Compulsive Reading for Political Junkies
LEKACHMAN, ROBERT
Compulsive Reading for Political Junkies Generation of Swine: Gonzo Papers, Volume 2, Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s By Hunter S. Thompson Summit. 304 pp. $18.95. Reviewed...
...As later events revealed, the Simon magic traveled poorly...
...I forgive the man his lapse into compassion for the Seven Dwarfs...
...Not one of them would have allowed a thug like Oliver North or weak reeds like [Robert C] McFarlane or Poindexter to come anywhere near them in a decent public place, except to serve the drinks...
...His account of Edmund S. Muskie's demise, which he accelerated in a minor way, is continuously hilarious, and his insider's story of the Thomas F. Eagleton fiasco is unexcelled...
...Thompson's contempt for politicians is hardly even-handed...
...Four-letter words are totally absent...
...His comment on Gary Hart was almost charitable: "Hart dropped out of the race in a blaze of shame, for reasons that wouldn't have raised eyebrows in a Rotary Club between Pittsburgh and Harlingen, Texas...
...Perhaps because even in San Francisco the promotion of drugs in a family newspaper is inadvisable, controlled substances are less prominent in this volume...
...He projects that rarest of things in politics —an awesome sense of integrity and commitment and utter conviction...
...Thompson is noticeably kinder to the Democrats, whose interminable primary debates he closely followed...
...The full flame of the Book of Revelation is directed at Ronald Reagan, Edwin Meese III, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, and especially George Bush...
...Not that they are needed...
...Paul Simon catches his fancy, after a fashion: "Simon is small and ugly and he almost never smiles...
...He is] faster and meaner than a bull mongoose...
...Thompson is fun to read, less as a prophet than an irreverent commentator on our deplorable politics...
...Hope colors analysis most conspicuously in the case of the Iran-contra affair...
...and he would still stand alone among the Democratic hopefuls...
...Thompson, who liked McGovern, described and vehemently deplored the transformation of the movement that won the Senator from South Dakota the nomination into an old-style political operation headed by Larry O'Brien...
...He did not scant his own heroic imbibement of any handy alcohol, his driving at high speeds under the influence of same, or his sniffing, snorting, smoking or swallowing marijuana, heroin, Quaaludes, and pills identified only by color...
...Images of violence freely floated from the man's psyche to his typewriter and from that abused instrument to the printed page...
...During the languid Presidential campaign we havejust suffered through scarcely a word was uttered by the candidates about Ollie, last year's national hero...
...Thompson looked forward to the impeachment of Dutch, as he invariably calls Reagan, and to the protracted incarceration of North, Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter, and company...
...That is pure magic in politics...
...Although Thompson happily quotes T.S...
...No nongonzo treats American politicians with the scorn and of course loathing that too many of them merit...
...Our guide gladly buries and reluctantly resurrects the President-elect several times...
...Eliot, Yeats, Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other high-class literati, his favorite source is the Book of Revelation, always handy in the Gideon Bibles available at the motels political reporters must resort to...
...While Michael S. Dukakis does not fare as well, he is taken quite seriously: " Dukakis is a feisty little bugger with impressive credentials and the style of a mean counterpuncher...
...An example is his 1973 account of George McGovern's doomed Presidential bid inFear and Loathing on theCampaign Trail (whose jacket identified him as Dr...
...Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found out a way to live out there where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
...If tame by comparison with Fear and Loathing, the present entry will certainly be compulsive reading for any political junkie, let alone admirers of gonzo journalism...
...Reviewed by Robert Lekachman Self-proclaimed inventor of "gonzo" journalism, Hunter Thompson combines lurid tales of his personal life, some of them conceivably true, with often exceedingly shrewd political analysis...
...But in that July6,1987 column, Thompson goes with the then conventional wisdom that New York's Governor Mario Cuomo will come out of hiding and snatch the nomination for his very own...
...He has lips like Mick Jagger and the ears of a young baboon...
...But none of these things matters...
...The author, who has now turned 50, an age when trips on powerful motorcycles are likely to end terminally, has mellowed slightly...
...Nevertheless, Fear and Loathing is, on rereading, a more incisive chronicle of the 1972 campaign than any produced by its author's unhallucinated colleagues...
...He concedes a preference for watching rather than initiating violence, and he has taken to meditating in his own fashion on the mysteries of life and death: "Maybe there is no Heaven...
...Alas, Dutch will serve out his term, and should attorney Brendan Sullivan prevail North will not be tried before the year 2000, if at all...
...None of us is perfect...
...Hunter Thompson...
...Thompson's present book is a collection of columns from the San Francisco Examiner written, with two exceptions, in 1986 and '87...
...Simon could be as ugly as the Elephant Man...
...Hedefends the remaining contenders: "These were not bad people...
Vol. 71 • November 1988 • No. 20
