Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture author of “Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” has committed suicide, the Associated Press reported. He was 67.

Thompson invented gonzo journalism, and influenced countless writers and journalists. He didn’t just break the mold, he smashed it to pieces. He also had a PhD in Journalism, and y’know, in order to break the rules, you have to know what they are. At his best, he was savage, acerbic, howlingly funny, and his putdowns could very definitely kill.

His political reporting for Rolling Stone in the late 60’s-early 70’s turned journalism upside down. The reporter could be part of the story, expressing their own subjective viewpoint. A common enough idea now, but Thompson was the one who started it. He was the model for Uncle Duke in Doonesbury too.

Some say he was a drug-addled cariacature in his later years. I dunno, I don’t care. The journalist as outlaw. That’s what he did. And that’s what we need more of now.

The title of his most recent book says it all, ”Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.”

Rest in peace Hunter, you had a long crazed run, and we thank you for it.

PS From a Freezerbox interview in March 2003

The mainstream press, you mean?

Yeah, the mainstream press is uh, is uh, in the bag, in the pocket of Bush and the military and they seem to like it there! Not all of them, I’ve got a lot of good friends, good people in journalism, that feel more strongly than I do, or at least as strongly.

Right.

The uh, New York Times, eh, yeah, it’s a different animal. There’s not too many papers like that. But the press in general, the media, the TV, is doing a disgraceful job in covering this situation in this country and around the world. This is where I have to bring some subjectivity into it that I believe is right! A president that came in here, uhhh… about two years ago…

Right, barely elected.

Barely elected, yeah, and I guess it’s only been two years, and he’s taken this nation from a, uh, um, let me think looking at it from a, uh, just objectively, from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war.

Right, but I mean, there were those assholes who flew the plane into the World Trade Center.

Who were they indeed? Now, [cough] do you believe that, that a bunch of Arabs jumped up from some kind of a campfire and fucking mountains over there and snuck into this country and hijacked those planes and did that by themselves?

Well what are you proposing? I mean I think they were funded years ago by the CIA and it was a blowback, but, I don’t think there was any direct… Are you saying there might be some other American agency or some international agency that directly supported them in that?

Uhh, this is tricky territory, but yeah, that’s what I’m getting at.

No Comments »

So why are so many bloggers, as well as major media, so utterly focused on the Gannon affair? Ah well, a bit of sleazy sex always gets our media buzzing in mock horror.

Meanwhile John Negroponte, a man who at the very least has condoned and allowed torture, assumes powerful office and major media is tripping over itself saying what a swell lad he is.

The Gannon story, both on blogs and mainstream media, is getting way more coverage than the grotesqueries of the Negroponte’s past, and that is not as it should be.

No Comments »

A sign.

I got so hooked on listening to podcasts in rental cars with mp3 CD players that I went to a car audio shop yesterday to see what the aftermarket had to offer. When I told them I’d want a unit that allowed fast-forwarding and rewinding within selections (the players in the Ford Foci I’ve been renting only jump from file to file), the salesguy showed me a bunch of Alpine units that do exactly that. Some also support the customer’s choice of Sirius and/or XM satellite radio, rather than just one or the other (imagine a radio today sold with AM or FM, but not both), which is nice.

But dig what happened when I brought up the reason I need fast-forward/rewind: “I listen to a lot of —”

“Podcasts?” he said.

“Right.”

“Yeah, they’re the hot new thing. All the makers are starting to pay attention to podcasting.”

No Comments »

CyberJournalist.net reports that podcasting has doubled the number of online listeners WNYC’s On the Media reaches, in just four weeks.

On the Media, WNYC’s nationally-broadcast NPR media analysis show, now has a podcast audience that rivals the number of individuals that listen to the program in a mid-sized media market like St. Louis or Kansas City.

Adam Curry’s Daily Source Show podcast has 50,000 listeners, and the BBC is podcasting too. This is radio, when you want to listen…

No Comments »

As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well” and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.

Um, an increase in attacks with a large number of dead would tend to indicate to all but the terminally myopic that the insurgency is alive and kicking, doesn’t it?

Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq’s landmark Jan. 30 elections.

“The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun,” Clinton told reporters.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. The insurgents didn’t even try to disrupt the elections. They waited for them to be over, then attacked. This is called “guerilla warfare.” You might want to read up on it.

No Comments »