What the MSM won't tell you about Hunter S. Thompson's suicide...

Hunter S. Thompson was a rebel to be sure. But just because he liked to shoot his guns while wearing his bathrobe doesn't mean he wasn't a lefty. Why do think journalists loved the guy? Why do you think Johnny Depp played him in the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Why do you think he was Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner's buddy?

Look, Thompson may have been a cutting-edge writer but he was a basically not much more than a old hippie who took a lot of drugs and idolized Jack Kerouac.

Stephanie Mansfield interviewed several folks who knew the real Thompson for her article in the Washington Times today:

"He was depressed about the state of society," said Loren Jenkins, foreign editor for National Public Radio in Washington. A vehement opponent of President Bush, Mr. Thompson, 67, "was feeling maudlin about the current conservatism sweeping the country," Mr. Jenkins said. "He felt he'd had a long run, trying to create a freer society in the '60s and '70s and he felt it had all been closed down."

Another Bush hater so consumed by his misery over the last election, he pretends he's Ernest Hemingway and takes a bullet to the head. And why is the guy so famous? Well, basically because he was a whack-job:

Known to magazine editors as a prima donna who turned in outlandish expense accounts and demanded high fees, he nevertheless earned respect for his entertaining rants. Mr. Jenkins said Rolling Stone once sent Mr. Thompson on assignment to Vietnam. Rather than cover the war, he spent his entire stay in a Saigon bar getting drunk and arguing on the telephone with editor Jann Wenner, who had canceled the writer's health insurance.

We should all be sad when someone takes their own life in a fit of desperation, but let's look at the whole picture of the man's life before we go and award him a post-humous pulitzer, shall we?

UPDATE: 1:55 pm
A blurb at the end of Stephen Schwartz's Weekly Standard column on Thompson really adds a nice coda here:

Posted by: Gary at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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