May 29, 2003

HUNTER S. THOMPSON REFLECTS

My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. Two grim-looking Agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was a "prime suspect'' in the case of a Federal Mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus. It was a Federal Offense, they said, and carried a five-year prison sentence.

"Oh no!" wailed my mother. "Not in prison! That's insane! He's only a child. How could he have known?"

"The warning is clearly printed on the Mailbox," said the agent in the gray suit. "He's old enough to read."

"Not necessarily," my father said sharply. "How do you know he's not blind, or a moron?"

"Are you a moron, son?" the agent asked me. "Are you blind? Were you just pretending to read that newspaper when we came in?" He pointed to the Louisville Courier-Journal on the couch.

"That was only the sports section," I told him. "I can't read the other stuff."

"See?" said my father. "I told you he was a moron."

Posted by Tim Blair at May 29, 2003 10:39 PM
Comments

The innocent little Gonzo and his mates tip a mail box in front of a bus as justifiable revenge on a nasty bus driver. Today kids tag the glass on buses as justifable revenge on a society that alienates them. Boo hoo.

Does Dr Gonzo really see himself as an inncocent child or is it simply the misrecollected thoughts of someone who drinks too much or was savagely beaten by his Hell's Angels mates? Who cares?

Like his pappy might have were he still alive, "once a moron, always a moron".

Posted by: ZsaZsa at May 29, 2003 at 11:40 PM

Father knew best.

Posted by: Robert Crawford at May 30, 2003 at 12:22 AM

Thompson is a leftist dork who doesn't know crap about basketball.

Posted by: Edward at May 30, 2003 at 04:38 AM

The nitwit should have been reading the Louisville Times. It was a vastly superior paper.

Posted by: hbchrist at May 30, 2003 at 05:28 AM

Isn't the point that he now wishes he had never done it? Quote:

"Without it, I would be an entirely different man today, a product of an utterly different environment. I would not be talking to you this way, or sitting alone at this ******* typewriter at 4:23 A.M. with an empty drink beside me and an unlit cigarette in my mouth and a naked woman singing "Porgy & Bess" on TV across the room."

I mean, what life is that? No beer, no friends, and you can watch a naked woman only on TV.

Posted by: Berend de Boer at May 30, 2003 at 09:44 AM

Last line of the extract to which Tim links:

"It may be that every culture needs an Outlaw god of some kind, and maybe this time around I'm it."

You outlaw, you.

Posted by: Preston Whip at May 30, 2003 at 01:57 PM