This is only tangentially related to the post, but it may be my only chance to proudly note that my great uncle, actor George Coulouris (that’s the old Mercury Theater ensemble member in the upper left) played a Greek tycoon dying if  brain cancer who reanimates the head of Nostradamus so he can get a transplant. The film is called “The Man Without a Body,” and consists of long scenes with Uncle George arguing with a rubber head.

This is going to cause me to reconsider a lot of assumptions.

Hunter Thompson is fading from cultural relevance now, and when he was alive, I would have said, “Good.” He was a classic product of the Sixties, contemptuous of American and the political system, relentlessly negative and cynical,  habitually stoned and proud of it. He was also a very funny, witty, skilled writer, if you could stand being bombarded by Abie Hoffman/M*A*S*H/ drug glamorizing political propaganda, which cleverly satirical as it often was, I could not. Thompson was bitter, angry and nihilistic; I would label his a largely wasted life. It was no surprise to me that he committee suicide. I was surprised he didn’t do it sooner, but then, he had been killing himself slowly with drugs and alcohol for decades. Thompson’s legacy is preserved to some extent in the person of the gun-toting, drugged out, corrupt Uncle Duke character in Doonesbury.

Thompson’s observations in his two most famous books, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” seemed like typical criticism from the “drop-out, turn-on” set then. It never occurred to me that he had access to a crystal ball. In a thorough and wise analysis of today’s political upheaval deftly titled “Has Everyone Lost Their Freakin’ Minds?” (I cannot recommend it more highly), Tyler Durden begins with a series of Thompson’s quotes. Here they are…

“How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

—“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.”

                 —“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”

“The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.”

—-“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”

“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

—- “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”

—–“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”

Not only are these useful and insightful observations that have profound ethical implication and applications, but they are far more apparent now than they were when Thompson made them.

Lessons?

1. I have to remember that ethically astute people often are highly unethical in their own lives. I keep forgetting this, which is ridiculous when one considers my familiarity with the life and career of Clarence Darrow, one of the prime examples of this inconsistency.

2. When people, even brilliant and wise people, behave in a manner that suggest they have no respect or understanding of ethical values, they seriously undermine their credibility and trustworthiness, thus reducing their ability to influence society and the culture in positive ways. This itself is unethical. I wonder if Hunter cared…

3. My son has a large tattoo of Hunter S. Thompson on his right calf. I was not supportive. I think I owe him an apology.