Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
Chino Cherokee
Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
He's covered US politics for decades and knows both the President and the
man who could take his place. And, for Hunter S Thompson, this week's
election boils down to a simple choice - between a 'pathetic fascist stooge'
and a 'smart and brave, decent man'
By Robert Chalmers
01 November 2004
The first time I noticed George W Bush," Hunter Thompson tells me, "was when
he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a
guy who had come to sell..." Thompson, sitting at his desk in a faded-green
dressing-gown, stares down at a plate of untouched food: Danish pastries
which were warm half an hour ago, smothered in red jam and melted ice-cream.
"Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say
that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from
all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with
this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes."
I've driven up to Owl Farm, the writer's ranch at Woody Creek, just outside
Aspen, Colorado, with the artist Ralph Steadman, his long-standing friend
and collaborator. It's 2pm - four hours before Dr Thompson usually rises -
but we've woken him early, and laid out before him are his usual
requirements for breakfast: orange juice, coffee, smouldering hash pipe,
Dunhill cigarettes, a half-pint tumbler of Chivas Regal on ice, and a small
black bowl filled with what - given certain lively exchanges I had with
Thompson after the last time I wrote about him - I can only describe as a
substance that some might assume to be cocaine.
"I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in
the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle
liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a
writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he
offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was
insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to
him. But when he passed out in my bathtub," Thompson adds, "then I noticed
him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have
him taken away."
Thompson, 67, who is a friend of Benicio Del Toro, Bob Dylan and Johnny
Depp, and the only one of that illustrious quartet who openly uses a
spittoon, clears his throat and expectorates into the receptacle below his
desk. His chair is surrounded by work spaces on three sides, like a
mission-control centre. Across the living-room, the huge television set,
which is never turned off, is showing highlights of a football game from
Seattle. Stuck to the screen is a yellowed piece of paper that reads: "No
music + Bad TV = Bad Mood + No Pages."
"I have a friend who was with George W Bush at Yale," Thompson recalls.
"Bush branded him with a red-hot coat hanger."
"Why?"
"Some fraternity thing. He still has the scar. (The victim, a respected
television journalist, later confirms this story. "I couldn't swear that
George did the branding himself," he tells me, "because he'd made me put a
pillowcase over my head for eight hours beforehand. But he was the one in
charge of the ceremony. I was on the front page of Yale News.")
"It is just incredible to me," Thompson goes on, taking a slug of
Glenfiddich straight from the bottle, "that Bush ever got into Yale. Well,
actually, it isn't. Some are enrolled at birth, practically. He was one.
There will be others. He is an average farm hand."
"Which may be why so many Americans feel they can relate to him..."
"Exactly."
"All this was 30 years ago. What's your opinion of Bush today?"
Thompson gets to his feet unsteadily and reaches towards a bookshelf. He
catches a shot glass with his elbow and it smashes on the floor.
"God-damn."
He is examining not, as I'd expected, the political section of his vast
library, but the shelves devoted to legal studies. He retrieves a large
volume entitled Black's Law Dictionary, opens it, and begins to read.
"'Imbecility: a more or less advanced feebleness of the intellectual
faculties' - Are you with me so far? 'That weakness of mind which, without
depriving the person entirely of his reason, leaves only the faculty of
conceiving the most common and ordinary ideas. It varies in degree from
merely excessive folly to an almost total vacuity of mind.' That's our boy."
The sub-headings under "Insanity" in Black's, Thompson explains, "define the
legal, not the medical, condition of madness. I chose Imbecility just now
but there is also... let's see now... 'Derangement: manifested by delusions,
incapacity to reason, or by uncontrollable impulses...' Shit, yes. 'In law,
such a want of intelligence as prevents a man from comprehending the nature
and consequences of his acts.'"
"Ronald Reagan..." Steadman ventures.
"Well," Thompson says, "he was out of his mind. He had mentally departed
even before his second term, when he was wandering around, clapping himself.
Although I always had a soft spot for him, because he started as a
sportswriter and his wife gave the best head in Hollywood."
Thompson returns to his dictionary.
"Dipsomania... Pyromania... George knows all about those... Mania Fanatica:
'a form of insanity characterised by a morbid state of religious feeling...'
Need I go on?"
Some would argue that Dr Thompson himself is a case study in at least one of
the above conditions. His title is a self-awarded doctorate in Gonzo
journalism, the term he invented to describe his drug-fuelled, often sublime
pieces in which abuse and profanity are as common as love and redemption in
the Gospel of St John. In what remains his best-known work, Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas, first published in Rolling Stone 33 years ago,
brilliantly enlivened by Steadman's illustrations, the writer took the
Wodehousian bachelor's blithe and adventurous attitude to alcohol and
extended it to LSD and munitions.
Hunter S Thompson is not regarded as one of world journalism's easier
subjects.
"Interviewing Hunter," Loren Jenkins [Newsweek bureau chief in Saigon,
currently based in Baghdad] told me, "was the most excruciating experience
of my life."
It's a combination of things, really: the ubiquitous firearms and narcotics;
his nocturnal regime and sudden mood swings. I first encountered him in the
early 1990s when I was working for another newspaper which had decided to
send him to join the Royal press corps for the Highland Games. I met
Thompson at Gatwick, at 6am. He lit his hash pipe while we were still in
sight of the customs hall and insisted on being driven to Smithfield Market
for whisky. When we reached his hotel, he barricaded himself in his suite
for 36 hours, then fled back to Aspen in the middle of the night. His
subsequent faxes referred to me as an "evil treacherous dingbat" and a
"weird limey freak".
"In a strange way," says Ralph Steadman, "insults are Hunter's way of
articulating affection."
Going up the driveway to his ranch - before you see the wandering peacocks
and the Cadillac convertible commemorated in his writing as the Red Shark -
you pass incrementally threatening signs such as "Keep Out" and "Danger
Zone", culminating in: "Guns in Constant Use".
Last time I was here with Steadman, in 1996, Thompson was on trial for
drink-driving and, at one point, told the judge that his arresting officer
had been "lurking under a bridge, like a troll". He now takes the powder
from his black bowl orally; a strategy forced on him, some believe, by
damage to his nasal septum. Over the years he has been acquitted on charges
including possession of drugs and explosives. In July 2000, he shot his then
assistant Deborah Fuller and told reporters she'd been wounded because he
had "mistaken her for a bear". He was not prosecuted. Thompson tosses me the
empty shotgun cartridge, which he's signed and dated.
"I've always believed," he says, "that anybody with a lifestyle as flagrant
as mine should have a spotless criminal record, if only for reasons of
karma."
While few would claim that Thompson represents US journalism's Voice of
Record, his vigorous social life has somehow not diminished his prominence
as a political commentator. If anything, the persistence and ferocity of his
self-destructive impulses have bestowed on him an almost fictional status,
and a special licence to berate Washington's élite. The regular work he puts
out, a column for sports channel ESPN - though undeniably madder and less
predictable even than his early writing - still has its brilliance. Thompson
at his best remains one of the greatest voices of satire in the language.
Hunter S Thompson was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His family envisaged a
future involving Harvard or Yale but his aberrant behaviour became
uncontrollable following the sudden death of his father when Hunter was 14.
Harshly jailed at 18 for his part in a robbery, he took a writing course in
prison, where the notions of literary fame and revenge on decent society
seem to have fused in his mind. He worked as a sportswriter until his taste
for drink and drugs drew him permanently into the bizarre parallel universe
his work now inhabits. He filed his first election report in 1964, and
retains excellent political connections both locally - Bob Braudis, the
highly popular Sheriff of Aspen, is one of his best friends - and
nationally.
When John Kerry came to Aspen in June, he appointed Thompson his designated
host, gave him pride of place in his motorcade, and bought three copies of
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Thompson's outstanding account
of Nixon's re-election (viciously illustrated by Steadman). Kerry then made
a speech in which he declared that he was considering making Hunter S
Thompson his Vice President.
Should Thompson ever accept this offer, punctuality may be a problem. On
this trip, I've been staying two miles up the road with Steadman, and this
is our fourth attempt at seeing him. The first time we came down, two days
ago, we arrived just as Anita Bejmuk, an engaging and remarkably
well-balanced woman who married Thompson in April 2003, was climbing into
her car. Anita (31) told us Thompson was asleep, and set off to spend a week
at her mother's, because her husband's recent behaviour had been especially
appalling.
This afternoon, when we arrived for the latest appointment he'd given us,
Tracey, the housekeeper, told us Thompson was in bed, at which a muffled
roar came from the bedroom. A few minutes later Thompson emerged, with an
awkward, loping gait. He underwent spinal surgery last year, after which he
spent weeks in a wheelchair. By December 2003, having just regained the use
of his legs, he went to Honolulu where he fell in his hotel room, fracturing
his left leg.
"It happened around 4am," Thompson recalls. "I needed more ice for my drink.
I executed a sharp turn at the mini-bar, and slipped. The break was so
savage - everything shattered."
His friend Sean Penn sent a private jet, at a cost of $27,000, to fly him
back to Colorado.
The original operation was for stenosis (compressed nerves in the lower
back), "one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. I have had
to learn to walk again twice," Thompson says, "in a single year."
He still appears frail; at the same time he is more coherent than I have
ever seen him. His manner is welcoming and - to use that least Thompsonesque
of adjectives - genial. He gives us green tea, and beer.
To my surprise, given the widespread view of Thompson as a busted flush, he
constructs a persuasive case against the Iraq War, arguing that the policy
of regime change was driven by major US corporations such as Halliburton,
which needed a new "legitimate" government to secure oil contracts. He goes
on to deliver an incisive critique of the recent 918-page report from the
chief arms inspector of the CIA.
Watching the debates between Bush and Kerry, I tell him, I was struck by
something lacking in this President that was present in others, namely a
mean level of competence. Bush's televised performances reminded me of what
Sid Gillman, former coach of the San Diego Chargers, said of one of his
players. "He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear," Gillman declared.
"Of course there are lots of other words he doesn't know the meaning of
either."
Watching Bush face Kerry, Thompson says, "I almost felt sorry for him until
I heard somebody call him 'Mr President', and then I felt ashamed. You know
what? I find myself talking almost with nostalgia about Nixon," adds
Thompson who, as a reporter, established a curiously affable relationship
with the late president.
"Was Nixon somebody you could engage with, on any level?"
"On one level - football. Nixon understood football. Politically he was
adroit, and a sound analyst. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White
House now, Richard Nixon was a liberal. And that's saying something, when I
think what I wrote in his obituary."
(His Rolling Stone piece, from June 1994, departed from the benevolent tone
favoured by most Nixon obituarists. Under the headline "Notes on the Passing
Of An American Monster", Thompson described him as "a liar, a quitter and a
bastard; a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal". He was a man, he went
on, "who could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.
Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honourable, and we
developed a keen sense of fraternity. My friends hate Nixon. My mother hates
Nixon. My son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us
together. Nixon laughed when I told him this. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I too
am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.'")
"I never thought," Thompson says, "that I would ever see a president worse
than Richard Nixon. But he is the worst president in American history, this
one. Because he is the dumbest. And because he has destroyed, in four years,
what it took two centuries to build up. He has taken this country from a
prosperous nation at peace to a dead-broke nation at war. We are losing this
stupid, fraudulent war in Iraq and every nation in the world despises us,
except for a handful of corrupt Brits, like that simpering little whore,
Tony Blair."
Thompson gives Steadman a mischievous look.
"Blair is Ralph's boy. Ralph is going to vote for Blair again."
"I can't wait," the artist replies.
The two men's relationship is a curious one. The quietly spoken Welshman
contributes generosity, patience and good humour. Thompson responds with
theatrical abuse that * sometimes crosses over into real meanness. And yet
if, like Steadman, you produce your best work when anguished, Thompson's is
a useful number to have in your phone book.
On one of their first assignments together, in 1970 at the America's Cup
Race in Newport, Rhode Island, for Scanlan's magazine, Thompson gave his
illustrator psilocybin - a hallucinogen similar to LSD - then rowed him out
to the American yacht under cover of darkness, demanding that Steadman spray
the words "Fuck the Pope" on the hull. When their small boat was spotted,
Thompson (who has a reputation for igniting marine flares in situations of
no obvious nautical emergency - he once detonated one in a Manhattan
pizzeria) sent a distress rocket across the harbour, setting fire to two
yachts. When Steadman arrived in the baggage hall at New York's La Guardia
airport the next day, he was hallucinating, with no shirt, and barefoot.
("I'd lost my own shoes in the ocean," Thompson wrote. "I told Ralph that it
was common for people to wander round New York barefoot. How could he know?
He was British. I told him the really fastidious ones wore black socks.
Maybe he didn't believe me, but by then I had his shoes on my feet.")
What has sustained their tempestuous 35-year relationship is their deep
respect for each other as artists, and a shared love of full-blooded
subversion that has found new inspiration in George W Bush.
"I have objected to our politicians for years," Steadman tells Thompson,
"and so have you. They keep replacing their troops with fresh blood, and
they seek to marginalise us by pretending that we are too old to care.
America's true weakness," he adds, "is that it has been found wallowing in a
pit of isolationist complacency."
This election is unusual, Steadman argues, in that, whereas the focus of
campaigns has traditionally been domestic, the US is now umbilically
connected, through Iraq, to the wider world.
"This is the single most important democratic vote of my lifetime," Thompson
says. "I have no doubt that John Kerry will win the election. Whether he
will become President is another matter."
I ask if he's referring to the well-documented electoral fraud in Florida
and elsewhere.
"Absolutely. That will happen again. The last time I spoke to Kerry, I
talked to him about that, and I also warned him about..."
Thompson places a Dunhill in his cigarette-holder, and lights it.
"About?"
"My impression was that Kerry's staff were a little naļve about the
possibility of his being assassinated."
"Are you serious?"
"Absolutely. His life is in danger. I believe that. I'm not sure that he
does."
"But you've told him."
"I told him about just how mean these fuckers in the White House are. And
cheap mean. The Medicis, for instance, were mean as well. But the Medicis
were smart."
Thompson says he first encountered the Democratic leader when they were both
involved in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War movement.
"I met John Kerry in a riot on that elegant little street in front of the
White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a
dead, bleeding rat over a spiked fence on to the White House lawn."
The year was 1971.
"I understood right away that Kerry was on the right side," he explains. "He
is decent, he is smart and he is brave. Kerry would be a good person to have
next to you in a fight. Can you imagine being in a fight and depending on
George W Bush to help you? John Kerry is a hero to me. George Bush is
chicken shit."
The phone rings, as it has done every few minutes; Thompson's only response
to previous voice messages has been muttered obscenities.
This call is from Laila Nabulsi, producer of Terry Gilliam's 1997 film of
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Thompson's partner for five years in the
early 1980s. The writer has had a number of long-standing relationships with
tolerant women, notably his first wife Sandy, the mother of his son Juan, a
computer analyst who lives nearby. Nabulsi's message says she's assembling
the guest list for a party to launch a proposed film of The Curse of Lono
(the book, a surreal fable inspired by the Hawaiian Marathon, which Hunter
and Steadman produced in 1984, is about to be republished). Thompson takes
her call, on speakerphone.
"We want Jack Nicholson," Laila says, "obviously."
"Yeah," grunts Thompson.
"Tom Cruise?"
"Well... OK. He's kind of a geeky little bastard but I guess it doesn't
matter if I like him."
"I invited Harry Dean," she adds. "And John Cusack. And Lou Reed."
The list goes on: Benicio, Bob [Dylan] and Steve [Buscemi].
"I want some women," Hunter says.
"Nicole Kidman?"
"OK. She's nice."
"Give me a name," he asks me.
I suggest Jordan Zevon, the son of the late songwriter Warren Zevon, who
wrote songs such as "Lawyers Guns and Money", and "Things to Do in Denver
When You're Dead". Zevon, who died of lung cancer last year, was a close
friend of Thompson, who wrote the lyrics for one of his last songs, "You're
a Whole Different Person When You're Scared".
"Laila," he says. "Put down Zevon's kids, Jordan and Ariel."
He solicits suggestions from Steadman, but then the artist makes the mistake
of proposing a name while Thompson is thinking.
"Aaaaaargh shit, Godamnit Ralph will you shut the fuck up," Thompson
screams, in a voice which is genuinely unnerving. He picks up a lock knife
and throws it into his wooden desk, where it lodges, vibrating.
There's a pause. Thompson winds up his phone conversation.
Then he turns to Steadman and delivers something I've never seen him attempt
before, in person or in print - an apology.
"I'm sorry I shouted, Ralph," he says. "Forgive me. I spoke out of turn."
I wouldn't like to suggest that Thompson has reformed, or lost his
knockabout sense of fun: at one point during a Hallowe'en party he threw at
his house the night after this interview, I looked up and noticed him
sitting quietly behind his desk, while the rest of us were unwinding with
his ample collection of hand guns, political masks and grotesque wigs.
Thompson had half an eye on the late-night erotic movie, while polishing his
ceremonial sword with impregnated cotton wipes from a tin which bore the
brand-name: Never Dull.
And yet friends agree that something - his marriage to Anita, perhaps, or
the acute physical suffering he's endured over the past year - seems to have
humanised him.
In the days I'd spend with Steadman and his wife Anna, waiting to interview
Thompson, I speak to many of the writer's friends in Aspen, including
Deborah Fuller (who insists that Thompson was indeed firing at a bear when
he hit her: "I just came out of the door at the wrong moment") and Sheriff
Bob Braudis, a likeable giant of a man, who helped look after the writer
following his spinal operation.
"You have to understand that Hunter has hit bottom twice in the past year,"
Braudis explains. "First the surgery, then the fall in Hawaii."
Dr Thompson was not, the sheriff recalls, a model patient.
"I visited him after the spinal operation, at this clinic in Vail, Colorado.
Hunter said: 'Get me out, Bob. I need a drink.' I asked the doctor if this
was clinically advisable. She said: 'No. Not usually. But in his case my
professional advice is - go.' Hunter's last words to her, as I wheeled him
out towards the bar, were: 'Can you get me some trousers like yours?'"
Periodically, during the stand-off which precedes any meeting with Thompson,
the writer would give some small sign of encouragement, such as a rambling
5am phone message, making an appointment he would break. One morning a
bottle of wine appears on Steadman's kitchen table. Next to it is a volume
the artist has asked him to sign, inscribed: "Here's your book, Ralph. Now
stick it up your ass."
"You see?" Steadman says. "You can't get more affectionate than that."
Talking to Thompson and Steadman, I sense the two men are aware that this
meeting could be their last. There's almost a sentimental tone to their
exchanges even though they are, as ever, in disagreement about copyright and
money. Steadman is particularly exercised about a number of his paintings
which Thompson appears to have acquired without going through some of the
usual preliminaries, such as paying for them.
We've talked for over three hours when Thompson suggests "firing up the
Shark" and going out for "a beer".
"I am not getting in that car," Steadman says. "Anna has forbidden me to
ride in it."
"Why?" Thompson asks.
"Because," Steadman replies, "the last time I got in it, you nearly killed
us both."
"Oh..." Thompson replies. "You mean... that truck... Oh, yeah."
"My wife," Steadman adds, "says she'd prefer not to take a dead body back to
Maidstone."
Thompson once wrote that, "Me and William Burroughs are the only two left -
the last unrepentant dope fiends." Now Burroughs is gone and, in the last
couple of years, Thompson has lost other allies including the magisterial
writer George Plimpton, and the great Warren Zevon. Does he feel mortality
closing in on him?
"Absolutely. But I've always had that feeling, ever since I was 18. The
worst thing about those deaths you mention is that I miss those two people.
I miss them a great deal."
I tell him that, now and again, I find myself in an idle moment marvelling
at the thought that Hunter S Thompson is still alive: has he had that
experience?
"Often. I never figured I would live past 30."
"How do you explain it?"
"Well," he says, with a conspiratorial look. "Here is something that nobody
knows. Ralph - get that book please. The one in the plastic bag."
Steadman fetches the package from the shelves, and unwraps The Reluctant
Surgeon, a Biography of Nigel John Hunter: "medical genius and great
enquirer of Dr Johnson's England".
"Read that, Ralph," he says, pointing to the inside flap.
"A gruff Scotsman," Steadman begins, "Hunter has been described as the most
important naturalist between Aristotle and Darwin, the Shakespeare of
medicine and the greatest man the British ever produced. He was the first to
trace the lymphatic system. He performed the first human artificial
insemination. He was the greatest collector of anatomical specimens in
history. He prescribed the orthopaedic shoe that allowed Lord Byron to
walk."
Carefully inscribed on the title page, in Thompson's writing, are the words:
"My mother, Lucille Hunter Ray, was a descendant of John Hunter. Mrs
Thompson has visited John Hunter's grave in Westminster Abbey."
"What are you saying, exactly?
"Well, I guess that might be the secret of my survival," Thompson replies.
"Good genes."
Thompson is probably not a man John Kerry would like to have at his side on
a daily basis. A few days after this interview, he arrived for a
book-signing in Los Angeles on the shoulder of Benicio Del Toro - stumbling,
incapable and screaming abuse about George W Bush.
And yet, when people read about this presidential campaign, decades from
now, it will be Thompson's crazed polemic, which at times approaches
Restoration satire in its brutal vulgarity, that will be remembered, ahead
of the orthodox accounts of a Tom Brokaw or an Andrew Marr.
What immediate message would the Doctor deliver, if he could address the US
electorate?
"I would tell them that, if George W Bush wins again, the United States
faces utter disaster. That the question facing voters is no longer whether
or not George W Bush is a pathetic fascist stooge. The question is whether -
Bush having already demonstrated himself to be a fascist stooge - the
American people like it that way, and see that as their future.
"If this president is re-elected," he adds, "we are facing the total death
of the American Dream as I know it, and I have spent a lot of time knowing
it. I would tell them that if this gang of criminals get in once more, we
will be in the position of a family who have sent the Hell's Angels written
invitations to their Thanksgiving party.
"Such a decision represents a serious error of judgment." Thompson laughs,
good-naturedly. "Because certain people never leave. Consequently I would
urge them..." He pauses, his voice soft, measured and utterly serious, "to
vote out this baffled little creep, on November 2."
BigBird
"Chino Cherokee" <tif...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com...
wrong group
Jimmy The Greek
"Chino Cherokee" <tifo...@OVEcomcast.net> wrote in message
news:Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com...
>
>"We are losing this stupid, fraudulent war in Iraq and every nation in the
world despises us,
>except for a handful of corrupt Brits, like that simpering little whore,
>Tony Blair."
Yup, that Hunter is a man with few equals...
James Connors
Ahoy Robert. Been to the polls yet?
--
Cheerie-vederci . . .
j a m e s
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Chino Cherokee
"James Connors" <galiana...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2uqfcmF...@uni-berlin.de...
> Chino Cherokee wrote:
>
> Ahoy Robert. Been to the polls yet?
SI!
Voted early so as to avoid the Diebold machines...
-Bob
Chino Cherokee
"BigBird" <big...@int.net> wrote in message
news:2uq3njF...@uni-berlin.de...
nice snip
Damon Scott Hynes
news:Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com...
I used to buy everything HST put out. Only when I realized I was buying the
same book three times...
And ESPN fired Limbaugh but kept Thompson?
--
Democrats suck. Republicans swallow.
http://home.att.net/~damonhynes/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMarnyStanierAppreciationSociety/
Harold Adrian Russell Philby
<tifo...@comcast.net> wrote:
>"James Connors" <galiana...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> Ahoy Robert. Been to the polls yet?
>SI!
>Voted early so as to avoid the Diebold machines...
A lot of good that did.
Bobby Fischler
> He's covered US politics for decades and knows both the President and the
> man who could take his place. And, for Hunter S Thompson, this week's
Thompson dopehead ravings snipped! Maybe he will move to France with
his fellow alkie and doper pal Johnny Dipp.
Hey Bob it must really suck being you today. Just remember - four
more years. Keep posting this anti-Bush ravings from loonies like
Thompson, it is worth a few laughs.
Just to let you know, I volunteered to help kick Moveon.org and
Kerry's ass here in Florida. I probably would not have spent the time
except the Moveon.org/Michael Moore zombies were just such an easy
target.
It was priceless watching the liberal Democrats being totally stunned
at how bad we stomped them here if Florida. The look on the faces of
the liberal news announcers faces when Bush took Florida. They knew
Kerry was doomed at that point. Sorry to gloat but you started by
posting Thopson incoherent drivel.
Sweet!
The Shadow
news:ae681794.04110...@posting.google.com:
> "Chino Cherokee" <tifo...@OVEcomcast.net> wrote in message
> news:<Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com>...
>> Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
>> He's covered US politics for decades and knows both the President and
>> the man who could take his place. And, for Hunter S Thompson, this
>> week's
>
> Thompson dopehead ravings snipped! Maybe he will move to France with
> his fellow alkie and doper pal Johnny Dipp.
Don't forget Rush....
>
> Hey Bob it must really suck being you today. Just remember - four
> more years.
*You'll* have to remember it
Keep posting this anti-Bush ravings from loonies like
> Thompson, it is worth a few laughs.
>
> Just to let you know, I volunteered to help kick Moveon.org and
> Kerry's ass here in Florida. I probably would not have spent the time
> except the Moveon.org/Michael Moore zombies were just such an easy
> target.
So are you
>
> It was priceless watching the liberal Democrats being totally stunned
> at how bad we stomped them here if Florida. The look on the faces of
> the liberal news announcers faces when Bush took Florida. They knew
> Kerry was doomed at that point. Sorry to gloat but you started by
> posting Thopson incoherent drivel.
More coherent than yours for sure....
>
> Sweet!
Dude!
James Connors
> A lot of good that did.
Au contraire. Knowing someone disagrees with you does not remove the
possibility of debate. It, simply, postpones it.
Mark Davis
<tifo...@comcast.net> wrote:
>"BigBird" <big...@int.net> wrote in message
>news:2uq3njF...@uni-berlin.de...
>> "Chino Cherokee" <tif...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com...
>
>nice snip
>
Ditto.
Dumbass.
But, seriously, thanks for posting that. It was a great article. And I
meant Dumbass in the nicest possible way.
Bobby Fischler
> franc...@yahoo.co.nz (Bobby Fischler) wrote in
> news:ae681794.04110...@posting.google.com:
>
> > "Chino Cherokee" <tifo...@OVEcomcast.net> wrote in message
> > news:<Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com>...
> >> Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
> >> He's covered US politics for decades and knows both the President and
> >> the man who could take his place. And, for Hunter S Thompson, this
> >> week's
> >
> > Thompson dopehead ravings snipped! Maybe he will move to France with
> > his fellow alkie and doper pal Johnny Dipp.
>
> Don't forget Rush....
>
> >
> > Hey Bob it must really suck being you today. Just remember - four
> > more years.
>
> *You'll* have to remember it
>
> Keep posting this anti-Bush ravings from loonies like
> > Thompson, it is worth a few laughs.
> >
> > Just to let you know, I volunteered to help kick Moveon.org and
> > Kerry's ass here in Florida. I probably would not have spent the time
> > except the Moveon.org/Michael Moore zombies were just such an easy
> > target.
>
> So are you
We won - you lost. Nice.
> >
> > It was priceless watching the liberal Democrats being totally stunned
> > at how bad we stomped them here if Florida. The look on the faces of
> > the liberal news announcers faces when Bush took Florida. They knew
> > Kerry was doomed at that point. Sorry to gloat but you started by
> > posting Thopson incoherent drivel.
>
> More coherent than yours for sure....
>
> >
> > Sweet!
>
> Dude!
Are you the dumb old guy in Central Florida who lost his roof because
you HAD a shingle roof? LOL!
The Shadow
Well Frank, I think we all lost. To all the Republicans here, congrats
on the victory. You made this bed, now let's see what it winds up being
like to sleep in it. This is going to be interesting, in the Chinese
sense of that word.
The sum of all assets held in the US (government, private, corporate,
institutional) is about $50 trillion. The sum of all debts in the US
(government, private, corporate, institutional) is about $70 trillion, of
which ten per cent ($7 trillion) is your buddy George Bush's doings.
This problem will be under the supervision of a Harvard MBA. With a C
average.
GOOD LUCK!
BTW, You are such an easy target it is hard to imagine how much easier
you will be in the next four years.
>
>> >
>> > It was priceless watching the liberal Democrats being totally
>> > stunned at how bad we stomped them here if Florida. The look on the
>> > faces of the liberal news announcers faces when Bush took Florida.
>> > They knew Kerry was doomed at that point. Sorry to gloat but you
>> > started by posting Thopson incoherent drivel.
>>
>> More coherent than yours for sure....
>>
>> >
>> > Sweet!
>>
>> Dude!
>
> Are you the dumb old guy in Central Florida who lost his roof because
> you HAD a shingle roof? LOL!
>
I don't understand why you think that has any effect on me. To have an
idiot who has never built his own home talk about the proper way to do it
is about like, well...Bush talking about success.
Bud
news:1099979287.gYNtL2p9cAmM+ubICWBYPQ@teranews:
> In article <Lf6dnYW2VaM...@giganews.com>,
> "Chino Cherokee" <tifo...@OVEcomcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
>> He's covered US politics for decades and knows both the President and
>> the man who could take his place. And, for Hunter S Thompson, this
>> week's election boils down to a simple choice
<snip the sWeeneyisms>
I can't believe:
a) HST still possesses the requisite functioning brain cells to string a
complete sentence together
b) anyone continues to take the man seriously
Back in the early 70s when I was doing the same type drugs in the same
quantities as HST, I swore by the guy. Once the drug-induced brain fog
lifted and I actually began to think, I realized wha ta farce the guy is.
An entertaining writer who occasionally makes a good point, but still a
farce and a bullshit artist living in a different reality than the rest
of us. HST was in L.A. for a book signing a couple of weeks ago, so drunk
he couldn't even sit in a chair. The session ended with HST laying on the
floor in a pool of his own vomit as he attempted to sign books.
HST is an author who never let the facts get in the way of a good story
and wasn't above bending the truth or just making something up if it made
a better read, yet people continue to believe every word he writes. Case
in point: If I were to ask you who founded the Hells Angels, what would
you answer? It's almost a certainty you'd say the Angels were founded by
a group of WWII veterans who returned stateside and didn't want to
discard the marauding and anti-social behavior they'd learned to enjoy
overseas in the heat of battle.
That's not the truth, but it's what HST wrote in his book about the Hells
Angels and has been accepted as the truth since then. In reality, the
Hells Angels were formed by 3 high school kids, just simple hick kids
from California that had never been further east than Alabama. HST was
told this by some of the Angels he was running around with while writing
the book, but evidently decided marauding WWII vets had more zing than 3
15-16 year old hick kids and thus the myth was born. That's just one of
the facts he "fine-tuned" to meet his needs for good copy. The guy's one
of my all time favorite reads, but he's still a BS artist.
Now that I've bashed HST, how about Kinky Friedman, Bob? Now, Kinky's a
great icon of the same era I like and might even vote for if I lived in
the great state of Texas. After all, "How hard could it be?" will likely
liveon as one of the great campaign slogans (given the context).
Bud
The Shadow
news:Xns959BF1ED242D6Xn...@130.133.1.4:
> Case
> in point: If I were to ask you who founded the Hells Angels, what would
> you answer?
Sonny Barger
Bobby Fischler
> > you HAD a shingle roof? LOL!
> >
> I don't understand why you think that has any effect on me. To have an
> idiot who has never built his own home talk about the proper way to do it
> is about like, well...Bush talking about success.
Just shows your intelligence or lack thereof.
The Shadow
> In article <Xns95978A42B...@65.32.5.122>,
> The Shadow <ev...@wh.gov> wrote:
>
>> > We won - you lost. Nice.
>>
>> Well Frank, I think we all lost. To all the Republicans here,
>> congrats on the victory. You made this bed, now let's see what it
>> winds up being like to sleep in it. This is going to be interesting,
>> in the Chinese sense of that word.
>>
>> The sum of all assets held in the US (government, private, corporate,
>> institutional) is about $50 trillion. The sum of all debts in the US
>> (government, private, corporate, institutional) is about $70
>> trillion, of which ten per cent ($7 trillion) is your buddy George
>> Bush's doings.
>>
>> This problem will be under the supervision of a Harvard MBA. With a C
>> average.
>>
>> GOOD LUCK!
>>
>> BTW, You are such an easy target it is hard to imagine how much
>> easier you will be in the next four years.
>
> Just once, stop hating this country, and stop giving your children
> citizenship in other countries. Stop bragging about moving your money
> offshore. Stop saying you're going to leave this country while we're
> in a fight against those who would destroy us.
>
> Stop being anti-American.
>
> Just stop it.
>
> Bush won. You got your ass kicked.
>
> 'Night, loser.
>
Cowardly, stupid, and effeminate - Brian Sweeney
>
>> > Are you the dumb old guy in Central Florida who lost his roof
>> > because you HAD a shingle roof? LOL!
>> >
>> I don't understand why you think that has any effect on me. To have
>> an idiot who has never built his own home talk about the proper way
>> to do it is about like, well...Bush talking about success.
>
> Ha! You are such a dumbass!!
>
> Hahahahaa!!!!!
>
Cowardly, stupid, and effeminate - Brian Sweeney
The Shadow
Hey, I didn't vote for Bush.
Wounded Troops At Reed Need Phone Cards. They say they need an
"endless" supply of these -- any amount even $5 is greatly appreciated.
Send them to:
Medical Family Assistance Center
Walter Reed Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001
Come on Frank, put five dollars where your mouth is...
George Bush: 1 for 1 in 2004.
The Shadow <ev...@wh.gov> wrote:
> > Just shows your intelligence or lack thereof.
>
> Hey, I didn't vote for Bush.
The biggest pussy on the Internet, Kevin Bitz.