{"id":3602,"date":"2005-07-25T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3602"},"modified":"2020-09-21T10:56:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T14:56:37","slug":"essay-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3602","title":{"rendered":"[Essay] Reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written on 26 Feb 2005.<\/p>\n<p><lj-cut>So many are mourning the death of the creator of Gonzo journalism.  So many say that he was a genius.  Now that he&#8217;s dead, many seem to even worship at Hunter S. Thompson&#8217;s feet.  I don&#8217;t get it.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n<p>Granted, my experience and exposure are limited.  I&#8217;ve seen the movie interpretation of &#8220;Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,&#8221; and that&#8217;s it.  Others have read several of his books, followed his diatribes against the current governmental administration, and held him up as a role model.<\/p>\n<p>But, more of the vocal mourners seem to have been like me.  How much more interest in what he had to say is there now that he&#8217;s dead?  How will his book sales figures react?  For how long will libraries be all checked out of his titles?  Why was he a liberal crackpot in life and a literary genius after he commits suicide?<\/p>\n<p>Publishing tactic:  suck on a gun barrel.  It worked for Nirvana and Hunter S. Thompson.  Maybe my novel will spend less time in a slush pile.  Added side effect:  more iron in your diet.<\/p>\n<p>Those of us that are left behind still get to toil through the day.  We who are the so-called &#8220;creative types that endure never being able to fully fit in to society&#8221; are still here, not fitting in.  Not only that, most of us are proud to dissent, not cowed and fearful.<\/p>\n<p>So, here&#8217;s my liberal crackpot theory:  he didn&#8217;t suck on that barrel.  It was shoved down his throat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written on 26 Feb 2005. So many are mourning the death of the creator of Gonzo journalism. So many say that he was a genius. Now that he&#8217;s dead, many seem to even worship at Hunter S. Thompson&#8217;s feet. I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3602\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[34,15],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-livejournal","tag-writery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paQnES-W6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}