The Good Doctor Prescribes.

“There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it ‘vengeful’ and ‘primitive’ and ‘perverse’ regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. ‘That kind of stuff is opinion,’ they say, ‘and the reader is cheated if it’s not labeled as opinion.’

“Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal ‘objective journalism.’ Mencken understood that politics – as used in journalism – was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it.”

Via Brain Pickings, the late and missed Hunter S. Thompson (RIP) makes the case for advocacy journalism. “With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” (HST pic via here.)

The High-Water Mark.

“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Good Riddance, Jesse.

Our nation’s been waiting with bated breath for years. But, at long last — Happy B-day, America! — Sen. Jesse Helms has shuffled off this mortal coil. (1921-2008) “Ed Feulner, president of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, hailed Helms as ‘one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century.’ ‘Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people,’ Feulner wrote.“

Um, yeah. As with Strom’s passing in 2003, it’s worth rereading Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obit right about now. “I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum. Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man…Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.“

Same goes for Helms and the Senate. If, God forbid, the media roll over as they did at Helms’ retirement and try to “Russert-ize” Helms now that the racist, homophobic bastard is finally gone, remember this: He was the worst kind of racebaiting scum and the worst kind of hypocrite. He camouflaged his divisive hatred by slathering it in fake, aw-shucks populism. And he spent his career serving the dictates of the wealthiest and screwing over the good people of North Carolina, white and black. Our nation is a brighter place with his passing. [Helms photo via here.]

Fear and Loathing in Bendy-Bulletland.

In the trailer bin, assassin-prodigy James McAvoy foregoes the doldrums of cubicle life for quality time with Angelina Jolie in the new domestic trailer for Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted, a.k.a. this summer’s big dumb Matrix-y action flick (and, mind you, I don’t mean that perjoratively in the slightest.) And director Alex Gibney of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side takes on the Good Doctor in the new trailer for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. Not sure if the latter will make it to this area, but I’m looking forward to it.

Go Baby Go.

A hearty congrats and best wishes to high-school friend Steve and his lovely new bride Alicia as they begin their journey down the road of marital bliss. I was privileged to attend their nuptials this past weekend in the Ken-tuck-ee province, city of Louisville — “home of the Kentucky Derby and Hunter S. Thompson,” according to my US Air pilot — and it was grand fun. (Our revelry, also a mini-high school reunion of sorts, was probably more in keeping with the spirit of the late Good Doctor…the phrase “alcohol-soaked” comes to mind. That being said, I did manage while there to visit world-famous Churchill Downs long enough to lose ten bucks on what I thought was an aptly-named horse…sigh, you let me down, obiwankenobi, even if the city of Louisville did not.)

Falwell’s that Ends Well.

Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007. My thoughts on this are basically the same as on Strom’s passing in 2003, and once again I’d refer everyone to Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obit. Of course, it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead…still, I’m sure countless people and pets around the world passed yesterday who are more deserving of eulogy than this contemptible, hypocritical bigot. Let’s just hope, for Falwell’s sake, that God is more compassionate and forgiving than he ever was.

Arianna’s Salon.

The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington’s answer to Matt Drudge, went live today, with a handful of celebrity postings (for example, John Cusack on Hunter) and a blogroll of the usual suspects. Seems ok, I guess, although I think Huffington would do well to make the site layout look less like the print version of The Onion.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Mark over at Nofeblog has collected some of the more compelling eulogies of Hunter S. Thompson, including ones by cartoonist Ralph Steadman and colleagues Tom Wolfe and David Halberstam.

The Proud Highway’s End.

“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005. Ugh, this is terrible news. Yes, his writing had been inconsistent in recent years, but Thompson at his take-no-prisoners best was a brilliant, lacerating voice that pierced through the platitudes and hypocrisy of so much of this world. This final succumbing to the Fear and Loathing, especially at this dark political hour when we need him most, is tragic.

I had several links to catch up on after my trip, but frankly right now my heart isn’t in it. Godspeed, HST.

Fanboy Post-Mortems.

Some pop culture quotes that, applicable or not, have been flitting about my head the past few days:

“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.“
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Where is the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
They’ve passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow.

The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow.”
– Theoden, The Two Towers

“Ladies and gentlemen, er, we’ve just lost the picture, but, uh, what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over — ‘conquered’, if you will — by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”
– Kent Brockman, “Deep Space Homer” (This last one birddogged, after much mutual quoting, by Mark at Nofeblog.)