Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Jesus! Another tangent, and right up front, this time—the whole lead, in fact, completely fucked. What can I say? Last week I blew the whole thing. Total failure. Missed the deadline, no article, no wisdom, no excuse … Except one: Yes, I was savagely and expertly duped by one of the oldest con trips in politics.

  By Frank Mankiewicz,15 of all people. That scurvy, rumpled, treacherous little bastard … If I were running for President I would hire Mankiewicz to handle the press for me, but as a journalist I wouldn’t shed a tear if I picked up tomorrow’s paper and saw where nine thugs had caught poor Frank in an alley near the Capitol and cut off both of his Big Toes, making it permanently impossible for him to keep his balance for more than five or six feet in any direction.

  The image is horrible: Mankiewicz gets a phone call from Houston, saying the Texas delegation is on the verge of selling out to a Humphrey/Wallace coalition … he slams down the phone and lunges out of his cubicle in “McGovern for President” headquarters, bouncing off the door-jamb and then grabbing the Coke machine in order to stay upright—then lunging again into Rick Stearns’16 office to demand a detailed breakdown on the sex lives and bad debts of every member of the Texas delegation … then, trying to catch his breath, gasping for air from the terrible exertion, he finally lunges back down the hall to his own cubicle.

  It is very hard to walk straight with the Big Toes gone; the effect is sort of like taking the keel off a sailboat—it becomes impossibly top-heavy, wallowing crazily in the swells, needing outriggers to hold it upright … and the only way a man can walk straight with no Big Toes is to use a very complex tripod mechanism, five or six retractable aluminum rods strapped to each arm, moving around like a spider instead of a person.

  Ah … this seems to be getting heavy. Very harsh and demented language. I have tried to suppress these feelings for more than a week, but every time I sit down at a typewriter they foam to the surface. So it is probably better—if for no other reason than to get past this ugly hang-up and into the rest of the article—to just blow it all out and take the weight off my spleen, as it were, with a brief explanation.

  Morning again in downtown Los Angeles; dawn comes up on this city like a shitmist. Will it burn off before noon? Will the sun eventually poke through? That is the question they’ll be asking each other down there on the Pool Terrace below my window a few hours from now. I’m into my eighteenth day as a resident of the Wilshire Hyatt House Hotel, and I am getting to know the dreary routine of this place pretty well.

  Outside of that pigsty in Milwaukee, this may be the worst hotel in America. The Sheraton-Schroeder remains in a class of its own: Passive incompetence is one thing, but aggressive nazi hostility on the corporate level is something else again. The only thing these two hotels have in common is that the Sheraton (ITT) chain got rid of them: The Schroeder was sold to a local business magnate, and this grim hulk ended up as a part of the Hyatt House chain.

  As far as I know there was no pool in the Schroeder. Maybe a big grease pit or a scum vat of some kind on the roof, but I never saw a pool. There were rumors of a military-style S&M gallery in the basement with maybe an ice water plunge for the survivors, but I never saw that one either. There was no way to deal with management personnel in the Schroeder unless your breath smelled heavily of sauerbraten … and in fact one of the happiest things about my life, these days, is that my memories of life in the Sheraton-Schroeder are becoming mercifully dim. The only open sore that remains from that relationship is the trouble I’m still having with the IBM typewriter-rental service in Milwaukee—with regard to the $600 Selectric Typewriter I left behind the desk when I checked out. It was gone when the IBM man came around to pick it up the next morning, and now they want me to pay for it.

  Right. Another contribution to the Thousand Year Reich: “We will march on a road of bones….” Tom Paxton wrote a song about it. And now I get these harsh letters from Milwaukee: “Herr Docktor Thompson—Der Typewriting machine you rented hass disappeared! And you vill of course pay!”

  No. Never in hell. Because I have a receipt for that typewriter.

  But first things first. We were talking about motorcycles. Jackson and I were out there in Ventura fucking around with a 750 Honda and an experimental prototype of the new Vincent—a 1000-cc brute that proved out to be so awesomely fast that I didn’t even have time to get scared of it before I found myself coming up on a highway stoplight at ninety miles an hour and then skidding halfway through the intersection with both wheel-brakes locked.

  A genuinely hellish bike. Second gear peaks around 65—cruising speed on the freeways—and third winds out somewhere between 95 and 100. I never got to fourth, which takes you up to 120 or so—and after that you shift into fifth.

  Top speed is 140, more or less, depending on how the thing is tuned—but there is nowhere in Los Angeles County to run a bike like that. …I managed to get it back from Ventura to McGovern’s downtown headquarters hotel, staying mainly in second gear, but the vibration almost fused my wrist bones and boiling oil from the breather pipes turned my right foot completely black. Later, when I tried to start it up for another test-run, the backlash from the kick-starter almost broke my leg. For two days afterward I limped around with a golfball-size blood-bruise in my right arch.

  Later in the week I tried the bastard again, but it stalled on a ramp leading up to the Hollywood Freeway and I almost broke my hand when I exploded in a stupid, screaming rage and punched the gas tank. After that, I locked it up and left it in the parking lot—where it sat for many days with a MCGOVERN FOR PRESIDENT tag on the handlebars.

  George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart17 that the Senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  Looking back on it, I think that was the moment when my relationship with Mankiewicz turned sour. Twenty-four hours earlier I had showed up at his house in Washington with what John Prine18 calls “an illegal smile” on my face—and the morning after that visit he found himself sitting next to me on the plane to Florida and listening to some lunatic spiel about how his man should commit political suicide by irreparably identifying himself as the candidate of the Beachbums, Weirdos, and Boozers….

  How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?

  All I ever wanted out of this grueling campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors.

  Ciao,

  Hunter

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  In his 1977 autobiography, George McGovern cited his quip to the Washington press corps’ annual Gridiron Club dinner in 1973: “Last year we opened the doors of the Democratic Party, as we promised we would, and twenty million Democrats stalked out.” Then he added: “For years, I wanted to run for President in the worst possible way—and I’m sure I did!”

  June, 1972

  Campaign Trail

  Dear Jann—

  One of the first people I plan to speak with when I get to Miami is Larry O’Brien: shake both of his hands and extend powerful congratulations to him for the job he has done on the Party [as chairman of the Democratic National Committee]. In January of 1968 the Democratic Party was so fat and confident that it looked like they might keep control of the White House, the Congress, and in fact the whole U.S. Government almost indefinitely. Now, four and a half years later, it is a useless bankrupt hulk. Even if McGovern wins the Democratic nomination, the Party machinery won’t be of much use to him, except as a vehicle.

  “Traditional Politics with a Vengeanc
e” is Gary Hart’s phrase—a nutshell concept that pretty well describes the theory behind McGovern’s amazingly effective organization.

  “The Politics of Vengeance” is a very different thing—an essentially psychotic concept that Hart would probably not go out of his way to endorse.

  Vehicle … vehicle … vehicle—a very strange-looking word, if you stare at it for eight or nine minutes…. “Skulking” is another interesting-looking word.

  And so much for that.

  The morning news says Wilbur Mills19 is running for President again. He has scorned all invitations to accept the Number Two spot with anyone else—especially George McGovern. A very pressing bulletin. But Mills must know what he’s doing. His name is said to be magic in certain areas. If the Party rejects McGovern, I hope they give it to Mills. That would just about make the nut.

  Another depressing news item—out of Miami Beach this time—says an unnatural number of ravens have been seen in the city recently. Tourists have complained of being kept awake all night by “horrible croaking sounds” outside their hotel windows. “At first there were only a few,” one local businessman explained. “But more and more keep coming. They’re building big nests in the trees along Collins Avenue. They’re killing the trees and their droppings smell like dead flesh.”

  Many residents say they can no longer leave their windows open at night, because of the croaking. “I’ve always loved birds,” said another resident. “But these goddamn ravens are something else!”

  Ponder the meaning,

  Hunter

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  Before covering the Republican National Convention in Miami, Thompson advised Wenner to be straightforward in dealing with first-class writers such as himself.

  August 2, 1972

  Washington, D.C.

  Jann …

  OK, I got the Fontainebleau reservation and also the GOP credentials letter—so I plan to be in Miami again on Aug 18 or 19, until the 25th …or maybe the whole weekend, so I can write the piece before leaving. I suspect it might be disastrous to try and lose a day or so travelling, then write it someplace else. So I’ll take the Mojo with me and plan on filing from Miami.

  Let me know about Findlay. I’d like to have him along. He won’t be much help to me, but I think he’d be a plus for RS. Especially if there’s any violence—which is just about impossible for one person to cover. If I took the inside & Findlay took the outside, we could probably handle anything that comes up.

  Regarding the questions of expenses: I’ll take my chances with this Miami thing, on the assumption we can work out something on paper, inre: Who’ll pay my tab for covering the rest of the campaign. Alan tells me I’ve already spent $18,602 of my own money—and I frankly don’t see where I have much to gain by picking up my own tab the rest of the way … and I doubt if I’d have much trouble getting somebody else to pick it up, although bringing in a wild card at this point might lead to a certain amount of trouble vis-à-vis the Book. I could do it without violating the contract—7500 words a month, etc.—but probably not without creating some nasty legal problems with regard to the book.

  I’d rather avoid this, but if we’re going to have trouble on it, I’d rather have it sooner than later. So if we’re heading for a nut-cutting scene, let’s schedule it right after Miami. You’re already on a nasty collision course with your notion that you can hire first-class writers and then treat them like junkie cub reporters. I’ve talked to enough people to get a pretty widespread feeling that RS is on the brink of a serious confrontation with itself—and although I feel nicely insulated from any flak or fallout when the crunch comes, I also share what appears to be a general concern for RS’s future good health … so it might be worthwhile to sit down sometime soon and have a sort of second annual WC Future Concepts conference.

  Or maybe not. Whatever’s Right …

  Other items: I want the original Vegas manuscript for my permanent papers collection … and also that Stearns/Beach tape,20 along with the un-edited transcription. I saw that notice on the B/Bd about how all staff-tapes must be turned in to the RS library, but once again the fact that RS pays none of my expenses on these stories makes me immune to all those Big Brother edicts. (Like they say, You Get What You Pay For—and, looking back on our relationship for the past year, I figure I’ve carried my end of the bargain pretty well—and all I can say to those lame cocksuckers who think my stuff is wasted space and a bad drag on their dinner schedules, is that I don’t have the time right now to discuss their problems in print, but I expect to find as much time as I need sometime around December.)

  Well shit … I see I’m getting a bit on the nasty side, here, so I’ll cut the thing off.

  Except for one more matter: I don’t recall exactly when we agreed on that salary raise from $12K to $15K, but I remember it was a week or so before the Calif. primary, & when I added it up at the rate of $50 a week—it came to exactly $1000 as of Nov. 7. (Five months at roughly $200 per—which means you already owe me $400, with $600 to come.) I’m not especially anxious to have it all right now, but I’d like a letter from you, confirming the agreement.

  There’s also the matter of how that Fla/Boohoo segment turned up in Charley’s book without permission from—or either credit or payment to—the author, but I guess we can let that one slide for a while.

  Anyway … sorry to sound so testy, but the current atmosphere seems to call for it, and I think it’s better to deal with these problems while they’re still minor; and also while I can still afford to admit that I’ve fucked up a few times, myself. My head is fairly well balanced these days, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.

  OK,

  Hunter

  MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK:

  The July 10–13 Democratic National Convention in Miami had gone wrong in many ways, and things got worse for McGovern from there. His choice of Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate turned disastrous within two weeks, when imminent press reports forced the vice presidential candidate to announce that he had indeed spent time in mental hospitals on three occasions, twice receiving electroshock therapy. McGovern made matters worse by declaring that he stood behind Eagleton “a thousand percent,” even while scrambling to dump him. He dropped Eagleton in favor of Kennedy-by-marriage Sargent Shriver, the former head of JFK’s Peace Corps and LBJ’s Office of Economic Opportunity, who was so inoffensive that Republican president Richard Nixon had let him stay on as U.S. ambassador to France until 1970.

  August, 1972

  Campaign Trail

  Indeed. It made fine sense, on paper, and I recall making that same argument, myself, a few months back—but I’d no sooner sent it on the Mojo Wire than I realized it made no sense at all. There was something finally and chemically wrong with the idea of Ted Kennedy running for vice president; it would be like the Jets trading Joe Namath to the Dallas Cowboys as a sub for Roger Staubach.21

  Which might make excellent sense, from some angles, but Namath would never consent to it—for the same reasons Kennedy wouldn’t put his own presidential ambitions in limbo for eight years, behind McGovern or anyone else. Superstar politicians and superstar quarterbacks have the same kind of delicate egos, and people who live on that level grow accustomed to very thin, rarified air. They have trouble breathing in the lower altitudes; and if they can’t breathe right, they can’t function.

  The ego is the crucial factor here, but ego is a hard thing to put on paper—especially on that 3 × 5 size McGovern recommends. File cards are handy for precinct canvassing, and for people who want to get heavy into the Dewey Decimal System, but they are not much good for cataloguing things like Lust, Ambition, or Madness.

  This may explain why McGovern blew his gig with Kennedy. It was a perfectly rational notion—and that was the flaw, because a man on the scent of the White House is rarely rational. He is more like a beast in heat: a bull elk in the rut, crashing blindly through the timber in a fever for something to
fuck. Anything! A cow, a calf, a mare—any flesh and blood beast with a hole in it. The bull elk is a very crafty animal for about fifty weeks of the year; his senses are so sharp that only an artful stalker can get within a thousand yards of him … but when the rut comes on, in the autumn, any geek with the sense to blow an elk-whistle can lure a bull elk right up to his car in ten minutes if he can drive within hearing range.

  The dumb bastards lose all control of themselves when the rut comes on. Their eyes glaze over, their ears pack up with hot wax, and their loins get heavy with blood. Anything that sounds like a cow elk in heat will fuse the central nervous systems of every bull on the mountain. They will race through the timber like huge cannonballs, trampling small trees and scraping off bloody chunks of their own hair on the unyielding bark of the big ones. They behave like sharks in a feeding frenzy, attacking each other with all the demented violence of human drug dealers gone mad on their own wares.

  A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can’t handle personally he will hire out—or, failing that, make a deal. It is a difficult syndrome for most people to understand, because few of us ever come close to the kind of Ultimate Power and Achievement that the White House represents to a career politician.

  The presidency is as far as he can go. There is no more. The currency of politics is power, and once you’ve been the Most Powerful Man in the World for four years, everything else is downhill—except four more years on the same trip.

  Ciao,

  Hunter

  FROM JOHN CHANCELLOR, NBC NEWS:

  NBC News correspondent John Chancellor had a minor quibble with something Thompson had written in his August 17, 1972, Rolling Stone piece on the Democratic Convention, “Fear and Loathing in Miami: Old Bulls Meet the Butcher.”