Hunter S. Thompson

HST has been on my mind quite a bit lately for a number of reasons.

First off I happened to notice that he was listed among the columnists on Drudge (something I had never noticed before). When I clinked the link - I noticed that HST hadn't posted anything on ESPN.com for about a month (I mentioned this at the time and speculated on the reason for the absence).

After Bill Simmons announced he was returning to ESPN - I got an email from Jim Savage who pointed out that he correctly called an early 2004 return to Page 2 for the Sports Guy. Jim also pointed out that he speculated that one of the existing columnists would have to be let go to make room. I started to wonder if HST was the guy to go.

It seemed to make sense. HST probably is very well paid because he was one of the "names" ESPN used to launch Page 2 (along with David Halberstam and Bill Simmons) but now his productivity is just plain awful. His columns have the feel of being dictated 5 minutes before deadline. I wondered whether HST was the journalistic equivalent of Albert Belle but instead of a big contract and a bad hip HST has a big contract and a sotted head. Maybe ESPN was out from under HST's contract and free to make a bid to bring in the free agent Simmons (is how my reasoning went).

Then James Lileks (a writer I very much respect) mentioned HST in his Daily Bleat on Monday. Lileks gave some examples of what HST's writing has become and then noted:

That’s what this addled has-been was writing last summer. I love much of his early stuff – at his peak, he was the best fiction writer journalism had. But this is college-paper stuff. “Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor.” And our aspirin bottles are hard to open and our dogs are stupid and our fries are too fattening and our parking lots are striped in such a way that today’s wider vehicles fill out the spaces, making it difficult to avoid getting a door ding, and our TV newspeople smile too much and our royalty checks are getting smaller and smaller as the newer ESPN website readers read this stuff and think, whatever, gramps instead of buying the books.

Lileks continued:

Of course in Thompson’s world the Big Darkness is always coming. Every day it doesn’t come means it’ll just be bigger and darker when it finally arrives. He’s the anti-rooster, bitching about the dawn: sure, it worked today, but one of these days the sun won’t come up, and then where will you be? Sitting on your nest popping out eggs like THEY want you to, completely unprepared for the Big Darkness! Which will be huge! And dark!

It would be funny if it was, well, funny, but it’s not even that. It’s just rote spew from the other side of the latter sixties. You had your Hopeful Hippies, the face-painters and daisy-strewers, convinced that human nature and human history could be irrevocably changed if we all held hands, listened to “Imagine” and realized that the war is not the answer. Regardless of the question. But the other side was the sort of dank twitchy nihilism Thompson spouts. It has no lessons, no morals, no hope. Imagine, Winston, that the future consists of a boot pressing on a face. Here’s the worst part, Winston – inside the boot is NIXON’S FOOT.

Thompson has less hope than the Islamists; at least they have an afterlife to look forward to. All we have is a country so rotten and exhausted it’s not worth defending. It never was, of course, but it’s even less defensible now than before.

He can say what he wants. Drink what he wants. Drive where he wants. Do what he wants. He’s done okay in America. And he hates this country. Hates it. This appeals to high school kids and collegiate-aged students getting that first hot eye-crossing hit from the Screw Dad pipe, but it’s rather pathetic in aged moneyed authors. And it would be irrelevant if this same spirit didn't infect on whom Hunter S. had an immense influence. He's the guy who made nihilism hip. He's the guy who taught a generation that the only thing you should believe is this: don't trust anyone who believes anything. He's the patron saint of journalism, whether journalists know it or not.

I read that and I thought Wow! - Lileks nailed him! That's exactly right!

I read HST hoping that I find a spark of his earlier intelligence and wit. Instead I get the drivel that Lileks documents. Normally I just skim over that stuff though (kinda like it was Peter King talking about his daughter's softball team).

Yesterday I noticed that HST had a new column up. I figured I's give it a shot. Then I read these lines and realized what an idiot I had been for giving this old bastard the benefit of the doubt over and over.

Yes, sir. We have taken the bull by the horns on this one, sports fans. These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line. Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport. Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.

Ab Ghraib worse than the holocust? This was Bush/Hitler nonsense sanctioned by a major media outlet at its worst! Where is the outrage that followed Greg Easterbrook's brain fart?

HST is ashamed to carry a US passport and I am ashamed of myself for wasting all the time over the years reading his CRAP. No more. Yesterday was my last HST column.