Tag Archives: hunter thompson

GENESIS OF QANON

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Hunter Thompson originated QAnon. He advanced the Thompson Report concept in a book or periodical proposal to his publisher in 1968, The Gonzo Papers, Vol II, p. 15-16. Thompson called it root-hog journalism:

[15] “We have to keep in mind that various outrages are in fact being planned, and that I probably wouldn’t have much trouble getting a vague battle plan…but of course that wouldn’t be enough. I’d have to mix up fact and fantasy so totally that nobody could be sure which was which. We could bill it as a fantastic piece of root-hog journalism – The Thompson Report, as it were. This courageous journalist crept into the sewers of the American underground and emerged with a stinking heap of enemy battle plans – and just in time, by god, [16] to warn the good guys what to watch for. Oh, I would have a ratlin good time with it…I could even compost a fictitious interview with Guru Bailey, the Demo chieftain, during which I try to warn him of this impending disaster and he reacts first in anger, then with tears, throwing down hooker after hooker of gin during our conversation. And a private chat with Johnson, who heard of my dread information and summoned me to the White House for a toilet-side interview with two recording secretaries – a bracing fag and a nervous old woman from New Orleans – taking notes on a voice writer(s) – echoing my words, and Lyndon’s, for the private record.

…(The Case of the Naked Colonel…did you ever see that? A fantastic story and absolutely true..a Pentagon colonel found naked in his car, passed out on the steering wheel with a pistol in each hand… no explanation.)

…Richard Nixon… calls me at my Chicago hotel, during the course of my research and offers me $20,000 for my information…then a meeting with Nixon and his advisors, they want to exploit the freak-out…but an argument erupts when one elf Nixon’s aide makes a crude remark about his daughter – undertones of drugs and nymphomania, Julie, caught in the 14th green at Palm Springs with a negro caddy at midnight, the caddy now in prison, framed on a buggy count.”

It is shameful that the Republicans can originate nothing of their own. The Reps have to reach into the 1960s and Hunter Thompson’s prowess for their journalistic ideas to produce fantasies. The Nixon fact might be raw in 1968, but today anything goes, do your own thing, I have freedom. Every Rep. believes that. They bare all and welcome any overt violence by fragile white people, exhibiting truly hippy behaviors like those manifested during the 1960s in San Francisco., and later elsewhere. Indeed, most of the participants of January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in Washington DC looked like hippies – unshaven, unclean, sneering, uncontrollable, likely on meth…

Thompson’s media proposal is being used by the Reps today.

POOR LANGUAGE

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When I read and hear language today to describe one politician or another and actions, in or out of office, I realize America has not learned from its heritage. Everyone writing and speaking is inept, ineffective and inexact. They are uneducated; they are relaxed; they are polite.

At the height of the Sixties Hunter Thompson and Rolling Stone magazine ran severe articles about anything. Some of Thompson’s words appear in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, and The Great Shark Hunt. Upon reading the 1972 campaign book Pat Buchanan relieved his friend Thompson by telling the author, “I thought it was funny.” If one did not like the contents (comments about everything and everybody), it was difficult to disagree with the quality of the writing.

What has happened in the 50 years since Thompson and Rolling Stone opened up? The quality of writing has fallen. Everyone thinks they are either Woodward or Bernstein; they got degrees from a school of journalism without much newspaper experience; they know how to use word processing and the Internet. They haven’t read many books so don’t know much about writing (anyone read Ernie Pyle?); they know little of the times of their early lives. I doubt if many know what the CFR is. (Code of Federal Regulations). How many have seen, picked up and read (very small print) the Federal Register. (Daily publication of new and proposed Federal Regulations)

Many reporters today likely know people elected to and serving in government but do they know them as well as Bob Woodward knew Mark Felt, Deep Throat. All today’s reporters can talk as though always sitting before camera on live TV. Their comments, Left and Right, are poor, unknowledgeable and ill-expressed. They talk like robots, hooked up to a word processing program with proper political views using language as colorful as the programer’s.

Comedians might meet the standard of language variety, if they wrote their own stuff. But a comedian likes to speak one or two lines and get relief: funny, funny, funny, Hardy – Har – Har. To have impacts comments must be longer and better expressed. Who is prepared to talk about approaching Don Trump’s event horizon and leaving existence forever?