Fear and Loathing in America
Page 45
Sincerely,
Hunter
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Thompson revealed to his book editor that his campaign for sheriff was really just a means to an end of the “Death of the American Dream” concept.
July 6, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Things are proceeding as planned—or almost: We now have two Freak Power candidates for County Commissioner this fall, instead of one. This is posing some very harsh strategy problems, strikingly reminiscent of the national Demos’ dilemma (sp?) with, say, McGovern & Ted Kennedy. Our McGovern (city councilman Ned Vare—see enc.) can’t win … and our Kennedy, a sure winner, is swearing he won’t run. My own notion, for now, is to force/coax/compel our Kennedy into the CC race—and then, without consulting him, run my Sheriff’s campaign so far to the Crazy Left of him that he will look like a fine moderate by comparison. (The only problem here is that some people think I might win by going Left/Crazy—that in fact it will take that kind of campaign to mobilize the young/drug/fun-hog vote, which is clearly the biggest bloc—by at least 2–1.)
So, rather than try to run a two-track, dual-level effort—with me catching the left/crazier and our Kennedy-type holding the liberals—we may decide, by autumn, to run the whole thing on straight freak-power, leaving the liberals to suck wind. Our decision on this will be fateful, and indeed at some point I might be faced with a serious insurrection inre: my Sheriff’s campaign—which the local liberals still refuse to take seriously. But when they understand that I really intend to run, they’re going to freak out … and at that point we’ll all have to decide just how valuable they are. (And in fact they’re already useless, to me, but I hate to think that I might—by running some kind of bull-headed & egotistical Freak Power campaign for sheriff—destroy our chances of electing the Kennedy-type in the CC race.)
We’ll see. This worries me—particularly since the final chunk of my book depends on my running for sheriff. It would make me feel a bit shitty to get rich off the shattered remains of our action here… and the only solution, as I see it, is to run a Sheriff’s campaign so wild & weird as to guarantee my defeat—in 1970—but which will seem, in 1975, like a fine and reasonable effort. In retrospect. This will be difficult, but I think I can manage it.
In the meantime, I plan to write the first third of the book around last fall’s Joe Edwards campaign, laying the groundwork and background for the Savage Campaign of ’70. And I assume, of course, that upon receipt of this portion (one third) of the book, you will instantly send me $5000. I am putting it together right now, in fact, in the skeleton form of an article for Rolling Stone. Carey McWilliams has asked for a piece on the Sheriff’s campaign, but I hesitate to say I’ll do it for him, in light of the book action. What do you think? Send word. …
Thanx,
Hunter
TO RALPH STEADMAN:
Steadman had agreed to draw President Nixon for the next Aspen Wallposter.
July 6, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Ralph …
Indeed. Send the Nixon drawings as soon as possible, airmail. All you have to do is submit them to what we in the colonies call a copy camera (the Times probably has a dozen of them on the premises) and send us 8 × 10 copies. That way, you never have to let the originals out of your hands. (But if you’ve already sent the others, don’t worry—we’ll have them copied and return them unharmed.) In any case, we want the Nixon art for #5, which is now in the works—so make haste!!!
While I think of it, Pat Oliphant—The Denver Post’s political cartoonist—says hello. He’s coming up with his family this weekend for a stay, & to do some Aspen drawings for us. Maybe I told you … ??? … but he was the first artist I called when I got the idea about doing the Derby piece. But he couldn’t handle it because he had to go to a cartoonists’ convention in London. And when he got back he lamented the fact that he hadn’t met you. He wasn’t sure where you were… until I told him about the Derby & he saw the drawings. Very weird. … He’s very big over here (Pulitzer Prize, etc.) & says you’re the best in England, that Scarfe31 stole all he knows from you, etc. … But I straightened him out & told him what you were really like.
As for Scanlan’s, Warren has been mumbling something about sending me to Australia to do a piece about the kangaroo slaughter …& I said OK, but I wanted you along to do the art. If you push the Alaska tangent from your end, we can probably work up a dual assignment out of it somewhere. I also suggested a series of Thompson-Steadman visits to “sacred American institutions”—like the Super Bowl, Labor Day in Detroit, Mardi Gras, etc. … we’ll see what happens.
Inre: the other (local antagonist) drawings, I’m still looking for a clutch of decent photos to send you. It’s imperative that your drawings resemble the monster we are going up against. We intend to make heavy use of your drawing—not only as a Wallposter cover, but also for street-art. I’ll send details when I get the right photos. Very soon …
Your thing with the Times sounds fine. Are they letting you run loose and vicious? Heath32 seems like perfect fodder. I think you are heading for a sort of Nixon-era over there. Good luck …
I’m also enclosing Wallposter #4, which lists you as chief of the London bureau. We have plenty of extras, so if you know anybody who runs a bookstore, let me know and I’ll send you some Wallposters for sale in London.
And … as a closing note, you’ll get a boot out of knowing that I’m trying to sell our Derby nightmare as a screenplay. No luck, so far, but I’ve just started trying. I’ll keep you posted.
Ciao …
Hunter
P.S. Jim, my youngest brother, is living out here with me now & says hello. He’s the one you didn’t draw….
TO LARRY O’BRIEN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE:
Back in 1964 Thompson had written to Lawrence O’Brien, then a White House aide to President Lyndon Johnson, asking to be considered for the governorship of American Samoa—and to his surprise had received a serious and courteous reply. Shortly after the 1968 election, O’Brien had been named chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
July 7, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Larry O’Brien …
Your last letter—rejecting my application for the Governorship of American Samoa—still cuts to the quick when I read it. And I’d forgotten all about you, except for that one foul blow, until I saw you tonight on TV—in what has to stand as one of the most wretched & ineffectual uses of free network time in the history of television.
You came off worse than Nixon, and that’s not easy. All it did—for me and all of my friends who watched—was confirm our sad conviction that the Democratic Party is doomed to extinction. I say this as an experienced politician. Last fall I was campaign manager for a 29-year-old Freak Power candidate for Mayor of Aspen. Beginning on October 1, we mounted a whirlwind registration campaign (2 wks before our candidate decided to run), and we lost the election—to a state GOP committeewoman—by only six votes. We did this despite active opposition from the incumbent (Democratic) mayor, the one-owner local media-cartel & all local Demo functionaries. Now, looking forward to November ’70, we’re entirely confident of beating both the GOP & the Democrats in the crucial County Commissioner race.
In this context, and against this very active background, your presentation tonight of the “Democrats’ Case” against Nixon seems almost as lame and irrelevant as the Humphrey-style bullshit we get from the local Democrats, whose once-dominant influence has withered so badly since 1964 that they are now out-numbered 4–1 by Independents & 2–1 by Republicans.
Meanwhile, we have no trouble getting new voters to register—as Independents—and to vote for the kind of candidates who once might have run as Democrats. If I were you I would ponder this kind of development, particularly in light of the upcoming 18-year-old vote. How many students can George Meany33 deliver?
But what the hell? It’s a waste
of time, I think, to be writing this kind of letter … and in fact I began it as a sort of joke, harking back to those days when you still had enough humor in you to cope with my application for the Governorship of American Samoa in the same spirit that led me to write it. And it seemed terribly sad, tonight, to watch you sitting there like a tired old ward-heeler, presiding over film-clips of JFK.
I can’t even wish you good luck, because I honestly believe that the best thing that can happen to the Democratic Party is for the whole goddamn thing to simply disappear. As a gang of impotent relics, you people are blocking the road. There is a hell of a lot of energy waiting to be unleashed on the Nixon mob, but men like you & Humphrey are never going to tap it. So why don’t you get the hell out of the way & let us get on with the job?
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO THE POLICE CHIEF:
The Police Chief was a monthly magazine for cops.
July 8, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
The Police Chief
1319 18th St. N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Gentlemen:
I would like to subscribe to The Police Chief. Please send me the annual rates at once, or—if possible—start my subscription immediately and bill me. Time is a factor, since I am currently running for the office of County Sheriff, and friends have told me that The Police Chief magazine might be a great help to me while campaigning.
Thank you,
Hunter S. Thompson
Chief Magistrate
Box 37
Woody Creek, Colo.
81656
TO NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN, THE WASHINGTON POST:
Left-leaning Washington Post Style section writer Nicholas von Hoffman had claimed in an article for the New American Review that after the Post ran his particularly harsh column decrying the April 30, 1970, U.S.–South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the Nixon administration had tried to co-opt him by soliciting his views at an “impromptu” meeting—set up by White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler with the president’s domestic policy adviser, John Ehrlichman, who, von Hoffman wrote, ended their conversation by telling him: “We’re counting on leaders like yourself to keep things calm.”
July 9, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Nicholas von Hoffman …
In the wake of tonight’s Board Meeting, with the other members gone wild outside on fire and strange drugs, it is not an easy thing for me to sit down here & inform you by mail that tonite you were voted … yes … get ready …the New Chief of the Aspen Wallposter’s Washington Bureau. The salary is $96,000 per annum—payable when the Meat Possum Press Ltd. (our parent organization) goes public & net stock sales reach $500,000. In the meantime, we have a man who will co-sign your loans free of charge, for almost any amount.
The duties of the Washington Bureau Chief are commensurate with the salary. Your only task—once your appointment is confirmed—will be to pass on occasional rumors & libels too heinous for publication anywhere else. The Wallposter is judgement-proof, and we intend to keep it that way. I’m enclosing #4, the most recent issue, and any others I can find. As you see, by the mast-head, we are rapidly expanding our staff. Tonight we fired both the LA & SF bureau chiefs—& we had good reasons. “T. M. Goddard” is the pseudonym of a San Francisco lawyer gone mad on cocaine; and Oscar Acosta, our man in LA, has not been rational since he was defeated, last month, in his campaign for the office of Sheriff. Warren Hinckle has agreed to re-organize the ruins of our SF hq., and Dennis Hopper will take over LA. The NY bureau chief will be fired tomorrow. Indeed, he was due for the axe tonight, but the meeting went out of control before we could cope with that matter. Two of the directors went down to the river-bridge with a case of dynamite, and Pat Oliphant—who signed on today as Illustrator in Residence—has gone up on the mesa to shoot bats with a .410. And his wife, they say, has gone after him with a handful of horse tranquilizers.
In any case, I want to welcome you to the team & finish this letter so I can get some sleep. We lead active lives out here in the West; our office operates 25 hours a day & you can rest assured that our facilities will be made available to you whenever you check in. Our next issue will be going to press in a week or so, and unless we hear from you at once your appointment will be realized on the masthead. As for filing, my only query for now concerns Ray Price, Nixon’s speechwriter. Is he still there? Is he alive? The last time I saw him he was losing badly at liar’s dice with Pat Buchanan … and I worry about him.
In closing, allow me to congratulate you once again on your appointment to the far-flung Wallposter staff. Your salary will begin piling up the moment we hear from you.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
Editorial Director
Aspen Wallposter
TO CARRIE PETERSON, WJZ-TV13:
The free Rolling Stones concert that drew 300,000 to California’s Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969, had turned deadly when a group of Hell’s Angels hired to provide security for the band went berserk and beat a young black fan to death, allegedly for brushing against one of their motorcycles.
July 14, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Carrie Peterson
Contact WJZ-TV13
Television Hill
Baltimore, MD 21211
Dear Miss Peterson …
Thanks for your letter & your interest in my Hell’s Angels book. Random House was correct in saying that I am “presently not appearing to discuss (the) book”—mainly because I’ve had nothing to do with the Angels since I finished writing about them, and I think it would sound a bit silly for me to get propped up on TV and try to sound wise and/or hip on a subject I’m no longer qualified to talk about.
As for East Coast bike-gang “experts,” I don’t know any of them either. Several years ago I talked briefly to some people from a gang called the “Pagans,” from the Washington/Baltimore area … and they were very interested in picking up hints on how to act like Hell’s Angels. But I couldn’t help them much, and still can’t. As a matter of fact I became very tired of being cast in the role of a PR man for the Angels, and that’s why I stopped talking about them—in public or anywhere else.
Since Altamont, however (Dec ’69), I’ve found myself defending what I wrote from time to time—on the grounds that what I wrote in ’66/’67 was a blueprint for what happened in ’69—and that aspect of the book is the only one that interests me now. What I said then was that the Hell’s Angels and all their ilk were the vanguard of an Agnew-style constituency—a new breed of Brownshirts, as it were—and now, three years later, I believe that far more strongly than I did when I wrote it. Both the Weathermen and the Hard-Hats are blood-cousins to the Angels … and if you feel like talking about this aspect of the book on TV, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at it.
I get to NY now & then, and occasionally to Washington, but at the moment I’m locked in here trying to finish a new book for RH. Beyond that, I’ll be running for sheriff of Aspen in the fall … and right now I’m trying to put my campaign platform together. (Which suddenly reminds me that one of my platform consultants lives in Falls Church, Va., so perhaps a trip east might work out. …) Anyway, I have no idea what’s involved. We’d all be better off if you contacted my agent, Lynn Nesbit, at the International Famous Agency (jesus, that sounds awful—but those fuckers are agents for the Grateful Dead, too …).
From my own POV, I’d just as soon come east and rave on TV almost anytime between now & Sept—if only because I could justify the trip for various other reasons. But September and October will be busy months here, and after that I won’t be doing any traveling until maybe late November—depending on the outcome of the local election.
So what the hell? If any of this interests you, check with Lynn & let me know. If not, good luck with whoever you can dig up.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO RALPH STEADMAN:
Warre
n Hinckle had given the go-ahead for a Thompson-Steadman Report in Scanlan’s Monthly debunking America’s most venerable institutions.
July 18, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Ralph …
Prepare yourself; I suspect we have struck a very weird & maybe-rich vein … but instead of laboring over details I’ll just enc. a copy (see below) of a suggestion I sent about 2 wks ago to Warren Hinckle … to wit:
“… I thought I’d pass on a suggestion that one of my enemies laid on me today: “Why don’t you just travel around the country and shit on everything?” he shouted. “Just go from New York to California and write your venomous bullshit about everything that people respect!” Which sounds like a nice idea—a series of Ky. Derby–style articles (with Steadman) on things like the Super Bowl, Times Sq. on New Year’s eve, Mardi Gras, the Masters (golf) Tournament, the America’s Cup, Christmas Day with the Chicago Police, Grand National Rodeo in Denver … rape them all, quite systematically and then we could sell it as a book: “Amerikan Dreams. …” Ah yes, I can hear them weeping already … where will the fuckers show up next? Where indeed? Ponder it, & send word. …”
That (exactly as reproduced above) is what I sent to Warren—& yesterday he called from NY, saying “Yes, let’s try it.” He suggested that we call it “The Thompson-Steadman Report” and bill it right from the start as a long and awful series (or maybe he said Steadman-Thompson …heh …I can’t quite recall). In any case, he told me to call you at once & get started in London, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly I would say … and I think it behooves us, at this point, not to waste any more of Scanlan’s money than we have to.
Because I think this Rape-Series is a king-bitch dog-fucker of an idea. We could go almost anywhere & turn out a series of articles so weird & frightful as to stagger every mind in journalism. “As we buckled down for the approach to New Orleans I snorted the last of our cocaine. Steadman, far gone on acid, had locked himself in the men’s room somewhere over St. Louis & the head stewardess was frantic. I knew I would need psychic strength & energy when we landed—to meet the press limousine & get on with our heinous work. …”