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Thompson writes of Earnhardt's fatal road accident: "It seemed to send a message, an urgent warning signal that something with a meaning beyond the sum of its parts had gone Wrong & would go Wrong again if something big wasn't cured -- not just in racing, but in the machinery of the American nation."

Then he wrote of George Bush on election day: "His eyes are wild and his voice is shrill and he is acting more and more like a doomed animal on its way to the meat-grinder."

Wrong Hunter. Very Wrong. And you "guaranteed"
that that only would John Kerry win (he referred to Kerry as "JFK" at one point, but that the Democrats would win both houses of Congress.

John Burks, former managing editor of Rolling Stone referred to Thompson's "escalating bull -- " that took "sweeping liberties with -- and often liberating himself from -- reality." Such "pretend journalism," as Burks described it, is exemplified by notorious fakers Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, who were drummed out of the profession while Thompson is being anointed for sainthood. Instead, we should piss whiskey on his grave.

Burks concludes, Thompson "played his readers for suckers." But, as we all know, there are not only Chumps for Chomsky on indymedia.ie, but there are plenty of Gonzo Gobshites too...

by redjade Tue Mar 01, 2005 21:45

"I think he made a conscious decision that he had an incredible run of 67 years, lived the way he wanted to, and wasn't going to suffer the indignities of old age," Brinkley said in a telephone interview from Aspen. "He was not going to let anybody dictate how he was going to die

[....]

The family is looking into whether Thompson's cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said.

"The optimal, best-case scenario is the ashes will be shot out of a cannon," he said.

by irish cultural attache in san francisco Wed Mar 02, 2005 03:18 irishculturalattache at gmail dot com

At least Rotten had the sense of humour to take the piss out of himself on "I'm a Celebrity...", whereas the po-faced sanctimony of the likes of Thompson precluded any kind of wit at all. What a loser. Welcome to the Stupid Club, Bozo.

by eeekkkk Wed Mar 02, 2005 23:17

:-()

by redjade Thu Mar 03, 2005 14:17

yeah, but I was the first to suggest one - don't forget that! ;-)

the conspiracy meme started at indymedia.ie and then went globo-virus....

Feb 21 2005, 4:36pm
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68704#comment100959

by redjade Wed Mar 09, 2005 19:19

"I've been exploding Duke's head as far back as 1985," he wrote. "I also had a rocket burst out of his head, a flock of bats, and during Duke's run for president, Mini-D, a tiny self that conducted Duke's business, even gave speeches when the candidate was incapacitated."

After he'd established his original Thompson parody, Trudeau noted, he soon moved his story line away from the writer's real life. This was in part because sticking to Thompson's personal narrative "would have been very limiting." But it was also because Thompson himself "seemed so aggrieved by the character."

As well he might have.

For Trudeau's Duke, in the end, is a character far more sinister than the self-created, self-destructive gonzo artist who shot himself last month.

Duke has a "predatory nature," the cartoonist explained. Once parachuted into a hot spot like Haiti, Kuwait, Panama or Iraq, his "relentless opportunism" will always take over. He stands for "a certain kind of mad unconditionality. Duke is never ambivalent, never in personal conflict. His take is resolutely binary: Is this in my self-interest or not? It's a kind of weird state of grace."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18756-2005Mar8.html

---

the strip...
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20050308

by mick - DIMC Tue Mar 21, 2006 17:59 darwin

http://dimc.axxs.org/index.php?action=default&featurevi...ew=54

http://dimc.axxs.org/index.php?action=default&featurevi...ew=56

darwin is being harassed by liars and assorted fuckwits