Blast from the past: HST's 1994 Nixon obit

[mark0rama]

All this Reagan adoration reminds me that ten years ago, as Nixon was being hailed as some sort of statesman, I waited for someone to unleash a blast of truth. Hunter S. Thompson came to my rescue (Rolling Stone, 16 June 1994):

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."

(snip)

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

(snip)

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

Read the whole glorious column here: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm

[callous taoboy]

1. Met HST

at Ken Kesey's farm back in the early 90's. That was an exceptional evening. Dr. Thompson kept throwing out these classic one-liners (this was during Gulf War I), e.g.: "Goddamn George Bush, every time before he gets in front of a camera his aides have to spray a clear plastic coating over his face to keep him from cracking up."

[Career Prole]

2. LOL! "...his aides have to spray a clear plastic coating

over his face to keep him from cracking up."

They're buying that shit in bulk nowadays.