Hunter Thompson commits suicide

[Comrade]

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html

"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67

By Troy Hooper
Special to The Denver Post


Post file
Hunter S. Thompson in his Woody Creek home, February 1997




Woody Creek - Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.

Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.
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"On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.

"Details and interviews may be forthcoming when the family has had the time to recover from the trauma of the tragedy," Braudis said in an interview from Owl Farm, the rural Woody Creek home he moved into in the 1960s.

Thompson grew up in Kentucky. He is married to Anita Thompson, who grew up in Fort Collins. His son Juan lives and works in Denver. His grandson is William Thompson.

Thompson's books include "Hell's Angels," "The Proud Highway" and his most recent effort, "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

For those who know of him and has read his later works, Thompson became a raving moonbat in his later years and rabid America hater. Whether his suicidal tendencies caused him to becom a radical Anti-American lib, or he became suicidal because he was a liberal proven wrong, is a mystery. But surely every time I hear another rant from the left again, I'll picture themselves shooting themselves in the head... its only fitting.

And if you think that I'm too harsh on the poor soul, his tirades against the people which celebrated his past work and made him rich and famous are exactly why I can't manage to weep for him killing himself.


Apparently, Thomson's last years were spent churning out sports-related pieces for ESPN's Page Two section, and one of his pieces in May of 2004 had this classic example of moral equivalence and in a way, Holocaust denial.

The long-dreaded 2004 Olympics in Greece will be the ultimate crossroads for sports and politics in this new and vicious century. The recent photos of cruelty at the Abu Grahaib all-american prison in Baghdad have taken care of that.

Yes, sir. We have taken the bull by the horns on this one, sports fans. These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line. Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport. Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.

Oh, the horror of the U.S. being represented at the Olympics! I think the free elections in Iraq must have pushed this guy over the edge like a malfunctioning computer. America=Nazi Germany=Democracy in Iraq? Does ... Not ... Compute... fizzle.... BANG!

Maybe Michael Moore and other libtard notables will also take things into their own hands and end their shame and grief. One can only hope.

 

[KarlMarx]

When someone takes their life like this, you have to wonder why. It's pretty obvious the person had a problem, usually, depression worsened by alcohol and/or drug abuse (LINK). I wouldn't be surprised if he was into both.

Obviously, something was eating the guy.... I have to wonder, if it was a similarity he shared with his fellow America haters. My guess is one trait he shared with his fellow America haters was that he was the sort that was perpetually sarcastic, had something bad to say about everything and everyone plus he hated, and was bored with, himself, his life and everything around him. I'm sure we've all met the type. Furthermore, he was probably constantly spewing his poison and justifying it as a form of honesty. He managed to turn this hatred of his fellow man (and by extension of his country and fellow countrymen) into a livelihood and unfortunately, was able to hoodwink his readship into believing that he actually had something of value to offer them through his writings.

 

[Annie]

I like this excerpt regarding Thompson:

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/05/0205/022105.html

...Hunter S. Thompson and Sandra Dee died on the same Yahoo most-emailed page. There’s some telling symmetry in that. Dee, who died of organ failure, was a sunny perky teen idol with a dark past – sexual abuse, domineering show-biz mom, public divorce, alcoholism, health ills. But she “turned her life around,” in the lingo of Behind the Scenes; she had a good last act, and she didn’t trade on her pains to craft a public persona. People think "Sandra Dee," they think the happy teen Tammy still.

HST killed himself. He never would have “turned his life around” – that’s a hard thing to try when the room’s been spinning for 40 years. Depression? Wouldn’t be surprising. A bad verdict from the doc? Wouldn’t be surprising. A great writer in his prime, but the DVD of his career would have the last two decades on the disc reserved for outtakes and bloopers. It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else’s satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right...

 

[OCA]

This is what too much acid results in. The guy was a wingnut, loved by mostly other wingnut druggies.

 

[onedomino]

Hunter Thompson Dies, CBS News Anchor Field Narrows
by Scott Ott

http://www.scrappleface.com/ (Satire)

(2005-02-21) -- With the announcement that columnist and so-called 'gonzo journalist' Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide over the weekend, the field of potential replacements for Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News has "narrowed significantly," according to one network source.

Mr. Thompson, whose stock-in-trade subjectivity and vigorous injection of personal opinion became the template for much of modern journalism, was author of several books including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and A Generation of Swine. But he was perhaps best known to the elderly as the inspiration for the Doonesbury comic character, Duke.

"Hunter Thompson was a natural to inherit the big desk at CBS," said the unnamed network source. "Edgy, acerbic and not afraid to weave his political agenda into the story...many viewers would have simply thought that Dan Rather had ditched the toupee."

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