Peace to the Good Doctor: RIP Hunter Thompson

Hunter Thompson killed himself yesterday, in Colorado. By gun, of course. A macho signoff for a wild man. I don't second guess suicides. Some people just need to get from this place to the next. I don't think it is a good thing, but I also don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. And I read a lot of Hunter over the last 35 years. He wasn't a confused person. So I respect his decision, though I feel it was a tragic one.

But let us all recall how damn much fun Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream was to read back in the early seventies. I still have the Rolling Stones that it ran in with the Steadman illustrations. It was funny and outrageous and went too far. That's what I liked about it. And I read Thompson for years, particularly his political stuff. I also read, early on, the book about the Hell's Angels that made his reputation. He had guts and good instincts. And he wrote truthfully about a lot of stuff that Americans don't want to hear about.

I wonder what Pat Buchanan is thinking today on the subject? He and Thompson were on opposite sides of the fence but did some serious drinking together. I am no fan of Buchanans, but at least he knows and says that Bush is a disaster for America.

Well, we'll all have a shot of tequila and maybe a toke (if I were still toking that is) for a crazy bastard leftover from the sixties, those days when the culture confronted itself and made itself a little better. Those days are past. Self-deception if the rule of the day. No room for Kesey, Hunter Thompson, Alan Ginsburg. Our writers today are obscurists like David Foster Wallace. Our poets? Well, we don't actually have any poets. None that any average american has ever heard of.

Adios, Hunter. Hope you are finding out many truths right now.