The Extreme and Offensive Journalism of Hunter S. Thompson

 Like most young adult men my age who are interested in journalism, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is someone I've appreciated and embarrassingly tried to emulate many times. I think he's probably my favorite narrator, and his crude, often rambling intensity is such a welcomed voice when he's covering something as banal and passively evil as a presidential election. He was a madman in a room filled with the most drab and corrosive people you could meet. In Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Thompson was tasked by Rolling Stone to cover the democratic primary and general election between George McGovern and Richard Nixon. There are plenty of moments in the book I could share: When in the middle of an explanation of the Wisconsin primary results he starts a tangent about his Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle, his request of a sixpack of beer from the open bar of a press gaggle, or his sabotaging of the Ed Muskie campaign by accusing the senator of being addicted to Ibogaine. But my favorite, is his story of when he met Nixon back in 1967, and he almost accidentally killed him:

"It was just before midnight when I left Cambridge and headed north on US 93 toward Manchester - driving one of those big green rented Auto/Stick Cougars that gets rubber for about twenty-nine seconds in Drive, and spits hot black divots all over the road in First or Second... a terrible screeching and fishtailing through the outskirts of Boston heading north to New Hampshire, back on the Campaign Trail... running late, as usual: left hand on the wheel and the other on the radio dial, seeking music, and a glass of iced Wild Turkey spilling into my crotch on every turn.

 Not much of a moon tonight, but a sky full of very bright stars. Freezing cold outside; patches of ice on the road and snow on the sidehills... running about seventy five or eighty through a landscape of stark naked trees and stone fences; the highway is empty and no lights in the roadside farmhouses. People go to bed early in New England.

Four years ago I ran this road in a different Mercury, but I wasn't driving then. It was a big yellow sedan with a civvy-clothes cop at the wheel.. Sitting next to the cop, up front, were two of Nixon's top speechwriters: Ray Price and Pat Buchannan. 

There were only two of us in back: just me and Richard Nixon, and we were talking football in a very serious way. It was late -almost midnight then, too- and the cop was holding the big Merc at exactly sixty-five  as we hissed along the highway for more than an hour between some American Legion hall in a small town somewhere near Nashua where Nixon had just made a speech, to the airport up in Manchester where a Lear Jet was waiting to whisk the candidate and his brain-trust off to Key Biscayne for a Think Session.

It was a very weird trip; probably one of the weirdest things I've ever done, and especially weird because both Nixon and I enjoyed it. We had a good talk, and when we got to the airport I stood around the Lear Jet with Dick and the others. Chatting in a very relaxed way about how successful his swing through New Hampshire had been... and as he climbed into the plane it seemed only natural to thank him for the ride and shake hands...

but suddenly I was seized from behind and jerked away from the plane. Good God, I thought as I reeled backwards, Here We Go... "Watch out!"  somebody was shouting. "Get the cigarette!" A Hand lashed out of the darkness to snatch the cigarette out of my mouth, then other hands kept me from falling and I recognized the voice of Nick Ruwe, Nixon's chief advance man for New Hampshire saying, "God damnit, Hunter, you almost blew up the plane!"

I shrugged. He was right. I'd been leaning over the fuel tank with a burning butt in my mouth. Nixon smiled and reached out to shake hands again, while Ruwe muttered darkly and the others stared down at the asphalt.

The plane took off and I rode back to the Holiday Inn with Nick Ruwe. We laughed about the cigarette scare, but he was still brooding. "What worries me," he said, "is that somebody else noticed it. Christ those guys are paid to protect the boss..."

"Very bad show," I said, "especially when you remember that I did about three king-size Marlboros while we were standing there. Hell, I was flicking the butts away, lighting new ones... you people are lucky I'm a sane, responsible journalist; otherwise I might have hurled my flaming Zippo at the fuel tank."

"Not you," he said. "Egomaniacs don't do that kind of thing." He smiled. "You wouldn't do anything you couldn't live to write about, would you?"

"You're probably right," I said. "Kamikaze is not my style. I much prefer subtleties, the low-key approach - because I am, after all, a professional."

"We know. That's why you're along."