Nothing left that he could live with

Majikthise has it more or less right in her post on Hunter Thompson's suicide. There's so little now in media, in television, or on-line, with which a person with a lick of sense can live. Hunter S. Thompson was a nut, but he was a nut with a hell of a prose style. Through the lens of his nuttiness it was possible to see a world that made sense. His was a lunatic eye turned upon recognizable reality, and sometimes truths emerged more plainly from the distortion. I remember his parting shot at Nixon, done while everyone in the mainstream press turned to obligatory hagiography:

"Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in heaven and hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that 'I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.'

"I have had my own blood relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. 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.'"

This was some of the best, most honest writing done about Nixon during his funeral, so far from the nauseating kitsch of network and cable news tributes airing for that entire week. Before then, I'd felt almost alone in thinking, when I heard Tricky Dick had kicked the bucket, "I hope it hurt". It gave me comfort to read something this funny and smart and true, and it could only come from a single voice, acting alone.

But single voices don't act alone all that much in the media anymore. People put on their corporate or partisan liveries (and with the whole Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert/Whatever-the-fuck-he-calls-himself its become damn near impossible to tell the difference) and they go out and spin for their side. Of course, there are old ones, who mostly shill for that bygone lost era of clubby bipartisanship, wondering why politicians are so cranky and why people can't just take off their uniforms at the end of the day and toast each other. It's a kingdom of kitsch, this media environment, uncaring of truth, addicted to worry and shock, thirsty for a sentimental ending. It reminds me of what William Holden said to Faye Dunaway before walking out on her near the end of "Network".

"Max Schumacher: You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.

"Diana Christensen: [hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.

"Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love."

Hunter Thompson died because there was nothing left in this world that he could live with. It breaks my heart that it's come to this: Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist and enemy of Nixon, dead at 67. Que iconic photograph. Silence. Slow fade. Que Cialis commercial.