From:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/colum...la-features-colRalph De La Cruz
Published February 24, 2005
Brrring ... brrring ...
A deep voice answered.
"Gonzo journalism," I barked into the phone with the urgency of a 20-year-old who unexpectedly had his call answered during a radio contest.
"Congratulations, you've won a year's subscription to Rolling Stone magazine ..."
You don't get too many things for free. So, you tend to remember when it happens.
First time it happened to me was because of Hunter S. Thompson.
I had just finished the recalcitrant, rebellious, nonconformist, druggie writer's genre-busting novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
A wonderful romp that proudly showed off the author's ability to rip off publishers, hotels and practically any other corporate entity while inhaling and ingesting every manner of drug known to man.
"Fear and loathing" was what Thompson called the process of telling a story through his eyes -- his drug- and paranoia-glazed eyes.
Ultimately, he would go on to do fear and loathing on the presidential campaign and at the Super Bowl.
Gonzo journalism, Thompson called it. The father of that genre committed suicide Sunday at his ranch in Colorado.
In the 1970s and '80s, gonzo journalism turned Thompson into an icon.
At a time when Nancy Reagan was urging the country to "just say no," Bill Murray was making Where the Buffalo Roam, a semi-biography of Thompson.
But it would be a huge mistake to simply link Thompson's popularity to drugs.
People weren't attracted to his writing because it honored the bizarre. But rather, because it exposed the absurd. It confronted hypocrisy and expressed our outrage at the double standards that were all around us.
When Hollywood decided in 1998 to turn Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas into a movie, it drew the A-list talents of Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci and Ellen Barkin.
That's the level of respect Thompson commanded.
In the past few days, folks have been crediting Thompson with being the godfather of the blogging movement, with its confrontational, outlaw style. I'd go much further.
Alternative publications that continue Thompson's tradition of loudly shaking the establishment's cage owe their broad acceptance to Thompson.
And with his pro-gun, libertarian view he was Jesse Ventura before Jesse Ventura.
In 1988, I went to see Thompson at the Miami Book Fair. After a couple of hours, it was announced he was a no-show and would be rescheduled. Given his reputation, we had almost expected it.
A couple days later, I was back at a Miami auditorium. Waiting again.
After an hour and a half, Thompson stalked onstage, holding a half-empty bottle and bragging about how he had forced his frazzled publishing company "handler" to buy him the liquor -- contrary to orders given by the man's bosses.
But once he began speaking politics, he was brilliant. The Clinton years were around the corner, and yet Thompson bemoaned the Democrats' strategy and their reliance on liberalism and the youth vote, and he accurately predicted the party's future troubles.
So I wasn't surprised to read the Aspen Daily News account of election night 2004 at Owl Farm, Thompson's ranch.
Early in the evening Thompson said: "I don't mean to pop the bad news to you, Bubba, but John Kerry is getting beat just like George McGovern did in 1972 -- or worse."
The next morning, he told the newspaper that the election was "another failure of the youth vote. Yeah, we rocked the vote all right. Those little b------s betrayed us again."
I wasn't surprised.
And he spoke about his own frustration.
"I feel like somebody's died," he said. "I'm just not sure who it was."