September 13, 2002

5:08 PM

Hunter S. Thompson's Advice to Bush: Quit!Political commentator, sports enthusiast and all around American treasure lets fly. When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.
posted by Ty Webb (40 comments total)

via drudge?
posted by goethean at 5:20 PM on September 13, 2002

If Bush had his way, Thompson would be dead.
If Thompson had his way, Bush would be dead.

Oh yeah. They'll listen to each other. Some time long after hell freezes over.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:25 PM on September 13, 2002

so, um, where's the rest of this article? it just stops. am i missing something?
posted by oog at 5:33 PM on September 13, 2002

As your attorney, I advise you to heed Dr. Gonzo's advice.
posted by TedW at 5:38 PM on September 13, 2002

Heh.

A few additional trenchant observations by HST, which I believe have something to do with the American Dream:

Ronald Reagan: "For the last 20 years he has functioned brilliantly as the flag-waving front man for a gang of fast-buck Southern California profit-takers who no longer need him."

George Bush "He has the instincts of a dung beetle. No living politician can match his talent for soiling himself in public. Bush will seek out filth wherever it lives... and when he finds a new heap he will fall down and wallow crazily in it, making snorting sounds out of his nose and rolling over on his back and kicking his legs up in the air like a wild hog coming to water."

Oral Roberts: "Oral Roberts is a greed-crazed white trash lunatic who should have been hung upside down from a telephone pole on the outskirts of Tulsa 44 years ago before he somehow transmogrified into the money-sucking animal that he became when he discovered television."

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.... Mainly we are dealing with a profoundly degenerate world, a living web of foulness, greed and treachery . . . which is also the biggest real business around and impossible to ignore. You can't get away from TV. It is everywhere. The hog is in the tunnel."

Heaven will be a place where the swine will be sorted out at the gate and sent off like rats, with huge weirs and lumps and puncture wounds all over their bodies-- down the long black chute where ugliness rolls over you every 10 or 16 minutes like waves of boiling asphalt and poison scum, followed by sergeants and lawyers and crooked cops waving rule books; and where nobody laughs and everybody lies and the days drag by like dead animals and the nights are full of whores and junkies clawing at your windows and tax men jamming writs under your door and the screams of the doomed coming up through the air shaft along with white cockroaches and red stringworms full of AIDS and bursts of foul gas with no sunrise and the morning streets full of preachers begging for money and fondling themselves with gangs of fat young boys trailing after them.

posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:45 PM on September 13, 2002

I just knew you were a fan, fold_and_mutilate. You'd have to be inhuman not to be. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:00 PM on September 13, 2002

Thanks, Ty.
posted by lbergstr at 6:01 PM on September 13, 2002

"Hunter S. Thompson's Advice to Bush: Quit!"

That's really not kooky advice at all. There was a certain Republican who won the presidency only after a hotly contested election in, among other states, Florida. He promised that if selected as the winner he would do the gentlemanly thing and step down after his term was up.

Far be it from any of the Bush's be as much a gentleman as William Jennings Bryan.
posted by raaka at 6:13 PM on September 13, 2002

Pardon my interruption, but the hell would/should anyone give a rat's patootie what Hunter S. Thompson thinks, especially about our Commander in Chief?

I'm just sayin...
posted by davidmsc at 6:21 PM on September 13, 2002

HST on Pat Buchanan: "And Buchanan had better hope that God is not really a Budhist like they say, because he will come back in the Next Life as a dung-eating rat in Calcutta, scuttling around the garbage heaps on drenching monsoon nights with only a dim genetic leak to remind him of those days of power and glory when he walked tall like a yeti in Washington ..."

Buchanan introduced HST to Nixon, which spawned what I feel to be HST's finest work. Say what you will about him, the vision he gave us of Nixon crouched in the dark like a spider is one of the most lasting and influential portraits in all of political history.

HST has never been more than a second-rate political commentator, never more than a B-list artist, but when it comes to combining the two he is without peer.

ps. Foldy rocks.
posted by Nicolae Carpathia at 6:23 PM on September 13, 2002

yah.. VIA DRUDGE!
posted by paleocon at 6:49 PM on September 13, 2002

Settle down, Dutchman.
posted by goethean at 7:16 PM on September 13, 2002

" [...] Thompson's writing was equal parts irreverent and without reverence."

Uhhh -- yeah. Would it be asking too much for them to hire a copy editor?
posted by webmutant at 7:27 PM on September 13, 2002

Pardon my interruption, but the hell would/should anyone give a rat's patootie what Hunter S. Thompson thinks, especially about our Commander in Chief?

Ummm... because HST is a brilliant man and GW Bush is ... well ... not.

PPS: I wanna be Foldy when I grow up!
posted by anastasiav at 7:40 PM on September 13, 2002

As Jefferson wanted to be remembered as the author of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps Thompson will want to be remembered as the man who wrote Richard Nixon's obituary.

"... I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum."

Or maybe he'll live to write Bush's.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:59 PM on September 13, 2002

That link is fuggin awesome, oct. thanx.

It's like Thompson is the only one that's enough of a scumbag himself to understand what a scum Nixon really was.
posted by goethean at 8:13 PM on September 13, 2002

Not to sound heartless, I should add that I don't wish ill (or an early obituary) on anyone, not even our beloved and respected comrade President.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:13 PM on September 13, 2002

Webmutant, I think that was a joke to out the stiff-necked.
posted by mblandi at 8:39 PM on September 13, 2002

I'd like to second, for octobersurpise, Allah bless you for such an amazing link.

I am absolutely certain that Mr. Thompson will go to heaven...if I believed in it.
posted by Dantien at 8:51 PM on September 13, 2002

HST is like a completely untalented William Burroughs, who was often untalented enough to begin with. Eventually, you drown in the jaded, cranky bile. The ironic part is that HST has basically turned into a leftist version of Nixon- paranoid, angry, obscene, devoid of poetry and compassion, spent. Sad when idealism sours. Life (and America) are really not as bad as HST and fold_and_mutilate make it seem. Not by far.
posted by evanizer at 9:42 PM on September 13, 2002

Ladies and Gentlemen, this rendition of "Whistling Past The Graveyard" has been brought to you by the inimitable Evanizer! Give him a hand, folks!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:58 PM on September 13, 2002

Give him a hand, folks!

Sorry, I can only spare one finger.
posted by Optamystic at 10:36 PM on September 13, 2002

...I actually do agree to some extent that HST did descend into self-parody and staleness many years ago, although I would argue that he was brilliant at his peak.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:40 PM on September 13, 2002

I agree, HST did have his moment, but has spent much of his subsequent career making his peak seem sort of like an accident. But I suppose we'd all be lucky to have that one moment of brilliant clarity.

Oh, and right back atcha, Optamustic.
posted by evanizer at 10:55 PM on September 13, 2002

Nice one, evanizer. Nothin' personal, I just get cranky when people dis' my man Hunter.
posted by Optamystic at 11:11 PM on September 13, 2002

We're even. Hugs?
posted by evanizer at 11:38 PM on September 13, 2002

C'mere, ya big lug...
posted by Optamystic at 11:45 PM on September 13, 2002

Dylan, whom Thompson first met

Yuck.

And I can't read parts 1 and 2 either. Can someone please cut and paste it or something?
posted by emf at 1:05 AM on September 14, 2002

so, um, where's the rest of this article? it just stops. am i missing something?

You and me both. I was looking for page 2 where the actual interview occurs. Am I being thick?
posted by Summer at 1:49 AM on September 14, 2002

The interview is in the two pop-up links for streaming video partway down the page.
posted by Nicolae Carpathia at 2:11 AM on September 14, 2002

"Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" flat out whups on any other book about campaigning. Ever.

Thompson hasn't become bitter and jaded and past, he was that way in the 60's.

And in one hundred years, when President Bush is a footnote, you'll still be able to identify your compatriots with that one word. And that word, baby, is bats.

Would someone please come up with the money to pay David Foster Wallace to follow the next Presidential campaign around, just so we could maybe have one person write from the inside out? Just one seems to be enough, but we still need the one.

I'd say send Thompson, but the Secret Service, despite their history of good drinking times with him, probably wouldn't let him anywhere near the President.
posted by dglynn at 2:27 AM on September 14, 2002

A lot of people have talked quite badly about Hunter.. that's fine, nothing said against him will diminish his brilliance and importance. Talk to anyone in the journalism industry, ask them to name the top 3 journalists of all time, and 9 times out of 10, HST will be mentioned. He revolutionized the way a story is approached, and his styles permeate the modern media today.

A two bit political commentator? Hardly. He had Nixon pegged when the rest of America was still smiling at him (and voting for him?!)

Is he cranky? No not really, he is still the self-proclaimed King Of Fun, after all... and i imagine he still has fun... but he is also human enough to be concerned for the downward spiral the western world has been on. Simply because he is not a sheep, and is willing to speak out on the War On Freedom, some will label him as a "soured idealist". Sad.
posted by re_verse at 2:29 AM on September 14, 2002

The interview is in the two pop-up links for streaming video partway down the page.

Thanks Nicolae
posted by Summer at 2:31 AM on September 14, 2002

but he is also human enough to be concerned for the downward spiral the western world has been on.

Uhh, what downward spiral the "western" world has been on? I think we've been on quite an upward spiral since Thompson's glory days, but that's just me sitting here in my gay-tolerant, high-speed internet piped, organic food stocked, crime unbeleagured loft here in the capital of the "western" world.

Really, it's just this sort of broad, from-the-sidelines lefty meme-replication that has so beleaguered Thompson's work in the last couple decades. OK, he wrote a good piece about Nixon. Fine. I'll definitely give him that, but that doesn't excuse terrible, lazy work he did (or didn't do) later. I love Picasso, but he sure turned out his share of crud after he figured out how to put the least amount of effort into making Picasso-brand paintings that he knew would rake it in, solely on his reputation.

Simply because he is not a sheep, and is willing to speak out on the War On Freedom, some will label him as a "soured idealist". Sad.

And sad as well this image of the brave non-sheep fighting the good, liberal non-fight. This piece was the work of a sloppy sheep, regardless of said sheep's political leanings. And, judging from MetaFilter and the Internet as a whole, NOT being a sheep is the newest way of being a sheep. Oh well. Call it like you see it.

Baaa.
posted by evanizer at 3:00 AM on September 14, 2002

Evanizer has a point. Thanks for your gratitude evanizer.
posted by yertledaturtle at 3:36 AM on September 14, 2002

Bush should quit before he destroys what evanizer is greatful for.
posted by yertledaturtle at 3:38 AM on September 14, 2002

As long as he pays the piper, evanizer's cool. The ranks of like minded fair weathered leaders will be grateful. Abandon liberalism and embrace the. . .

Oh I can't.
posted by crasspastor at 3:49 AM on September 14, 2002

Thanks for the compelling article crass.
posted by yertledaturtle at 5:25 AM on September 14, 2002

I am surprised that Hunter S. still has two brain cells to rub together, if half of what I have read about his alcohol and chemical consumption is accurate.

The man does have a way with words, but that doesn't mean I particularly think he knows what he is talking about.
posted by konolia at 8:10 AM on September 14, 2002

hunter is ok. I've never seen a better writer who has made "getting an advance" an art form for 30 years.
posted by clavdivs at 12:27 PM on September 14, 2002