Bonzo Gonzo

Doing an Opus Here Boss Edited down from 400 pages

“ As recently as 1960, or even 1964, a coalition of party heavies, state conventions, and big-city bosses had chosen the candidate in relatively unviolated privacy, and then presented him to the press to report on. Now the press screened the candidates, usurping the party’s old function. By reporting a man’s political strengths, they made him a front runner; by mentioning his weaknesses and liabilities, they cut him down. [...] The press was no longer simply guessing who might run and who might win; the press was in some way determining these things. [...] But as I walked away from the press trailer that night, slightly shaken, it occurred to me that the networks regarded themselves as omnipotent and sacred institutions, roughly like the Presidency. Maybe the correspondents didn’t, but the corporate heavies did. Later in the year, I would come across the same mammoth PR operation, the same desire to classify the most trivial and worthless information, the same arrogance, and the same mindless lickspittle respect for any higher executive—at the White House, of course. [Boys on the Bus] ”

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved It will be interesting (for me) to see how this plays out.  In my head it's about 400 pages of delightful insight, but of course I seldom have the discipline, or even the ability to do anything longer than 300 words before miasma sets it.  Where was I?  Oh, right, Fear and loathing and NPR.  I've spent the last two three hours (so far) using Mark Judge's essay as a springboard into reflections of something  personal.   Okay, I just got coffee and realized I'm petering out so I have to do this stream of consciousness stopping only for periods and spell checks. “ Thompson seemed just the man to establish a truly “adversary” relationship with the Presidential candidates. In December 1971, he was dispatched to Washington to open a Rolling Stone office and to turn his violent, satirical, epithet-studded style on the men in the Democratic primaries. I also worked for Rolling Stone, and they sent me out to write the serious backup pieces, keep Thompson out of trouble, and carry the bail bond money. [...]     Thompson had loaned his press card to a freak, who had run amuck aboard Muskie’s whistle-stop train, insulting reporters and heckling the candidate when he tried to speak at the final stop in Miami. Many of the reporters, seeing only the badge on the freak’s lapel, had taken him for Hunter S. Thompson of Rolling Stone. In the article, Thompson explained the mistake but revelled in its consequences. The piece was a big hit with the press corps, and they soon began to read him regularly. [Boys on the Bus Notes] ” The quotes from Boys on the Bus (1968) have more to do with Hunter S. Thompson than with author Timothy Crouse because I remembered Hunter as being the author when he in fact only wrote the forward..  I realized, perhaps not for the first time,  that this book (Bus) had more influence on me than any book after Theodore White's Making of the President 1960.   The bullet observation being that, after watching White become rich and famous by dissecting the 1960 election, while they stuck with the five W's, these journalists he traveled with  had stopped being journalists and were now explainers. [Clip]  Along with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Thompson's Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. are the two best investigative books ever written.  I don't have a copy to quote from, but from memory the essence of liberal America was captured in his account of a  soirée held by Manhattan liberals, with the Angels brought in like some exotic furniture.  Here, an Angel, possibly Sonny Barger, wearing his piss, booze and sweat soaked vest, is drinking beer from a long-neck, conversing with a middle aged woman draped in a silk gown and sipping Chablis.  Barger listens politely while she prattles on about the the cause this shindig is nominally being held to support, before finally interrupting her: Do you know what you need? Startled matron: What? Someone to eat your pussy! [ ...  the woman later contacted him]   [397 pages clipped here] But the real epiphany came from understanding what "Gonzo journalism," means.  I never really knew. “ Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the 'polished' edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for a more gritty approach. Use of quotations, sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and profanity is common. ” " style over accuracy"  HFS, I'm a Gonzo Blogger!  I just need to start drinking earlier.