As a sports writer Hunter S. Thompson
injected his joy or disgust into his stories. As for politics, since 2000 it was just disgust. In his
book "Hey Rube," published in 2004, he bounced between these two passions-–
railing against blood sports and the downward spiral of dumbness. He called the collection "Modern
History from the Sports Desk."
"We have seen weird times in this country before, but the year 2000
is beginning to look super weird. This time there really is nobody flying the plane. We are living in dangerously weird times
now. Smart people just shrug and admit they’re dazed and confused. The only ones left with any confidence at all are
the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.
So let’s stick it to sports. He
thought the best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. He made a list of New Rules to limit
all baseball, football, and hockey games to three hours, at which time the score would be final. He wanted the baseball season
trimmed to 110 games– and over by Labor Day.
He thought that Congress should pass a special criminal fraud law to
permanently banish professional boxing. "Pro football is a pure sport. It may be fixed, but at least it is artfully fixed,"–
unlike boxing: "a horrible traveling hoax that’s turned itself into a bag of poison scum."
He was a oner– a vulnerable, honorable, and vital writer who
made his own, somewhat outrageous, rules. A native of Kentucky, he lived his later life in a fortified compound near Aspen,
Colorado, where he worked hard, and-- when friends came to visit- played gleefully.
