Where Have You Gone Hunter S. Thompson

Let me start this week of posts off with a small tribute to the greatest political journalist of all time--Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter had a way of getting inside a story, especially during a presidential campaign, that compounded the truth. He reported through his own eyes and his own mind. Hunter told the story he wanted to tell in the way that he wanted to tell it. If he thought Nixon was evil, he would tell you Nixon was evil. But, you may ask, is that legitimate journalism?

I found this nearly perfect example of Hunter's style reprinted from Rolling Stone magazine on The Atlantic website. This particular paragraph holds his justification and legitimization for his style of reporting:

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Hunter used humor and satire in his political writing because it was necessary in order to deal with the hypocrisy and dishonesty that he saw. As Courtney asserted in her post, humor in journalism has its place and that place is legitimate. I urge anyone who reads this to select the link above from The Atlantic and read the entire essay by Thompson. It is beyond belief.