MrFrankDavis's Full Review: Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing: On the Cam...
Few elections in American history have been as significant as the 1972 presidential election. The civil rights movement of the 1960’s combined with the changing attitudes towards the Vietnam War created a sense of apathy with American voters. When this apathy was subjected to the Watergate fiasco, this created a mini revolution in American politics, where one third of congress was replaced in the 1974 midterm election.
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 is the story of the 1972 presidential election. Hunter S. Thompson covered the election as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. The book is a collection of his articles on the campaign, along with footnotes and analysis that were edited in, in January of 1973. As this book is a collection of his articles, it is divided into chapters titled after the months of the election year.
Thompson tried a new experimental approach in his coverage of this election. He tried to break down the existing conventions in presidential reporting, and to provide a more realistic picture of the events taking place.
“Covering a presidential campaign is not a hell of a lot different from getting a long term assignment to cover a newly elected District Attorney who made a campaign promise to “crack down on Organized Crime.” In both cases, you find unexpected friends on both sides, and in order to protect them- and to keep them as sources of private information- you wind up knowing a lot of things you can’t print, or which you can only say without even hinting at where they came from.
This was one of the traditional barriers I tried to ignore when I moved to Washington and began covering the ’72 presidential campaign. As far as I was concerned, there was no such thing as “off the record.” (Thompson, pages 17-18.)”
Thompson was able to report things that other reporters were forbidden to by the existing conventions of reporting. He broke down the reverence that reporters held for national offices. This was the foundation for the change in reporting, from the time of FDR, who was never photographed in his wheel chair, to the current standard, where it is not uncommon to see any malaise that president is inflicted with broadcast with Technicolor charts and diagrams depicting the most personal of areas. An example of this change can be seen in his reporting of the attempted assassination of George Wallace, a candidate in the Democratic Primaries, he said, “a lot of us had already entertained the horrifying possibility that this country might be in for another wheelchair Democrat.” (Thompson, page 211)
This bold new approach also served as a crutch to propel the fledgling Rolling Stone magazine into the national spotlight. Thompson has a flair for political analysis. With a vast understanding of the methods of the political wizards and pols that run the political campaigns, he reports with a distinctive style that is unique from others. On occasion he oversimplifies the wheelings and dealings of politicians and reports the gist of their activities.
“ If your [your, being a delegate] price is a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1509 figure [number of delegate votes in the Democratic Primary] that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1400 you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointment . . . but if he’s already up to 1499 he won’t hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S. Supreme Court . . . and if you catch him peaked at 1505 or so, you can squeeze him for almost anything you want. (Thompson, page 263)”
Other reporters began to read Rolling Stone magazine for his coverage. Stewart Alsop of Newsweek is reported to have even quoted Thompson in one of his columns.
There was also a backlash to his new method of reporting. By reporting everything, he began to estrange his sources. Because of this, he had to continually modify his reporting style.
“One of the only humorous moments in the Florida primary campaign, for instance, came when one of [Ed] Muskie’s state campaign managers, Chris Hart, showed up at a meeting with representatives of the other candidates to explain why Big Ed was refusing to take part in a TV debate. “My instructions,” he said, “are that the Senator should never again be put in a situation where he has to think quickly.
By nightfall of that day every journalist in Miami was laughing at Hart’s blunder but nobody published it; and none of the TV reporters ever mentioned it on the air. I didn’t even use it myself, for some reason, although I heard about it in Washington while I was packing to go back to Florida. (Thompson, page 163)”
He did not report this until after his ties to the Muskie campaign were severed beyond repair. His frustration with the campaign is evident throughout. He repeatedly burns bridges, and is forced to continually change direction in his campaign coverage.
One of the most difficult aspects of this book was the way in which it was written. As a collection of articles, it often lacks continuity between chapters. In one chapter he analyzes the events of the month and makes predictions for the next month. The next month, he begins to analyze the new occurrences without completely relating the new information. This is understandable, because he was reporting and analyzing national headlines, as they occurred. There was no need at the time the book was written for him to rehash what all the other reporters reported.
One of the most endearing qualities of the book is the perspective in which it was written. Thompson is a moderate liberal with radical ideals. He speaks for the younger generation of the time, the disillusioned young adults of the early seventies who just recently graduated from being hippies. He gives a voice to all of those who were victims of the excesses of the civil rights movement, and who urgently called for the end of the Vietnam War. And he channels this voice in the most productive method available, politics.
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