Hunter S. Thompson: A Farewell to "Fear and Loathing"

If Hunter S. Thompson can kill himself, what does that say about the rest of us?

Most of you who know the name know it through the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Based on Thompson's novel, it focused on Johnny Depp (as Thompson's alter-ego Raoul Duke) and Benicio Del Toro as they tore through Las Vegas in a surreal ride full of drugs and self-deprecation.

But before the film, he was the great, grand, dark wizard of gonzo journalism, traveling the western United States half-cocked and blown out of his gourd with a drink in one hand and a firearm in the next, looking for an excuse to do something reckless like smash out a window with a whiskey bottle or shoot down trespassers on his barb-wired Aspen "compound."

He was one of my heroes, and a hero to thousands of journalists. Before Thompson, journalism was a staid, placid field, full of responsible professionals in ties and neatly pressed white shirts.

But the good doctor made incoherence and rowdiness into an art form, replacing responsibility with madness and professionalism with balls-out, reckless glee. A typical "report" might ramble from paranoid rants into incomprehensible gibberish. When he covered the Hell's Angels in 1965, he injected himself into the story, traveling with the bikers and participating in every ounce of their violent bacchanals.

He was the perfect channel for the burned-out flame of the rebellious '60s. Hunter S. Thompson was a nonconformist, an anarchist, an unconventional madman who refused to compromise with mainstream society on any level. He held nothing back, jumping like a wild-eyed, half-crazed dope fiend on the establishment, forcing in every pummel, refusing to allow any editor to talk him into meekness or moderacy.

And he was so until the end. In his early days, he was a declared enemy of Richard Nixon; and when from Richard Nixon's filthy loins squirted the blood-smeared placenta of George W. Bush, he screamed out again in anger, a madman with the eternal voice of reason running through his blood.

Every journalist in America who refuses to sit back while conservative media moguls or starched-shirt scumbags try to trample their individuality and expression, every American who lifts a voice of opposition to the monsters in charge, every red-blooded patriot who breaks every rule of decency for the benefit of humanity owes a shot of fine rum to Hunter S. Thompson tonight.

Drink up. Tonight, the good doctor is in some drug-induced hallucination of heaven, an American paradise of his own design, where there are no cops or thieving politicians or heavy-handed hypocrites - where there is only the wide, wild stretch of road and the loneliness of the West.

But back here in America, George Bush has been re-elected, and Hunter S. Thompson is dead. We should be so lucky.

Dunavin is a contributing writer to OFF! magazine and The Capaha Arrow