Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail '72

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72
I started reading this book last year, beginning with the primary campaign insanity of Obama vs. Clinton, and was always struck by how closely it mirrored the political situation of '72. It was pretty surreal to see what a grotesque assortment of by-laws and procedures really go in to the election process and the extreme highs and lows that the whole process can take you to.

Thompson recounts the entire '72 election season, from the insane drama surrounding the democratic primaries to Nixon's dominating victory in November. Along the way you get to see the insanity that the candidates and their surrogates devolve into. Politics is dirty, slimy, awful and addictive - Thompson knows this. He approaches politics with a healthy respect, the same that he reserves for hard drugs like heroin. Through Thompson, we can see how people both young and old get sucked into the world of politics. How they become addicted to the polling numbers, the talking heads on television, the debates, the thrill of winning, etc. Once people get sucked into that world, they rarely get out, which is why Thompson tries to hard to keep himself from becoming one of those people. He even entertains delusions of running for office himself before realizing what he's becoming and abandoning the whole scene entirely.

I'm an unabashed Thompson fanboy and haven't found a thing written by the man that I didn't like except for some of his sports columns. I just feel that the man had a unique style, voice, and way of looking at the world that can't really be emulated by anyone else. Thompson may have believed he created something new with "gonzo journalism," and he did, but he created a type of writing that only he was capable of doing. Everyone who tried to follow in his gonzo footsteps ended up just aping his specific mannerisms and style instead of doing something new. Gonzo journalism isn't writing in the style of Hunter S. Thompson. It's combining fiction with the reporting in order to create something that while not totally factual, gets across the feeling and importance of the news story in a way straight reporting never could. It's reporting that really makes one feel that there were there, in the thick of things.

What made Thompson great at this style of journalism was his ability to stay above the fray. From the Kentucky Derby to his Las Vegas drug expeditions to his political coverage, Thompson always seemed a millisecond away from snapping or going insane, but he didn't. He always had one thing to hold him back and keep him from getting totally absorbed in the madness surrounding him, and that was his obligation to report the story. If he didn't always stay that one step away from the edge, there would have been no one to report back and tell people what was happening in these forgotten little recesses of the world. It's not like Thompson was a saint or was abstaining from much, but I always admired that conviction to resist the urge to join wholeheartedly in the madness around him - to always think about the story at hand and what he was trying to convey to people.