basesurge's Full Review: Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing: On the Cam...
I write this in March of 2007. It's the beginning of serious election time in this country. Everything gets weird during election time. It's the ultimate silly season which these days goes on for more than a year. For a brief (but seemingly endless), stupid moment the goings-on in places like Dixville Notch, New Hampshire become important. Persons who aspire to the leadership of the most powerful nation the world has ever known stand outside factory gates in the bitter cold and try to get their picture taken earnestly hand-shaking and "listening" to people they wouldn't allow in the door of their offices under normal circumstances. (Are there any factories left in New Hampshire any more?, I wonder. Perhaps they have a few mothballed and they open them up every four years for the election rush...)
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, PHD (courtesy of the Universal Life Church) was the dean of something he called Gonzo Journalism. As far as I can explain it, this consists of a sort of immersive approach to reporting which jettisons the traditional pose of impartiality and delivers its news in a manic stream-of-consciousness fashion. Thompson was previously the author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream." and "Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga". The latter was a look inside the Hell's Angels motorcycle, ahem, club during the 1960s and the former a wild and brilliant tale of a drug-soaked trip to Las Vegas to cover some car race or other. The first had a rather "journalistic" tone and the latter was full-bore bloody Gonzo. "F-and-L '72" falls somewhere between.
Sometime in the late 1960s HST was tragically bitten by the Politics bug. He ran for sheriff of his home town of Aspen, Colorado on the Freak Power ticket. His platform included banning cars and public beating of dishonest mescaline dealers. As it does to most who touch it, Politics rather spoiled our present author, "F-and-L '72" was his last really noteworthy work.
To me at least, Politics is opaque and boring, like baseball, but to fanatics there is something positively addictive about it. Every angle and aspect is fit to be examined with unnatural fascination and even glee. It's a game of nuance and numbers... again like baseball. I am not one of those who are fascinated by this stuff, I wish that, like baseball, it was something I could safely ignore. But for insiders and wannabe insiders, there is nothing that brings on a bigger Jones than the smell of power.
HST bit down on this hook full-bore. He was the "National Affairs Desk" for "Rolling Stone" magazine back when that phrase was still ironically humorous. He (and the magazine) made no great secret of their support of the political Left. The scope here is pretty much the entire 1972 presidential election cycle. At that time that encompassed a period of a bit more than a year. There wasn't any serious challenge to Richard Nixon's nomination for re-election to the Presidency so the early story was on the Democrat side. The majority of the book concerns the unlikely rise of Senator George McGovern over old party warhorses Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. McGovern was a unapologetic Leftie, Nixon's people called him the "3-As" candidate: Acid (LSD), Abortion (on demand), and Amnesty (for Vietnam draft dodgers). His major opponents were more old-school boys with more traditional styles and constituencies. There were other candidates spanning the gamut from Shirley Chisholm (the first black-woman to be a remotely serious Presidential candidate) to George Wallace (the old lion of racial segregation), quite a mixed field. HST and his employers may not have been floored by McGovern but he was the only candidate with a chance who they could live with. Humphrey was LBJ's Vice-President and Muskie was a centrist Democrat, neither of these guys had any appeal for RS's hippie audience. For the most part the Hippie hatred for Muskie and Humphrey had to do with their stand on the Vietnam War. "F-and-L '72" therefore is mostly the story of the doomed campaign of George McGovern.
Any US Presidential campaign cycle has two phases, the Primary elections and the General election. The organization of the book mirrors this. The chapters generally are individual months starting with December, 1971 and terminating with Nixon's second inauguration in January of the following year. At the start of things, the author is torn, as many Leftists were in those days, because none of the front-runners were even remotely suitable from their point of view, being simply mirror images of Nixon. Thompson reserves special hatred for Humphrey who the left regarded as LBJ's horse-holder when it came to the hated war. "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible, and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey really is until you've followed him around for a while on the Campaign Trail." Don't see much Political reporting like that these days...
The tone of the whole book is in this mode. While the subject and time-frame of the book doesn't lend itself to the full-bore drug-soaked approach of "F-and-L Las Vegas", things are still rather absurdest and off-center. HST's phantasmagoric description of being accidentally trapped in a highly scripted "Nixon Youth" "spontaneous demonstration" at the Republican convention (he took a wrong turn while looking for an open bar, if memory serves), is worthy of "F-and-L Vegas". However, as the wheels began to drop off the McGovern wagon one-by-one, as the picture of the scope of the Democratic debacle became more clear the outlook of the book becomes more grim, ending with chapter sub-heads like "Nixon Uber Allies". If you're a Leftie, especially the Old-School variety, the kind who actually remembers Nixon, you'll find this depressing, I imagine. (For the record, it's my opinion that a McGovern Presidency would have been a disaster at least on a par with that of Jimmy Carter.)
HST's full-bore, nitro-injected, drug and booze soaked style probably isn't for everyone. Occasionally it can be tough to figure out whether a given event actually happened or not. This book probably isn't the best for folks looking for a primary source for the history of these events.
For all of that, there's a lot of funny stuff here. HST apparently couldn't bring himself to enter the orbit of the hated Humphrey campaign (maybe Humphrey's people knew the score on the RS National Affairs reporter...) so in the early innings of the election the majority of the brickbats are directed at front-runner Muskie. First the accusation of ibogaine addiction. Then the Boo-Hoo. It seems that some gin and mescaline soaked "boo-hoo" somehow "obtained" press credentials for Muskie's campaign train (the "Sunshine Special") in Florida. Credentials in the name of Hunter S. Thompson. I don't think even Muskie's mom could have suppressed a laugh at the description of this drug-soaked nut yanking on the Candidate's pants during his speech and telling him "Shut up and go get me another drink, you old bast@@d!" Wouldn't it be great if something like this were to happen to Al Gore or John Kerry? (Common', you Democrats, you know it would be a scream...especially John Kerry, he was funny all by himself...) Thompson innocently disclaims knowledge of how the boo-hoo got his press credentials but I didn't just fall off the truck, Hunter... There's also the story about when HST shared a ride with Richard Nixon and they rapped about Football... Yes, you read that right and yes, it's true...
HST describes the frequent boredom, occasional drama, background absurdity and B$, and rising lunacy ("Bad craziness" in HST-Speak) of a serious political campaign. This inside day-to-day view is probably the books most useful facets in this day-and-age. The personalities are now long gone for the most part (Including the author who decided to take the Ernest Hemingway escape route from old age a few years ago). Only somebody who remembers the period with nostalgia could really have a fascination with the nuts and bolts of the story. Those unfamiliar with the time may need some sort of reference to know the dramatis personae, I was alive at the time (grade school) but I couldn't tell you who Sam Yorty was (is?).
The text is illustrated by Ralph Steadman who did the illustrations for "F-and-L Vegas" and Pink Floyd's "The Wall" film and album art. I gather he didn't much like Nixon either. There are also contemporary photo illustrations provided with suitable HST-style captions.
The McGovern campaign was the last blast of open Hippie political activity. After the Senator's thorough thumping at the hands of Nixon many politically active hippies "dropped out". The others got buttoned down and began a "Long March Through the Institutions." Some have emerged in the upper ranks today. There is a brief little throw-away story toward the end of the book where HST receives a ride at some airport from a young McGovern staffer named Sandy Berger. (Who would later go on to fame as one of the deft hands in Bill Clinton's national security team, and for stealing Classified from the National Archives.) For all the scope of his failure McGovern's campaign is the foundation of modern American Leftism. He was, in a sense, the Left's Barry Goldwater. If Goldwater paved the way for Regan, McGovern paved the way for Clinton.
How much you'll enjoy reading this book is conditioned by your need for politics, appreciation of history and toleration for HST's Gonzo style. This is a historical record but not really History. It's kind of like reading some-body's diary -- somebody who drinks a lot and drops Acid on a regular basis. You'll have to make the call...
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