If Hunter S. Thompson knew one thing, it was this: Both journalism and politics are brutal businesses to be in, and one should swim in their poisoned waters only when there is no other choice. Otherwise, especially if you have any fondness for the notions of comfort and sanity, it’s best just to stay away.

Take journalism, for example. Collecting information and reporting it as truth is not for the faint-hearted, dilettantes or hacks.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, there are those who don’t want to hear the truth. Second, even fewer wish to pay for it. And third? Well, there is no third. Just the first two, outside of the occasional jailing or beating should you find yourself working in a third-rate dictatorship outside of the purview of the mainstream American media. Such as a local state legislature. Or Congress.

Politics is no better, really. The kind of constitution and complete lack of moral fiber it takes to get involved in American politics, whether running for president of the United States or second assistant village clerk, would rule out most politicians as acceptable candidates for career day at the neighborhood elementary school.

That’s because, in order to be successful at the blood sport of American political life, you have to spend your days thinking of ways to convince voters that your opponent fucks barnyard pigs for relaxation and his budget proposals are dangerous as well.

Not exactly the kind of thing that will win the hearts and minds of a people, or a loan on a used car without a co-signer.

Thompson, who took his own life at the age of 67 on Feb. 20 at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., knew all this and more. Thankfully for us, he felt it was his job, between bouts of self-inflicted dementia, late-night rides across the country in oversized Cadillacs and the occasional, non-lethal shotgun-related accident, to let us know, too.

From Richard M. Nixon to George W. Bush, and every president, puffed-up congressman, greedy land developer, unreconstructed racist, cigarette boat salesman, television sports announcer, Washington Post editor, corrupt attorney general, televangelist, Arab arms dealer, coked-up movie producer and attentive bartender in between, Thompson peeled back the layers of what the sun rose up on every day as it slipped past the desolate eastern edge of Maine and made its across the country to the overbuilt hills of California.

And no matter how he looked at it, in his 15 books and countless newspaper columns, magazine articles and rambling interviews, it wasn’t pretty. But if we are to believe him (and there’s really no reason not to), he had no other choice. Throughout his career, he came to perfect the art of what became known as “gonzo journalism,” a heady and often unsettling stew of reportage, memoir and hallucinogenic fantasy built on uncomfortable truths about the essential nature of the American Dream and the dark forces that rule the land—not to mention the insides of our own hearts and minds. It couldn’t have been easy, no matter how facile it all appeared on the page. It couldn’t have been painless, no matter how hearty the joie de vivre or how well the heart took up the challenge of a fistful of late-night pharmaceuticals. And it couldn’t have mattered more.

In Better Than Sex, his 1994 book offering an inside look at the thrilling days of the first campaign victory of President Bill Clinton, Thompson spelled out his complete lack of ability to fend off the hold that the twin sirens of politics and journalism had on his life and work. “Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction,” he wrote.

He came from a long line of American writers who felt it was their job to cast off outmoded rules of journalism the way today one might cast off a fast-food job or last month’s best-selling CD. He was part of a movement—along with writers such as Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese—that became known as the “New Journalism” of the 1970s: writers who, wishing to reinvent a tired craft, inserted themselves into stories, viewed their jobs as equal parts storyteller and reporter, and didn’t mind using a few tools of fiction writing to get their points across.

But perhaps more importantly, Thompson also came out of that group of artists who felt it was equally, if not more, important to cast off outmoded societal restrictions to perfect their craft. He gobbled up massive amounts of illegal substances, joined up with the notorious Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang and ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., on the Freak Power Party’s platform of decriminalizing drugs in the early 1970s. Thompson’s ethos was grounded in the belief that the conformist, big business military-industrial complex that still ruled the country when he started his career was at the core of what was wrong with America, and that the only acceptable response was complete disdain for and avoidance of the rules whenever possible.

And outrage.

As we look back at the 1960s and early 1970s from the viewpoint of 2005, we tend to view it as a period of either blessed-out love-ins or stone-the-crows destruction of cherished institutions.

What we often forget, however, is the sense of righteous anger that came along with the acid rock guitars from the crumpled bodies at the peace demonstrations, the bloodied heads on the college campuses and the maniacal, mocking laughter that came from the halls of Big Business, Congress and the military as they successfully beat back the only chance that would come along in many of our lifetimes to affect real change. Laughter that knew, on some level, that no matter how much the cities burned and campuses erupted and the young men came back from the front lines with fewer limbs than they shipped out with, nothing that really mattered in America was ever in any danger of changing.

Thompson, however, never forgot, and used the memory to fuel a career skewering the pompous politicians, duplicitous celebrities and greedy, second-rate hucksters who managed year after year to make it to the apex of American life.

That’s where the addiction came in, after all. You have to be really, really, angry to write like he did; have to look at the world and not like what you see, and view all your fellow men and their terrible misdeeds with the kind of judgment usually reserved for biblical prophets and kings—the kind that wouldn’t think twice about wiping out an entire race of people for the sins of a few. You have to imagine that you can see past the leaden sound bites and shiny advertising campaigns, out to where the truth resides, out to a place that once existed and might, just might, exist again if the memory of what it means and how much it matters is kept alive. And is told in the pages of the text, and in the living of the life.

Outside of Thompson, few writers in the history of American journalism found a better or more succinct way of getting there. Or even bothered trying.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2005 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Politics and Economy.