Fear and Loathing at Patterico

Although I can't vouch for the accuracy of everything collected in Dennis Wheeler's "The Great Southern League Race Debate," it is an important document that explains what Stogie and others have been trying to explain about this "white supremacist" accusation against me, namely that it is false.

Whatever Patterico's intent in blogging about it, the main effect is that I've been provided ample materials for a discussion of how this smear got started. I didn't plan to spend any more time dealing with it, but one of my commenters asked me to address it, and so I will. The provenance was explained this morning:

Wheeler was -- and, so far as I know, still is -- a white separatist or white nationalist, call it what you will. In the 1996 e-mail list-server messages he collected, you will see that I argue against Wheeler's insistence that the Southern League (which subsequently became the League of the South) should adopt his own racial views. Others on my side in that debate included George Kalas and Gary Waltrip.
Wheeler's arguments did not prevail; he left the list-server and subsequently posted lengthy excerpts of the colloquy on his own site, without permission of the participants. Wheeler obviously believes himself correct, and considers the 1996 debate a vindication of his own views. It's a free country, and I can't tell him what to think.

Rather than starting with the how and why of my participation in that list-server, I'll begin by pointing out the when: It was 1996, and the occasion of the Atlanta Olympics had led to a lot of controversy over the Confederate symbol on the Georgia state flag and a lot of ill-informed MSM punditry about the "legacy of slavery," etc. Being a native Atlantan, I was outraged by the attempt of reporters for the New York Times and other major media outlets to smear my hometown, a thriving metropolis that had long boasted of being "The City Too Busy to Hate."

Ride With the Angels
As a reporter, editor and columnist for the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, I approached this ugly mess in the Gonzo way, stomping straight into the middle of the fight and becoming directly engaged with the fight and the fighters.

Arbiters of journalism ethics are free to criticize this method, but it gets results. If you're going to write about the Hell's Angels, ride with the Hell's Angels. Whatever is lost in terms of Objectivity is more than compensated by the elimination of misinformed bullsh*t, which is the real problem in American journalism.

From the standpoint of the news consumer, it doesn't matter whether Katrina Vanden Heuvel is a Marxist or whether Sean Hannity is a member of Opus Dei. What matters is whether they get the facts right or whether they are engaged in the dissemination of misleading distortions. What makes the MSM an object of criticism is that they strike a pose of Objectivity while disseminating such distortions.

Hunter S. Thompson was always a man of the Left, yet despised mainstream journalism on the same grounds as do most conservative bloggers today: The media get the facts wrong, or omit facts more important than what they report. Most often, to borrow the terminology of liberal analyst George Lakoff, the MSM "frame the narrative" in such a way as to prejudice the reader's perception of personalities (e.g., Howard Dean or Sarah Palin), events (e.g., the Iraq War or the NY23 special election) and social phenomena (e.g., homosexuality or crime).

If you allow your perception of the world to be controlled by the MSM -- permitting them to be the primary lens through which you view events -- you will be misinformed and disinformed. Just as Hunter S. Thompson saw the bogus "'terror on two wheels" hype about the Hell's Angels as an opportunity to seek out the Angels and discover the unreported reality, I have often found myself in the position of trying to discover similar realities, e.g., the absurd "Send the Body to Glenn Beck" claims about the death of Bill Sparkman.

Trolls and Hidden Agendas
All of this is by way of outlining a distinction that is very important. As a professional journalist, I was paid to cover the controversies of the mid-1990s. As a citizen, however, I felt a duty to become involved in those controversies, which is how I found myself on the list-server in July 1996, praising George Kalas for his efforts to prevent the League of the South from being marginalized as a racist organization:

I have never understood those black or white who say that the South should necessarily be riven by racial antagonisms.
-- Robert Stacy McCain, July 17, 1996

It was my praise of Kalas, you see, that elicited Wheeler's subsequent response and the debate that then unraveled. And as anyone who reads the whole thing will see, I got an early introduction to a phenomenon that bloggers now know as the "concern troll."

Wheeler didn't start out by declaring himself a white separatist, a provocateur attempting to hijack the organization whose e-mail listserver was, at that time, a public forum open to all. Instead, he began with a subtle attempt to undermine the authority of Kalas to speak for the League.

Thus began a long train of events which now, more than a dozen years later, results in me being accused of racism -- when my entire purpose was to argue against what I am now accused of advocating. I note this comment on the Patterico post:

I think DaveC is right that this can basically be put in enough context to be forgivable, if RSM wants. . . .
-- Dustin

Well, I've never met Dustin and perhaps never will. While I appreciate his message of support, the "forgiveable" part bothers me. Whom have I wronged, that I should seek their forgiveness? Granting that people have been offended, this was when they were led to believe (by the framing of the narrative) that I was expressing some personal doctrine of my own, rather than discussing the attitudes of others.

That this discussion has been fairly criticized, I cannot deny, but I wasn't writing for publication, I was trying to prevent Wheeler's attempt to hijack the League as a vehicle for his own purposes. That this preventive engagement was successful ought to be counted to my credit, rather than being cherry-picked in an effort to discredit me.

Yet it would be dishonorable to say that the end justified the means, so if my readers feel more explanation is due, I will try to satisfy that demand. Over and over, I've said that this is a long story, and a story of such value that I did not intend to tell it for free, merely to defend myself against an accusation that my friends know to be false. I am not a "white supremacist" or a "segregationist" or whatever other perjorative label my enemies wish to attach to my name.

Nevertheless, since I am in the middle of a fundraising drive to collect $2,000 for a trip to Pasadena -- Roll, Tide, Roll! -- I'll put aside whatever else I might have done today, and try to explain the basics, so long as the readers keep hitting my Pasadena tip jar.

The Discussion Continues . . .

Life without consequences

"The real difference between the Rich and Others is not just that 'they have more money' . . . The truly rich are born free . . . they will never feel hungry, and their credit will never be questioned. . . .
"Why do the finest flowers of the American Dream so often turn up in asylums, divorce courts, and other gray hallways of the living doomed? What is it about being born free and rich beyond worry that makes people crazy?"
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Bad Craziness in Palm Beach," from Songs of the Doomed

There is something about unearned privilege that is deeply corrupting. Most people who are condemned by liberals as "rich" are innocent of such vices. These are people with high annual incomes which they have earned by honest labor or, once they've achieved career success, from wisely investing their earlier earnings.

These "rich" were not born rich, and whatever privileges they have, they've earned. And, if they are wise, they'll take care to teach their children not to take for granted the advantages that the child derives from the parent's success. These advantages ought to be blessings, but many times they are not, simply because the child is overindulged or never properly chastised, and thus takes for granted fortune's smile.

Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and it is a fact that some of the third- and fourth-generation descendants of 19th -century "robber barons" -- scions of famous families, born to comfort and privilege -- died bankrupt, unloved and alone.

Old money can corrupt, and new money can, too. Remember the IPO hot shots of the "dot-com" boom? Or recall those stories about lottery winners who wasted vast winnings and ended up broke again? What about those professional athletes -- first-round draft picks and All-Pro stars -- who reached their 40s without retaining a cent of their once-fabulous earnings?

One of my favorite songs of the '60s is Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," about a young upper-class woman who finds herself cast down among the lowlifes she once held in contempt:

Once upon a time
You dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime
In your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll,
You're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel?

Really, what could be sadder than the spectacle of advantages wasted on ingrates who don't appreciate what they've been given until they've squandered it all and have nothing left? Such people are much worse off than someone born poor who, by sweating and scrimping, manages to claw themselves just a couple of rungs up the ladder.

These kinds of tragedies happen all the time, and in the strangest ways. And it is sometimes hard to resist the temptation of schadenfreude when you hear about someone who was once a pompously self-important snob being sentenced to federal prison. But our glee at such spectacular downfalls ought not blind us to the tragic wastefulness of these human disasters.

In every tragedy like that, there was a moment -- somewhere along the way -- when someone might have done or said something to prevent the disaster. But they ignored the problem or felt it was none of their business, and so the inevitable downfall ensued.

"I can't stand when adults demand the 'right' to act a certain way and then want to be shielded from the normal consequences of their actions. . . .
"People never cease to astonish me and Ms. McCain is no exception.
"I guess I'm just tired of people thumbing their noses at the rules and then citing those same rules as evidence they've been ill treated. Two wrongs don't make a right but it's generally unconvincing when you try to hold others to a standard you long since openly rejected."
-- Cassandra at Villainous Company, Oct. 15

When the going gets weird . . .

. . . the weird put in a quick call to Woody Creek, Colo.:

Hunter S. Thompson's widow says she may consider a campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., a development that could provoke fear and loathing in Aspen, where real-estate developers have long dreaded a return of the late "gonzo" journalist's infamous 1970 "Freak Power" politics.
Anita Thompson said in an exclusive interview Wednesday that she is being urged to seek the office by current Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is up for re-election in 2010 discussed the possibility of retirement in an interview last month with the Independent, a British newspaper.
"I'll have to talk to Bob," Mrs. Thompson, 36, told the American Spectator when asked about her possible future in politics. "The Aspen Disease is spreading in Pitkin County, almost out to Woody Creek."
Sheriff Braudis was a personal friend of Hunter Thompson, a Kentucky native and author of Hell's Angels, whose later books such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas defined the intensely personal style he dubbed "gonzo." . . .

Read the whole thing. And let the editors of the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette consider that their offices are only 300 miles from my house. Y'all hit the tip jar.

UPDATE 2:49 p.m.:

Mrs. Thompson wishes it to be known that the suggestion of her seeking the office held by her friend Sheriff Braudis "has been a running joke for five years, just because of the posters."

My apologies, ma'am. What a huge embarrassment . . .

To the Editor: Journalism's 'Wretched Failure' vs. a 'Damn You Kind of Style'

A prophetic letter destined to be ignored:

Dear Sir:
Two articles in your October 12 issue on “The Americas” deserve a bit of comment. Probably others do, too, but be that as it may, I refer here to “News and Latin America,” by Bernard Collier, and What’s Happening to Journalism Education?” by John Tebbel.
The two are related, in that current journalism education is at least vaguely linked to our news coverage of Latin America. The subject interests me because I recently returned from a year and a half of traveling all over the South American continent as a free-lance journalist. . . .
The fact that Collier did his research in Buenos Aires – which most of the foreign-based U.S. correspondents deserted years ago – is a good indication of just how far behind the times he is. . . .
Collier says the Latin American press is guilty of “a dismal lack of analytical reporting on government affairs, both in time of crisis and during relative peace.” . . .
This is pure balderdash, and one of the best examples of what happens when a “Latin American correspondent” tries to cover his beat from New York. . . . And if he had ever been in Rio, did he ever get far enough away from the Hotel Excelsior Bar to lay hands on a copy of the afternoon O Globo and read some of their brutally anti-government editorials? . . .
Which brings us now to Tebbel’s lament that “research” is strangling the hopes for “professional training” in our schools of journalism. Perhaps your linking of the two articles was intentional – because Collier’s wretched failure to deal with his theme would appear to be proof of Tebbel’s thesis that journalism needs people who can cut the ever-toughening mustard. . . .
Tebbel might consider a few other problem areas before he takes up the standard of “professionally oriented programs” as the panacea for better and more meaningful journalism in our time. He should consider the case of the Herald Tribune, for instance, which only this year decided Latin America was important enough to give one of its staffers the title of “Latin American correspondent.” The man chosen to carry that ball was Bernard Collier – but thus far it appears the Tribune would have been better of sticking with the wire services, who at least have men on the scene who read the local papers.
Or consider the case of Ralph McGill, who regularly bemoans our serious lack of news from Latin America, but who cannot for some reason see his way clear to hire a man to cover that mysterious continent. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution even turns down freelancers who offer to send as many stories as the papers can use. . . .
Let Mr. Tebbel consider the broader possibilities for a moment, and postpone for a while his academic resentment of research in journalism schools. And let Mr. Collier, in reporting on a continent bogged down in misery and further from hope than most people in this country can possibly understand, at least give credit where credit is due, and not condemn out of ignorance a Brazilian journalist – putting faith in his fellow man to speak his own truth in a Damn You kind of style that “trained professionals” and “technicians” and “specialists” have just about killed in this country.
Cordially,
Hunter S. Thompson
Woody Creek, Colorado
Oct. 14, 1963

Excerpted from a letter to the editor of the Saturday Review, written when Thompson was 26, broke and unemployed. This letter was first published in a 1997 collection of Thompson’s early correspondence, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-67, edited by historian Douglas Brinkley.

The Review never published this letter – or anything else Thompson ever wrote. Founded in 1924 as the Saturday Review of Literature, the magazine was sold to the publisher of McCall’s in 1961 and resold several times during the next quarter-century. The magazine declined steadily until it ceased publication 1986; rights to the name were purchased by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.

Within a decade of writing this 1963 letter to the Review, Thompson had published three classic books – Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) and Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973) – becoming one of America’s most famous journalists.

He was subsequently portrayed in two feature motion pictures Where the Buffalo Roam (1980, starring Bill Murray) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, starring Johnny Depp), and was the subject of the 2008 documentary Gonzo (see my review for The American Spectator). In 2007, I became friends with Thompson’s widow, Anita, whom I met after publication of her book, The Gonzo Way.

UPDATE: An interview with Mrs. Thompson, whose sense of humor sometimes causes problems.

Me, Moe Lane and Malkin vs. the MSM: The Media Elite's Strange Priorities and Misallocation of Scarce Resources

"I don’t actually want to see newspapers go away, seeing as they’ve got structural advantages on news gathering that I envy. Like actual budgets: when someone like Robert Stacy McCain decides that he’s going to go down to Kentucky and cover the Bill Sparkman murder, he has to shake the tip jar, write a few posts highlighting the issue, and hope that somebody comes through for his expenses. The equivalent NYT editor simply calls up the relevant department and has somebody set it up. The ability to follow stories that easily is a powerful ability; would that the NYT was willing to take advantage of it.
-- Moe Lane of Red State

My good friend Moe (we're like this, Moe and me) was addressing Michelle Malkin's criticism of the New York Times, criticism that might be applied more generally to all the elite media.

Speaking of which, if the NYT desires a token conservative presence on its op-ed page, why hire another "meritocrat" pundit like Ross Douthat, who can't be bothered to pick up a phone, much less get in his car and go talk to sources in person?

The NYT would have done much better to (a) spend that money on actual reporting, and (b) fill the designated "conservative" spot on its op-ed page with rotating freelance submissions from actual conservatives. You know: People like Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Mark Steyn, Mary Katharine Ham, Rush Limbaugh . . .

Yet the same criticism about misallocation of resources might be extended far beyond the Times building on West 43 Street, to encompass much of the blogosphere and even the conservative movement. My good friend J.P. Friere, formerly of The American Spectator and now with the Washington Examiner, likes to say that conservatives don't need more Bill Buckleys, we need more Bob Novaks, and he's right. (Although Hannah Giles in a thong is a lot easier on the eyes than Novak ever was.)

Nowadays, every 22-year-old with a laptop and a Wordpress account wants to play the pundit, give us The Big Picture, and lecture us with their own ill-informed answers to that eternal question, "Whither Conservatism?"

Here's your answer: Shut up, kid, I've got T-shirts older than you.

Today, down in rural Virginia, Al Regnery's throwing a big barbecue. All the big shots will be there and I'm invited. I'll be running late, and I'm worried about what economists call the opportunity costs of attending the annual shindig, rather than staying here to work, work, work.

There's only one of me and I'm a freelancer. I don't have an AmEx card for travel expenses like the big shots at the networks do. It takes a couple of business days for PayPal transactions to be processed, and until that tip-jar cash clears the bank, I'll be pushing it to the limit just to get to Clay County, Kentucky, by Monday, and only hope I can avoid my checks don't start bouncing before those payments clear.

Meanwhile, I've promised the American Spectator a column that's already half-written and has to be turned in before I try to get some sleep, then depart before dawn in my 2004 KIA, so I can try to file something -- at least a brief report -- with a Kentucky dateline by noon Monday. Never mind that we're a one-car household and my wife's steamed because she'll have to improvise her own transportation for a few days. (A rental car might cost $60 a day, nudge, nudge.)

Considering all my disadvantages, then, perhaps you understand my resentment of the media elite's overprivileged journalistic inertia. When I think of the elite, with their Harvard educations and their fat salaries, sitting around pontificating about the Big Picture . . . well, I'm not ashamed to rattle the tip jar, because I think I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of the MSM's better-than-thou attitude.

When I started blogging full-time in March 2008, it was only a time-waster between freelance gigs. Also, I had at least one prospect for a staff position at a publication I won't name. But then those guys started jerking me around, asking me to contribute some freelance work for them, just as a kind of tryout.

Screw that. As if I couldn't hustle up freelance opportunities without trying out for a job like some unknown grass-green rookie. I'd rather freelance for the Spectator and Pajamas Media -- people who treat me with some respect and appreciate my efforts.

So, as always when faced with such a problem, I asked myself: What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?

Double down. Bet on myself. Spend out my 401(k) to pay the bills until I could turn this crazy gonzo thing into a revenue stream sufficient to establish my financial independence. And then, next time they're looking to hire an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of newspaper experience who also does HTML and digital photography, knows his way around the blogosphere and Web 2.0, has mad skilz with Final Cut Pro and PhotoShop, my answer will be a question:

"What's it worth to you, buddy? If you want me, do you want me with or without that blog where I can say anything that crosses my mind? Do you want me to give up that wild fun and all those loyal tip-jar hitters, or do you want me to bring them along with me? I can go either way here, but I've got to know if you're serious about wanting me, because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You're not going to push me around like some kid fresh out of J-school. Been there, done that, ain't going back for more. But I'm a reasonable man, and am willing to entertain any reasonable offers. So give me a number here, and I'll tell you whether it's too low. I write for money."

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. And things are looking pretty weird right about now. My wife's worried sick about the bills. She's also worried sick about me getting into trouble in Kentucky, but I told her it's nothing. If they'd didn't kill me in Kampala, they won't kill me in Clay County.

BTW, I just got off the phone with Track-a-'Crat, who seems to be coming down with Appalachian Swine Flu. He's got all the symptoms, so he'll probably be too sick to go to his day-job Monday. He'll have to be rushed to see a specialist, and I told him I know just the man to see: The world-renowned Dr. Raoul Duke of Louisville, Ky.

Rent a convertive, Track-a-'Crat, and leave the rest to me. Sometimes, the cure for Appalachian Swine Flu is worse than the disease . . .

Just keep hitting that tip jar, you ungrateful bastards. Baby, it's about to be showtime!

Jimmie Bise covers the Steny Hoyer townhall they wouldn't let him into

Basic rule of Gonzo reporting: When you go to cover something, cover the story that's in front of you. Democrats had bussed in supporters to pack the house at Tuesday's health-care townhall meeting with Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), so Jimmie Bise of The Sundries Shack couldn't get inside:

Tonight, a standing room-only crowd of over 1500 people packed the gymnasium of North Point High School in my hometown of Waldorf, MD to attend a health care town hall meeting with Congressman Steny Hoyer. I’d love to be able to give you a report of what happened inside the meeting but I can’t. I didn’t actually make it inside the doors. When I arrived at 6 PM, an hour before the meeting was scheduled to start, the line to get inside was incredibly long. . . .
In other words, if you didn’t get there well before 6 PM, there was a real chance you weren’t going to make it inside. I could have stood in line myself (since I didn’t get media credentials, which you’d better believe I will get next time something like this happens) or feel out the crowd and talk to some people. I opted for the latter. After all, it’s not like Steny Hoyer, the second-highest Democrat in the House of Representatives, was going to stand up there and suddenly announce that he was opposed to government-run health care. So I wandered up and down the line, talked to some folks I met along the way, and snapped a few pictures. . . .

Lots more where that came from, so read the whole thing. It got Jimmie his second Instalanche of the week. Nobody can accuse Jimmie of being an "insider" journalist.

NTCNews.com rounds up the rest of the news about Steny's big event. Jimmie's resourcefulness impressed me. When you're covering a "pack journalism" event -- where multiple media are on the same story -- a basic trick is to get the story the other guys miss. Find your own angle and own that angle.

Another way to put it: Be your own Decider. As a reporter, you exercise journalistic discretion -- "news judgment," as it's called -- and if you think you've found something more newsworthy than what the pack's reporting, go for it.

Sometimes it helps to ask yourself, "What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?" And I don't mean drink a quart of Wild Turkey, drop some blotter acid and rent a red convertible. That's strictly optional.

Thompson was brilliant about this "outsider" method of reporting. Do something different. If every clueless reporter in the country is writing about the Hell's Angels, how about riding your motorcycle to a biker bar and just hanging out with the Hell's Angels? If you're covering a presidential campaign, and every other reporter is chasing around the unbeatable front-runner, Ed Muskie, why not go check out that guy nobody's giving a chance, George McGovern?

Next week, Jimmie and I will be attending a swanky reception for the author of the Best. Book. Evah! I've told Jimmie to rent a red convertible. The Wild Turkey and blotter acid are strictly optional, Jimmie.

Everybody's in Atlanta, why not me?

First it was Little Miss Attila, and now Moe Lane announces his departure to my hometown for this weekend's big Red State Gathering, where the attendees will celebrate the absence of the conspicuously uninvited Native Son.

Last weekend, after I described my trip to Richmond for Liberty 101 -- the Virginia Tea Party Patriots are wonderful people -- I got a worried e-mail from Ben Marchi, Virginia state director of Americans For Prosperity, as a result of these paragraphs:

Of course, my feelings were still sore that AFP's Erik Telford insulted me by leaving me out of next month's RightOnline National Conference in Pittsburgh with Michelle Malkin. When I mentioned Erik's name, Ben reminded me that Telford recently made No. 2 on Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" list. As usual, Olbermann gets the facts wrong -- Telford's No. 1.
That surge of registrations for RightOnline the past two days was caused by my friends signing up for a seminar Telford left off the Pittsburgh conference agenda: "I've Got T-Shirts Older Than You, Punk: Stacy McCain Explains Why He Just Beat the Crap Out of Erik Telford in the Sheraton Lobby." But I digress . . .

So I sent an e-mail back to Ben and explained that I wasn't really angry at Telford. He's a nice kid and I was only joking about the beating.

Well, probably joking. It's been years since I've risked an assault charge by giving some ungrateful punk the thrashing he so richly deserved, but just because I've become a top Hayekian public intellectual -- the pinnacle of journalistic respectability -- doesn't mean my enemies should feel they can grossly insult me without fearing the violent consequences.

These kids, they don't know from Gonzo. Back in the day, when Hunter S. Thompson was living the precarious and poverty-stricken freelancer's life, it became his habit to respond to rejection notices and unfruitful job applications with outrageous letters full of hyperbolic denunciations and threats.

People who actually knew Thompson understood that these letters were, for the most part, just writing exercises. A writer improves his craft by constant practice, and if you have just been denied the opportunity to get paid for your craft, why not exercise the rejected skill at the expense of the philistine wretch who failed to recognize your genius?

Long after he became famously successful -- genius must ultimately have its reward -- Thompson never forgot the experience of poverty and obscurity. For example, one reason he took such great delight in becoming a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner in the 1980s was that, 25 years earlier, his application for a reporting job at the rival Chronicle had been rejected. And then there was this 1972 love-note to a good buddy of his:

"Dear John . . .
"You skunk-sucking bastard . . ."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, letter to John Chancellor of NBC News, Sept. 11, 1972, reprinted in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

Thompson's unpredictable sense of humor made him a constant source of carnival amusement for his friends. So as Moe and Attila relax and enjoy their cocktails Saturday evening at the Red State Gathering, they should not dismiss the possibility that their conviviality will be disturbed by a sudden Gonzo episode:

"Sweetheart, give me a cold Corona, with lime," I told the redhead behind the bar, loud enough to be heard by Miss Attila, sitting at a table in the corner with Moe Lane. As usual, Attila was zonked on gin and entirely oblivious. But Moe glanced over and froze with the shock of recognition. I nodded at him and smiled, tossed a $10 on the bar -- the redhead was cute and the service was prompt -- grabbed my Corona and strolled casually to their table.
Strolling casually was difficult, considering I was jacked up on no fewer than six cups of truck-stop coffee I'd consumed on my 700-mile drive from Hagerstown. I'd made it in just a shade over 14 hours, although I could have done it in less than 11, if I hadn't been forced to exit I-81 south of Bristol to elude the Tennessee state trooper who blue-lighted me when I flew past him at 110 mph.
With my thorough knowledge of the region's back roads and a half-mile head-start -- the trooper must have been a rookie and was just a tad slow on the jump -- I knew he'd never overtake me. But like the moonshiners used to say, you can't outrun the Motorola, so I'd been forced to park the rented Mustang for half an hour behind a Pentacostal church near Walnut Hill while half the law-enforcement personnel in Sullivan County raced back and forth on the Blountville Highway trying to find me. I sat there on the front steps of the church, reading that morning's New York Times, smoking Camel Lights and enjoying the show until I was sure they'd called off the pursuit.
Given that the trooper had never gotten close enough to see my tags, I was reasonably safe from further harassment, but now there was a BOLO for the Mustang, so I had to wind my way through backroads until I picked up I-26, then cut back over to I-81 and kept it cool all the way through Knoxville before opening it up again once I made it on I-75.
So it was nearly 8 p.m. when I handed the keys to the valet in front of the Grand Hyatt, grabbed my satchel and tried to be inconspicuous as I pushed through the side door and crossed the lobby to the men's room.
Quickly washing, shaving and brushing my teeth, I changed clothes and looked as sharp as a CEO when I re-entered the lobby and approached the concierge, handing him the satchel containing my toiletry kit, washcloth and dirty laundry.
"No problem, sir," he said, handing me a ticket in exchange for a $5 tip.
"You're a gentleman and a scholar, Reginald," I replied, with the manic sincerity of a man who'd had nine hours sleep in the past three days, including a fitful 90-minute nap in the front seat of the Mustang in a truckstop parking lot near Adairsville.
Moe Lane knew none of this, of course, and my stroll across the Hyatt bar was supremely casual.
"Stacy!" he said. "What the . . I mean, what's with the tux?"
Attila stared glassy-eyed, predictably having skipped dinner to start in on the gin at five o'clock. She seemed to be trying to form the words of a greeting, but I just smiled, took a big swig of the Corona and pulled up a chair.
"Oh, my buddy Phil Kent invited me to a state GOP fund-raiser, and I thought I'd swing by over here and see how things were going."
"Stacy!" said Attila at last, putting her hand on my wrist.
"Sweetheart, how are ya?" I said, but she was too far gone to comprehend even this simple pleasantry, much less formulate an answer.
"Stacy!" she repeated, but then was distracted when the waiter walked past our table. She grabbed him and thrust her empty glass at him, demanding more gin. I turned my attention to Moe.
"Hey, good to see ya, man. Where's Mr. Erickson?" I said, taking another long drink from the Corona and trying to be as nonchalant as possible.
"Oh, he's still finishing up at the reception. I'm sure he'll be here in 10 minutes."
Still nonchalant, I shook my head and finished the Corona with another long gulp. "Too bad. Can't stick around. I've got to run back over to Phil's party. But maybe I can drop in and say howdy to Erick on my way out. Where's the reception?"
Moe told me the name of the ballroom and I nodded as he told me which floor it was on.
"Thanks, buddy," I said, then reached inside my jacket and pulled out the souvenir Bowie knife I'd bought for $30 at that Adairsville truck stop. Now my eyes gleamed crazily as I briefly brandished the seven-inch blade. "I've got some old business to settle with Mr. Erickson tonight . . ."
With that, I stood up and, holding the knife down beside my leg as if to conceal it, walked quickly toward the side door, glancing back just once to see Moe frantically typing a text-message into his Blackberry. Perfect.
Ditching the knife in the nearest trash can -- definitely $30 of fun -- I headed up the corridor to the pay phones, dropped in some change and made a quick call. After hanging up, I went around the corner, down the hall and turned left, back into the lobby. The concierge spotted me as I strode cheerfully toward him, holding the ticket for my satchel. He took the ticket and handed me the bag with a smiling "thank you, sir."
When I walked out the door, Phil's car was waiting. I threw the satchel in the back seat, climbed in and closed the door.
"Stace, old buddy, how's it going?" Phil said. "It's been a while."
"Yeah, too long, Phil. But you know how it is -- busy, busy, busy."
He wheeled the car through the driveway, but stopped when he heard the sirens of the Atlanta P.D. cars that came screaming down Peachtree Street toward us.
"Wow? What's that?" Phil said.
"Ah, some drunk woman was getting rowdy in the bar. She started talking a lot of crazy stuff about a knife. I guess somebody finally called the cops."
"Yeah, that happens a lot around here," Phil said, turning onto Peachtree after the cop cars had roared past.
"Yeah, I said. "It happens . . ."

Merely another hypothetical scenario, you see. No way I would actually do something that crazy. Even if I had time to drive to Atlanta this weekend, the gas alone would chew up the commission check that just came in the mail this morning, and my wife wants to make the overdue car payment with that. On the other hand, if a couple dozen readers were to hit the tip jar today . . .

Well, I probably still wouldn't drive to Atlanta just for the fun of startling Moe and Attila by my unexpected arrival, but isn't it important for them to think I could?

(Erick: No need to pay me for promoting the Red State Gathering. It's entirely my pleasure, you skunk-sucking bastard.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Steve Givler for playing the Grammar Nazi in the comments. "Strode" is just one of those irregular past-tenses that sounds so weird that it doesn't occur to the ear naturally, and I tend to write by ear, having paid only enough attention in freshman comp class to slide through with a B. Nothing against English majors or Advanced Grammar classes, you understand. Some of my best friends were English majors. NTTAWWT.

Strictly a hypothetical beer

Matt Margolis offers a thought experiment, which I found at Jimmie's Sundries Shack:

If you could have a beer with any politician, living or dead, who would it be?

Easy: Hubert H. Humphrey. So I could punch him in the teeth and say, "That's on behalf of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, you shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack!"

Then I'd smash my Corona bottle on the bar, grab that filthy scumbag by his collar and hold the jagged bottle edge to his fat little throat:

"Oh, it's not just for that shabby little deal with Daley in '68, you vicious pimp. Don't think the American people will ever forgive you for being the first major-party presidential candidate to advocate socialized medicine. I could slice you open like a carp, you miserable twerp, but I'm not gonna do it, and you're probably wondering why. It's this way, Hube: You're not even worth the hassle of pleading insanity, so I could spend every evening for the rest of my life porking second-shift nurses at St. Elizabeths. Now, get out of here and don't come back, punk. If you ever cross my path again, it will be your last day on earth, and the best thing that ever happened to the nursing staff at St. Elizabeths."

Of course, it's only a hypothetical . . . Like a cowardly swine, Hube was shrewd enough to die before I ever got my shot at him.

Update: by Smitty
Great POWIP post with dialogue outtakes from the Suds Summit.

Fear, Loathing and Smitty in Las Vegas

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold . . ."
-- Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The photo above was one of several that arrived yesterday in a brown manilla envelope with no return address, accompanied by a cryptic note assembled by some maniac who had cut letters out of magazines and pasted them together to create a message so disgustingly obscene that even I would not reprint it here.

No matter what this anonymous extortionist claims, I refuse to believe that my dear friend Smitty could have engaged in the repulsive acts portrayed by these photographs. As far as I'm aware, for example, there are no teenage Ukrainian albino prostitutes employed in Nevada. Even if there are, I sincerely doubt there could be two of them -- identical twins at that and, to judge from the astonishing variety of poses, double-jointed bisexual acrobats who've spent years studying the Kama Sutra.

However, if these lurid scenes are genuine, Smitty is either racing toward the Mexican border or headed for a long spell in a federal penitentiary. He has no alibi, because everyone knows he spent the past week in Las Vegas, a place notorious for its decadent hedonism. Certainly I cannot be held accountable because, so far as I knew, he was merely going on holiday with his German in-laws. Granted, one occasionally hears bizarre rumors about elderly German tourists, but . . .

Forgeries or felonies, the photos were certainly interesting, although fearing an inquiry by the Postmaster General's office -- some kind of sting operation? -- I immediately destroyed all of them except the one relatively safe picture I scanned in and displayed at the top of this post. That is obviously Smitty at the right side of the photo. I'd recognize the bowtie anywhere, but . . . who is that woman on the left?

Little Miss Attila? Well, certainly some of the tales Matthew Vadum told of their CPAC escapades two years ago might lead me to believe she could do such things. And she does live in L.A., a reasonable driving distance from Vegas, assuming you have a radar detector and you're driving one of those big Chevy convertibles with a powerful V-8 engine.

For a few minutes, I stared at the photo while smoking a bowl of Kashmir's finest and decided no, it couldn't be Attila. Too tall. Which also rules out Cynthia Yockey who was, after all, still in Baltimore so far as anyone knew.

Who could she be? And then it hit me.

One of the photos I'd burned immediately after receiving the package had depicted Smitty participating in altogether despicable behavior with a certain breed of domesticated livestock.

Sheep? No Sheeples? Oh, Carol, you temptress . . .

Fear & Loathing in the Hotel Bar

"What happened?" said our friend. "What did they do to her?" He seemed very agitated by what he was hearing.
"Do?" said my attorney. "Jesus Christ man. They chopped her goddamned head off right there in the parking lot! Then they cut all kinds of holes in her and sucked out the blood!"
"God almighty!" the Georgia man exclaimed... "And nobody did anything?"
"What could they do?" I said. "The guy that took the head was about six-seven and maybe three hundred pounds. He was packing two Lugers, and the others had M-16s. They were all veterans..."
"The big guy used to be a major in the Marines," said my attorney. "We know where he lives, but we can't get near the house."
"Naw!" our friend shouted. "Not a major!"
"He wanted the pineal gland," I said. "That's how he got so big. When he quit the Marines he was just a little guy."
"O my god!" said our friend. "That's horrible!"
"It happens every day," said my attorney. "Usually it's whole families. During the night. Most of them don't even wake up until they feel their heads going -- and then of course, it's too late."
The bartender had stopped to listen. I'd been watching him. His expression was not calm.
"Three more rums," I said. "With plenty of ice, and maybe a handful of lime chunks."
He nodded, but I could see that his mind was not on his work. He was staring at our name-tags. "Are you guys with the police convention upstairs?" he said finally.
"We sure are, my friend," said the Georgia man with a big smile.
The bartender shook his head sadly. "I thought so," he said. "I never heard that kind of talk at this bar before. Jesus Christ! How do you guys stand that kind of work?"
My attorney smiled at him. "We like it," he said. "It's groovy."

The Gonzo of Coulter

From my latest essay at Splice Today:

Given the Newtonian opposition of their political loyalties, and their vastly different literary ouevres, the fans of Hunter S. Thompson and the fans of Ann Coulter are very near to being mutually exclusive sets. A Venn diagram would show an almost infinitesimal overlap between Set A (those who admire the drug-addled king of gonzo) and Set B (those who admire the acid-tongued right-wing blonde). Yet as one of the few occupants of Set AB, I find striking parallels between the two, and wonder why others don’t also see these parallels.

Please read the whole thing.

Ready to riot

If McCain wins, good-bye, Toledo:

Toledo police are gearing up for possible "Civil unrest" during and after tomorrow's elections.
In an internal memo obtained exclusively by NBC 24 News, officers are ordered to "Have their riot equipment with them Tuesday and Wednesday". Police chief Mike Navarre confirms, officers will have gear similar to the equipment they used during the 2005 race riots. "They have been asked to have their helmets and their gas masks available tomorrow and Wednesday.", Navarre says, "That's the equipment they would not normally carry with them on a normal day".

Beautiful. I'm reminded of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72:

The entire Fort Walton Beach police force is gripped in a state of fear this week; all leaves have been cancelled and Chief Bloor is said to be drilling his men for an Emergency Alert situation on Friday and Saturday night -- because those are the nights when 'Kazika, The Mad Jap,' a 440-pound sadist from the vile slums of Hiroshima, is scheduled to make his first -- and no doubt his last -- appearance in Fish-head Auditorium. Local wrestling impressario Lionel Olay is known to have spoken privately with Chief Bloor, urging him to have 'every available officer' on duty at ringside this weekend, because of the Mad Jap's legendary temper and his invariably savage reaction to racial insults. Last week, in Detroit, Kazika ran amok and tore the spleens out of three spectators, one of whom allegedly called him a 'yellow devil' . . .

I doubt there will be much rioting out here in rural Maryland or in Alexandria, Va., where I'll be watching the deal go down tonight with friends at the National Taxpayers Union. But you never know . . .

Thoughts on the past 48 hours

"Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol ... but too many adrenalin rushes in any given time-span has the same bad effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

There was a time -- and it was only a couple of months ago, when I measured the success of this blog by the number of days per month with over 1,000 visits. Now? My worst day of September, I had 3,648 visits. Adrenalin jolts . . .

Denver '08: Fear and Loathing?

Hunter S. Thompson's widow, Anita, linked me today at her Owl Farm Blog, noting this Time magazine feature about the 1972 Eagleton debacle, which features a few choice quotes, including this:

Campaign Manager Gary Hart admits: "There were no formal staff meetings, no requests to check people out. I take the blame for not setting up a committee on selection. I should have thought of that."

Heh. Too busy toking up with Warren Beatty, I suppose. Not likely Obama will suffer a similar fate; his staff is mostly a bunch of Starbucks junkies. Large quantities of caffeine can make you a bit jittery and push you into a hypomanic state, if you're prone to that, but you couldn't drink so much coffee as to completely forget to vet the vice-presidential candidates. Or could you?

Anita supported Hillary in the primaries, but is a loyal Democrat, so now she's for Obama. Still, like a lot of Clinton supporters, she has deep doubts about Obama's readiness to face the GOP attack machine. Given the most recent poll results, I'd say those doubts are warranted.

Anita links Cameron Martin's review of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, one of the most readable books ever written about politics.

As Martin says:

Next week's Democratic Convention is in Denver, Colorado, just 220 miles from Thompson's former home in Aspen. The creator of Gonzo Journalism won't be there in person, but his addictive spirit will certainly make an appearance.

Just so. Anita will be there with her friend Jeralyn Merritt, and I hope to see them both amid the anarchy in Denver next week. "A Mile High and an Inch Deep."

RWFG on 'Gonzo'

Victor Morton, the Right-Wing Film Geek, reviews Gonzo:

Former work colleague Stacy and I went to see GONZO together last week, in part so he could review it for the American Spectator. I have long known that Stacy loves Hunter S. Thompson and had written several times for the newspaper on him, so I figured he’d get a kick about at least seeing GONZO. . . .
The nub of Stacy's complaint was that the film was too heavily focused on Thompson's political involvement in "the Sixties," and thus skrimped heavily on large chunks of material, both from earlier and later.

My review in The American Spectator was a bit harsh, because Alex Gibney's film to a large degree reflects the narrative that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner has spun since Thompson's death, that the only really important work of HST's career was what he wrote for Rolling Stone. Wenner especially discounts Thompson's later writing, including his columns for ESPN.com.

This notion of the great Gonzo in his final years as irrelevant was personally hurtful to Thompson's widow, Anita, who worked with Hunter on the ESPN columns. As she told the New York Daily News, Hunter "wrote more in the final five years of his life than he did in the previous 15 years of his life."

Gibney makes one major concession to Thompson's post-Rolling Stone career, by beginning the film with a re-enactment of HST writing his post-9/11 column for ESPN:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. . . .
We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

Very good -- the column is read by Johnny Depp, who functions as the voice of Thompson's writing for much of the film. But Gibney obviously chooses this column for the opening scene because it fits his own Bush-hating, anti-war worldview. Thompson matters, Gibney is saying, because Thompson was a man of the Left.

No, Thompson matters because he was a brilliant writer, one of the most creative writers of the 20th century, the inventor of a style that has been often imitated but never equalled. He is admired by so many journalists -- not all of them on the Left -- because, more than any other writer, Thompson conveyed the sense of journalism as fun.

Every reporter who has ever given that spontaneous air-punch of triumph -- yes! -- after hanging up the phone with a source that just gave him the quote that cinched the big story knows the Thompsonesque thrill of journalism as a rollicking good-time adventure. When I first met his widow last fall, she explained one common misconception about Thompson:

"A lot of young people are under the assumption that if you do a lot of cocaine and drink a lot of Wild Turkey, you, too, can write like Hunter S. Thompson."

You don't have to gobble mescaline and guzzle whiskey to be gonzo, you just need to conceive of journalism as a grand sport, a competitive excursion in search of the Big Story. (Ask Philip Klein about how I scooped him with his own notes while he lounged in the hot tub in Santa Barbara.)

Go back and re-read Hell's Angels, as I recently did, and you'll see that Thompson repeatedly excoriates other reporters (from Time, the Associated Press and the rest of the same MSM outlets that we all still hate today) for publishing stories filled with inaccuracies, hype and "official bulls--t," stories that failed to accurately describe who the Angels were, what they did, and why they did it.

Thompson's account went deeper, told a bigger and more interesting truth, and debunked the press hysteria that depicted the Angels -- a relative handful of Harley-riding hoodlums in California -- as a ubiquitous Menace to Society who might, at any moment, swoop down on your Middle American town and gang-rape your daughter.

Thompson got the Real Story, in other words, and thereby exposed as gullible chumps the big-shot Professional Journalists with their precious "objectivity" and "ethics." One can almost hear Hunter shouting: "Objectivity, my ass! How about some facts for a change?" That was the brilliance of Thompson as a journalist, and it is admirable without regard for the narrow lens of left-wing politics through which Gibney insists on telling Thompson's story.

Victor fairly well enjoyed the Gibney film (rating it a 6 on his 10-point scale) and points out that my own deep familiarity with the gonzo syllabus probably accounts for most of my dissatisfaction with the film. I didn't mean to tell anyone not to go see the film, which certainly delivers enough fun in two hours to justify the cost of a $9 ticket and a box of popcorn. I just didn't want anyone to go see it without the caveats.

If you want to know Hunter S. Thompson, read his books. But I guess it's the old story -- if you've read the book, you'll always be somewhat disappointed with the movie version.

At any rate, I owe Victor for a couple of beers and a plate of quesadillas. But considering that I introduced Victor to Ann Coulter, the balance sheet's probably still in my favor.

'Gonzo' review

At The American Spectator:

Neither mescaline nor LSD were available at the concession stand of the theater where I saw Alex Gibney's new documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, so I had to make do with a couple of cold Coronas.
This dearth of hallucinogenic enhancement may explain why the film seemed to suffer from an excess of politics and a shortage of laughter. Or maybe not.
Gibney, who won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, his anti-war film about the death of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, seems determined to force the square peg of Thompson idiosyncrasies into the round hole of contemporary liberal passions. It's an awkward fit. At times, Gonzo seems more like a celebration of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign than of Thompson's journalism career.

Please read the whole thing. I'm still not sure if there was ibogaine in the popcorn.

UPDATE: Gibney more or less admits to forcing HST to fit his narrative:

"I didn't know what we'd find when we were back there (to the late 1960s), but what we found was this eerie similarity between the conflict over the Vietnam War and the conflict over the Iraq war," Gibney said. "There's a character flaw American policymakers seemed to have -- believing that with a right application of force and a misplaced idealism, you can change the world and make it do what you want it to do."
Both Nixon and Bush "appeal to that aspect of the American electorate that Hunter Thompson understood: fear and loathing. People who are angry. Bush has that ability to manipulate the dark corners of the American id. People who feel they have been displaced, overlooked. Even though his economic policy rudders against them, he manipulates their anger and their fear in ways that don't represent their best possibility. And so, too, did Nixon. He was great at that. Compared to Bush, Nixon looks like an Athenian statesman."

Yeah, sure, fine -- but what the hell does that have to do with Hunter S. Thompson? The man was a reporter, not a political philosopher. And then there's this:

"Wouldn't it be interesting to do a film about a journalist who aggressively didn't play by the rules at a time when the people in power are manipulating reporters by forcing them to play by these phony rules?" Gibney said.

Pray tell, who are these "people in power," and how are they forcing reporters "to play by these phony rules?" Is he talking about publishers?

Frankly, I don't think Gibney knows anything at all about journalism. He's just one of these paranoid people who imagines a rich and powerful (and no doubt, Republican) "them" out there running the world. Which may explain why he's suing the distributor of his Oscar-winning anti-war documentary -- those sinister corporate thieves!

And good luck with that next film deal, after suing the distributor of your last film. Investors just love doing business with a lawsuit-happy crank.

Pass the Ibogaine

Jimmie's tripping on Gonzo, the movie:

[I]t’s hard to tell whether that’s because of the lingering love the ink-stained wretches who write movie reviews have for Thompson or because it’s actually a good movie.

The subjective subject is endlessly fascinating, but the Widow Thompson says it's actually a good movie, too.

Combat dispatch from the Gonzo front

Shawn Macomber apparently noticed I used a Hunter S. Thompson quote in a recent article, and responded to an earlier blog post with this comment:

I never wanted war, Mr. McCain, I just wanted to offer a credible threat that would allow UN inspectors more time to examine your bookshelves and resolve this Gonzo crisis peacefully.

The Mother of All Taunts! If Macomber keeps this up, he's going to find himself in a quagmire with no exit strategy because -- trust me -- I need another excuse to go Gonzo. I need it bad. I need it like Ed Muskie needs more Ibogaine.

The precedent of '72

Monday afternoon, after hearing Dick Morris invoke Willie Horton in reference to the Jeremiah Wright controversy, I knew I had to write this article:

The scandal that refuses to go away, the blunder that cripples a candidacy, the error that defies every effort at correction -- this is what the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has become for Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. . . .
Obama's predicament now resembles nothing so much as that faced by George McGovern in July 1972, after the Democratic presidential nominee belatedly discovered that his vice-presidential choice, Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, had previously been hospitalized for mental illness. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

McGovern's mishandling of the Eagleton affair had been in my mind for several days, primarily because I'd recently finished re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72.

Thompson believed that the way the Eagleton affair was bungled was what doomed McGovern, completely changing public perception of him. The alternative hypothesis was that Nixon's re-election was inevitable. Yet Nixon had his own brewing scandal that year -- the break-in at the Watergate happened about a month before Eagleton was announced as McGovern's running mate. Democrats, however, were unable to get any traction on that scandal, in large part because they were so demoralized by the Eagleton affair.

McGovern, as I explain in the Spectator article, had delayed picking his No. 2 until the week of the convention. That in turn led to a last-minute scramble, and Eagleton essentially lied his way onto the ticket by failing to divulge his previous hospitalizations. Once that was discovered by the press, Eagleton should have resigned -- but he refused to do so, and thus began a 10-day melodrama that made McGovern look ineffective and indecisive.

Obama's failure to put away the Wright controversy in March, so that Wright is still making headlines six weeks later, is very much reminiscent of how the Eagleton affair plagued McGovern's campaign.

Gratuitous Gonzo

Shawn Macomber shoehorns this reference into a story on McCain's business advisor, Carly Fiorina:

No doubt, the picture of McCain tackling unspecified "entrenched interests" may sound to many conservative ears somewhat akin to how Bill Clinton's promise to put 100,000 new cops on the street sounded to Hunter S. Thompson when he and P.J. O'Rourke met the future president at a Little Rock restaurant in 1992. "I was up all night persuading Hunter this was not a personal threat," O'Rourke has recalled.

Don't think I'll sit idly by and let you out-Gonzo me, Macomber. If you want war, you got it.