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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
Polemical Hacks, Bastardized Gonzo,
and the Death Of Democracy - Page 5
By Eric Kaufmann
Around the same time, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson roared through the Nevada desert, heading towards Las Vegas; a man on a mission, he set about consuming copious quantities of mind-altering substances, all the while tearing down established journalistic conventions in his journey to document the heart of the American dream. Thompson explains:
I don't get any satisfaction from out of the old traditional journalist's view - "I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view." Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon. How can you be objective about Clinton ? ("Gonzo Journalism")
Thompson would survive the bad vibrations of Vegas to publish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream , and to continue the development of Gonzo journalism, which by his own account requires "the talent of a master journalist, the eye of an artist, and the heavy balls of an actor" (Othitis 2). It is recognizable not only by violence, drugs, guns, and subject matter far removed from the original story, but by Thompson's realization that "one could learn just as much about a place by interviewing its drunks and addicts as one would be talking to high standing citizens" (Othitis 9). The outrageous and nearly unbelievable accounts quickly found an audience, and, with a little luck, the standards of acceptable journalism were ruined forever. The new pamphleteers have attempted to capitalize on this shift, but they are clearly not cut from the same cloth as Thompson, as they are simply slaves to ideology, nursing a desperate hope that they will find a receptive audience to agree with their published claims of objectivity in which "logic, evidence, and reason are conspicuously absent" (Wolfe 12).
Thompson, however, was no precursor to the pamphleteer. First of all, he has never feigned objectivity as the pamphleteers do, he has never portrayed his opinions as researched fact, and he does not compromise his personal opinions for ideology. Even when traveling with and supporting George McGovern's presidential campaign he attacked aspects of McGovern's campaigning which he found distasteful (Othitis 1). Furthermore, his coverage of news is not from a journalist's perspective, but from Hunter S. Thompson's perspective, covering the story only when it happens to intersect with his own activities. And although he claimed that "four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," and endorsed John Kerry as a "good man with a brave heart," it was not out of ideological conviction, but because of his personal involvement. Here, Thompson explains his history with, and affinity for, Kerry:
I had a quick little rendezvous with [John Kerry] on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen , Colorado . . . .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. ("Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004")