Thompson Nixon Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson Nixon

Hunter S. Thompson vs. Richard M. Nixon

The notion of journalism as a means to simply reporting information is a myth. Today especially, when access to information is the pathway to knowledge, the ability to withhold it represents a great and dangerous power. For nearly forty years, Hunter S. Thompson rebelled against and exploited this truth, using his seat as an influential journalist not just to observe realities but indeed, to apply a persuasive position on the subject. Perhaps this is most clearly evidenced in his literary treatment of one of history's most intriguing figure and, some might argue, Thompson's arch nemesis; Richard Nixon. The embattled, lambasted and loathed president would function as nothing short of a remarkable literary villain in a canon of work through which Thompson genuinely approached public opinion on Nixon as something of a goal. We find this through an evaluation of a literary collection which compiles some of the most important writings of his time, with a focus on Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. The first half of Thompson's career, which unfolded to the backdrop of a time when American idealism and self-image suffered their most catastrophic breakdowns, is captured in the Great Shark Hunt. Published in 1979, the collection of highlights from his career is unique when compared to mainstream journalism on the presidency. Thompson's writings serve both as informational and literary, distinguishing themselves from the temporal nature of traditional 'reporting' by engaging in the timeless pursuit of absolute truth and the encouragement of the public to accept his version of these events. Within the wide range of topics that Thompson has covered, the writer's personalization of historical events, his absurd hyper-real perspective and his gritty, unflinching portrayal of places and people imbue the work with an almost endless relevance to human events and American identity, particularly in the way that said writings capture Nixon, the events which seemed to revolve on his leadership and the implications to an America already in the throes of discontent. The outcome of Thompson's early 1970s work on Nixon is a decisive vision of the president as paranoid, corrupt and conniving that, whether as a result of Thompson's work or simply in concert with it, would become a collective history regard on the subject, shared by the public, political figures and historians alike.

In many ways, the early 1970s were a gradual comedown from the idealism of the1960's. By 1971, the decay of the economy and the racial segregation that dominated the urban landscape were producing cultural examples of discontent from a multitude of sources. The civil rights movement, the artistic fertility, the philosophical discourse and the political activism of the 1960's had given way to a sense of anger and despair by the decade's close. This is a sensation that resonates throughout Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Herein, there are prominent signifiers of the themes which suggest a distinction between the two decades. The idealism which preceded and informed the works collected there within is supplanted by desperation, evident in the common themes of rebellion against accepted social norms, articulation of mainstream society's corruption and dependency on anti-establishment agents for effecting meaningful change.

In his political estimation of the nation, Thompson's analyses are as much governed by his understanding of the system as by his own opinion. Basically a cardinal principle of the gonzo brand journalism of which he was the godfather, the work that he produced was culled from the genuine reaches of his belief system. In "Presenting: the Richard Nixon Doll," he evaluates the president accordingly by observing that "for years I've regarded his very existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless;

couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machines." (185)

This is a perspective on Nixon which is not just funny but also serves as a fiery rhetorical way of expressing the sense of betrayal shared amongst Americans over the distortion which had occupied their central leaders. In revealing truth and expressing philosophical impulses, Thompson, accomplishes dual goals here, not simply enunciating his own opinion but utilizing it to deliver a biographical sketch of the man that would be his primary muse (to be grotesquely ironic) in literature. In Thompson's journalism, Nixon is not simply a historical figure but a target for all of the grievances to be filed with the establishment. An almost mythically bad and complex character, the Nixon of Thompson's work is the perfectly amoral counterbalance to the sharply honed principle of the author himself.

Likewise, it helps to establish Nixon fittingly as a lightning rod for the issues which were then held as primary in the failures of America as a whole to realize its manifold promise.

Beyond simply establishing his work as a product of its times, such as current and observant journalism must be, the underlying ethicality of Thompson's slants against Nixon provokes a more lasting resonance that even carries over to his only overtly political work.

This is true and in plain evidence in one of his earliest pieces, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved," where all the excess, violence and hedonism of the American Dream comes to clash with the principled revolution burgeoning at that time. More than occurring at the scene of this Good 'Ol Boy Party, such conflict rips through the author himself as he describes a place of wanton disregard where he makes himself at home. The place to which he offers some illumination is physically the Derby but more notably, America. Like all of his work, there is a distinctly and uncompromisingly patriotic cynicism that accompanies he and his British traveling partner through the aggressive provinciality of backwoods America, depicting a time and place suspended motionless against a time of momentous change. The peripheral portrayal of a whole nation is carried home by Thompson's personal reflection, which helps the reader make connections out of the manic strands which compose his surprisingly coherent theses.

In "Kentucky Derby," the author infers a relationship between the social water-treading in the south and the greed which had come to fully characterize the place in question. Speaking casually on the premise of the Derby, Thompson reflects on his position; "Why not. Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon Is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, 'if I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market.' And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide." (27) as a literary device and as a function of journalism, this personal reflection is valuable to understanding the larger purpose of his writing as a weapon against misinformation. The above quoted contradiction is a good demonstration of Thompson's succinctness in exposing hypocrisy a few steps ahead of the system's ultimate recognition of Nixon's trespasses.

This motive has been central in forging Thompson as a figure of historical significance. His dutiful disclosure of the truth beneath the spin has rendered his work a history parallel to but dramatically different in perspective from the academically maintained version of American history. In "Fear and Loathing in Washington," Thompson again targets Nixon for his ineptitude, delivering a state of the union for 1972 that serves as a real historical record. As Thompson noted of Nixon, "he is now in his fifth year as president, and when he goes on TV to explain himself he is facing an audience of 50 to 60 million who can't afford steaks or even hamburger in their supermarkets, who can't buy gasoline for their cars, who are paying 15 and 20% interest rates for bank loans, and who are being told now that there many not be enough fuel oil to heat their homes through the coming winter." (277)

Ultimately, the use of Nixon as a central target for his grievances would be Thompson's wholesale form of representation for the myriad disaffected groups in American. As a racial theme for instance, this is present in Thompson's work as well. In his chapter about Louisville, Kentucky, a Southern City with Northern Problems, the journalist evaluates America's progress to that point in 1968. Here, he notes that "the Negro has won a few crucial battles, but instead of making the breakthrough he expected, he has come up against segregation's second front, where the problems are not mobs and unjust laws but customs and traditions." (Thompson, 40) at the center of America's struggle between progress and institutionalized ways of thinking is a culture pitched between conservatism and social evolution. Throughout his work, and in this context especially, Thompson suggests that such dramatic change as is needed regarding the racial imbalance in America must be achieved through grass-roots action.

The empathy which comes through here is not fabricated either. Thompson's very approach in "Fear and Loathing," and another cornerstone to the gonzo movement, is the concept of full immersion into his own stories. The long-suffering tone that shrouds all of his work is the repercussion of Thompson's journalism-by-personal-experience, an ongoing quest to find America in himself and those around him. For better and worse, his writing illustrates that he succeeded in doing so.

The rebellion of the 1960's, guided as it was by an optimistic emphasis on peace, love and cultural freedom, would take on a far more militant imperative as the decade wound to a close. Thompson takes this transition head on, highlighting the violence which had invaded an insular world of counter-cultural ideology. The hostility of the mainstream, which the activist culture had rallied so hard to reject, had infected its thinking and its approach to action. Thompson seems to suggest that this is a necessary change, pointing to the radicalism of the Black Panthers and the intensified anti-war segment as twin indicators that the stakes had been raised by a generation of ineffective resistance to Nixon's imposition.

In many ways, the embittered tone which is taken toward the Nixon presidency is underscored by the cultural failures of the essentially overwhelmed and outgunned movement. Thompson captures the rifts forming within the counterculture in his 1971 essay, Memoirs of a Wretched Weekend in Washington, where an anti-Nixon protest erupted into its own dividing lines. He illustrates the increasingly ugly state of the rebellion, observing that "the 'counter inaugural' parade had just ended and some of the marchers had decided to finish the show by raping the American flag. Other marchers protested, and soon the two factions were slugging it out." (Thompson, 177)

The splinters in the resistance belie in Thompson's work a transition to more aggressive forms of civil disobedience. And even more than that, he demonstrates that his perspective on Nixon, divided by a sense of hostility and apprehension, is a nuance that divided many of those who had sought to construct a meaningful coalition against Nixon. This would help to underlie the notion strung throughout Thompson's writing concerning the essential deadlock which would help to deliver a publicly repugnant candidate to the office.

Namely, the divides which Thompson discusses in the movement against Nixon demonstrates somewhat prophetically the victory which Nixon would somehow enjoy in the face of such pressure and unpopularity. The Thompson text provides something of a forewarning about the impending victory and simultaneously seems to prefigure the malaise and uncertainty which would be provoked by Watergate and the resignation. History shows that the galvanized movements which may have seized Nixon's failure as an opportunity for progress in the so-called Great Society were, in Thompson's estimation, splintered to individual irrelevance and philosophical hypocrisy by the strain of Nixon's terms.