Click here for info on the Print Journal (and to purchase your copy)!

On the Rise and Fall of Hunter S. Thompson

By Mark Grueter

---------------------------------------

“Kirby (Jones) doesn’t mind admitting – off the record – that his love of Pure Truth is often tempered by circumstances.” – “The Doctor of Journalism,” Hunter S. Thompson (Hunt, 239)

Part 1

Hunter Thompson didn’t care much for the accepted journalistic standard of ‘off the record’ solicitation of information. In his introduction to Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 he stated his views on the subject:

As far as I was concerned, there was no such thing as “off the record.” The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists… (18).

Kirby Jones (mentioned in the introductory quote) was George McGovern’s press secretary during the presidential campaign of 1972. Thompson’s coverage of that campaign was exceptional, in part, because he obtained access to eager McGovern advisers like Jones and Frank Mankiewicz, along with Nixon flacks like Ray Price and Pat Buchanan, not to mention the candidates themselves. Campaign Trail ’72 is almost exclusively a collection of reports filed by a newly-minted political journalist named Thompson, who was able to gain trust because he was new to the scene – the politicos were largely unaware of or indifferent to his unorthodox journalistic beliefs – and because he was reporting for a relatively unknown sheet called Rolling Stone.

But after he confessed his disbelief in the ‘off the record’ aspect of interviews in a best-selling book - in addition to all of the invective poured on the various candidates contained within that book - what adviser in their right mind would relay anything substantive or juicy to this “Gonzo” journalist? No one. It was a one-shot deal, but it worked. This, in part, explains why Thompson’s journalism peaked in ’72 and could only decline from there.

In the early 70’s Thompson was sent to the nation’s capitol by Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner to cover the ’72 presidential campaign. Wenner cleverly surmised that sending the fearless Thompson into the political world would create a good deal of unpredictable, reader-friendly, chaotic reporting. From the start of this well-documented journey, Thompson put his liberal views up front and made his dislike of politicians known. His early experiences on the trail only reinforced these biases.

Early on Thompson got kicked off the Ed Muskie campaign for giving his press pass to some “gin-crazed Boohoo” who ended up terrorizing Muskie on a train trip down the coast of Florida. In retaliation for having his privileges taken away, Thompson, who never liked “Big Ed” anyway, began to write extensively about how it was rumored that Muskie was addicted to a West African drug called Ibogaine, an upper of sorts that keeps a person awake in a very menacing fashion. Thompson speculated that this was probably the reason why Muskie had been acting so “erratic” of late. Unfortunately, he could not confirm it one way or the other because he had been banned from the campaign. Readers and other reporters took the allegation seriously and questions were put to the Muskie campaign. Denying the charge, Muskie expressed outrage. After the campaign ended, Thompson stated that he never accused Muskie of using Ibogaine. “I said it was a rumor to that effect,” Thompson explained. “I made up the rumor.”

So in a stroke of rhetorical genius, he turned the tables on the politicians he was covering. Fed up with their commonplace lying and deception, he decided to fabricate information about them, since they had been fabricating information about everything else. During one of Thompson’s infamous digressions, he relates a story from the ’68 presidential campaign in which Lyndon Johnson “told his manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.” The campaign manager protests that nobody will believe that the guy’s a “pigfucker.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Thompson claimed that these types of nasty practices and exchanges are regular features of most campaigns. So he appropriated this tactic as a writer, creating a way for journalists to get involved the process. By showing that two can play at that game, Thompson hoped to teach politicians a lesson about lying, demonstrating that what goes around can also come back around to bite you in the ass.

No “serious” journalist could pull off stunts like these, but Thompson got away with it, at least during the ’72 campaign. Why? Well, he didn’t pretend to be anything he was not – he was just a rebellious outsider writing for an upstart, youth culture magazine. He didn’t take himself seriously, unlike most people covering the campaign, who had “reputations” as responsible journalists to uphold. But also, he got away with it because he balanced antics as such with some well-written analysis. And lastly, his pieces for Rolling Stone began generating much fanfare. Thompson evolved into a political junkie himself, becoming as well versed as anyone in the intricacies of the process. (It is important to note, however, that his powerful and unique voice drove the substance of the issues to the fore. By immersing himself in the spectacle of the campaign over an extended period of time, the attitude with which he had always approached life and writing compelled him to comment honestly and insightfully about the campaign.)

So given the fact that Thompson made stuff up, why is it that critics and even McGovern aide Frank Mankiewicz described Thompson’s coverage as “the least accurate yet most truthful” account of the campaign? What does this paradoxical construction mean? It is argued that mixing fact with metaphoric fiction, in the way that Thompson did, captured the realities of the environment better than all the other more “objective” portrayals. The more I researched this assertion, however, the more I wanted to stay away from it. It seemed that it is idle to argue the point one way or the other. First off, one would have had to experience the campaign intimately and also have read all or most of the coverage from it to make any sort of competent judgement. Some people close to that position, typically McGovernites, other lefties and celebrity writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe, saw Thompson’s coverage as the most “truthful” while Republicans, establishment-minded Democrats, and some “intellectuals” saw his coverage as mostly truthless and useless – though perhaps entertaining.

One can nevertheless elucidate the remarkable value of Thompson’s journalism without taking up that particular issue. Perhaps what is most interesting about his achievement is that, for the first time in political journalism, someone wrote about the events surrounding the events as the centerpiece of most of the articles. He reported on what the campaign staff and other journalists were doing during the campaign – the back room negotiations, the hotel and bar room scenes; he revealed the various bets they all had with one another as to who would win each state and by how much. And Thompson was a central participant. At one point, he wrote about how candidate Hubert Humphrey was staying in a room directly above his, speculating openly about whether or not he should go upstairs and savage the fucker, but decides against it lest the Secret Service (the “SS”) pounce on him. You just didn’t read anything else like this anywhere. Thompson put Rolling Stone on the map as the nation’s leading countercultural magazine because of such contemplations. Reading Thompson’s work makes us wish there was a campaign journalist like him out there today. He showed us that politics can be fun and exciting, too.

Thompson was interested in the human and personal aspects of the campaign. He tells one funny anecdote about encountering the eventual Democratic nominee, George McGovern, when the latter was relegated to the single-digits in the opinion polls at the beginning of the campaign. Thompson and a few other bored reporters were in a cafeteria, on the road with some of McGovern’s staff. Thompson looked up from his newspaper to see a strange yet familiar looking man buzzing around the buffet table. The guy was by himself; he refused to turn his back and wouldn’t leave the food. On his way up to grab another beer, Thompson confronted the man and suddenly realized it was The Candidate. Nobody, including his aides, recognized him. “Jesus Christ!” Thompson couldn’t believe some sort of entourage, or at least a couple of handlers hadn’t surrounded McGovern. “This made me very nervous. McGovern was obviously waiting for somebody to greet him,” wrote Thompson. Finally, the journalist broke the proverbial ice and said hello, though worried about visions from their first encounter, a couple months back, when Thompson had subjected McGovern to a two-hour, intoxicated lecture about how he should reorder his campaign along the lines of the Aspen Freak Power Uprising.

Thompson detailed the campaign as a novelist might, which is not surprising considering he had just become fairly well-known for the popular 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, another work that mixed real events with imagined ones. Perhaps the only reason why Vegas is considered a “novel” as opposed to Campaign ’72 is because Thompson gave fictional names to his characters and an altered identity to his cohort and attorney “Dr. Gonzo” in the former. But is that the only thing that separates the two books in relation to “facts?” Pretty much. With these two achievements, Thompson sought – successfully I think – to subvert or at least put into question the categorical distinction between fiction and non-fiction writing.

Let’s take a look at a rare critique of Campaign Trail ‘72; In a pretentious description of the author, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that Thompson produced coverage full of “libelous epithets” and that the writer is “so hostile to politicians that he just cannot bother to understand them.” There is something to this, but it mainly misses the point. This type literal-mindedness fails to appreciate that Thompson’s readers understand that his dramatic descriptions are often exaggerated, and that the objective of his journalism is to break the rules - the same rules that are likely cherished by institutions like Columbia University. And it is not as if he was hostile to all the candidates, as he openly favored McGovern. The dismissive comments reproduced here fail to acknowledge the comedy and irony of Thompson’s work, in his attempt to challenge convention: Libelous epithets? Sure, why not? Thompson was experimenting with writing in an effort to capture the atmosphere of the campaign, and as most pundits agreed, he was largely successful in doing so.

Regardless of what one what ultimately thought of it, Thompson’s coverage, especially within a political context, was completely new and unusual. It was aggressive, highly subjective writing – Thompson never feigned objectivity. He casually intertwined fairly straightforward political reporting with remarks like this about the Muskie campaign: “There was a smell of death about it.” And he complements it all with interesting anecdotes.

Click here for Part Two of this essay.

---------------------------------------

Mark Grueter is pursuing a Masters in Liberal Studies at the Graduate Faculty for Political and Social Sciences. He is the Publications Manager and Web Editor for The Canon, the school's student publication and is a contributor to Stop Smiling, a magazine based in Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.  Grueter may be contacted at grueter@methree.net.

© 2003 Me Three