While I liked the movie Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, I did not like the way Thompson -- an iconoclast who never hesitated to criticize anyone he thought deserved criticism -- was re-spun and reduced to a sort of a hack leftist caricature.

Sure, the fact that he hated Nixon with a particular venom, opposed the Vietnam War and voted for McGovern -- these are all beyond dispute, as is the fact that he was a Carter supporter. Conveniently overlooked, though, was his outspoken criticism of Bill Clinton, whom he saw as destined to become "one of the great fascists of our time," and as not much better than Nixon:

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson tells the New York Post that supporting President Clinton was "one of my greatest tactical errors in politics."
. . . . "I don't want to go down in history or have my son read that his father endorsed Clinton two times," Mr. Thompson said.
. . . . "I had no idea what a treacherous bastard he really is. I'm shocked he went so low. You'd think after grappling with Richard Nixon that you would know where the low road is, ... but Clinton's treachery is really sleazy. It's his character defects. I think Clinton will prove to be one of the great fascists of our time."

I also found the quote here, but the link is no good. That's the problem with the Internet. Stuff can disappear. And if it's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist, right?

The situation calls for resuscitation.

So, using the dead link from my post, I went to the archives, where fortunately I found a discussion group posting dated 20 Mar 1997 showing the full quote (attributed to the New York Post) as appearing in "today's online issue of the Washington Times." Presumably, anyone with access to microfiche could get it and revive it; I just hate to become the only source to a quote without a source. Anyway, in light of the film, I thought I should supplement my post.

Fortunately, there's more than that. Thompson was quite outspokenly anti-Clinton. In this interview, he trashes Clinton right after trashing Nixon:

Clinton already stands accused formally of worse things than Nixon would have been impeached for. I think Clinton is every bit as. . . he's not as crude as Nixon. But maybe he is. I mean: Paula Jones? "Come over here, little girl, I've got something for you" !? It's almost embarrassing to talk about Clinton as if he were important.

I'd almost prefer Nixon. I'd say Clinton is every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but a lot smoother.

Question: How do you reconcile your liberal politics with gun ownership? Is that not a contradiction?

Hunter Thompson: I think George Washington owned guns. I've never seen any contradiction with that. I'm not a liberal, by the way. I think that's what's wrong with liberals. I believe I have every right to have guns. I just bought another huge weapon. A lot of people shouldn't own guns. I should. I have a safety record. Guns are a lot of fun out here.

...the things that Clinton has been accused of are prima facie worse than what Nixon was run out of office for. Nixon was never even accused of things like Clinton is being accused of now. Bringing the Chinese into the political process, selling out to the Indonesians, selling the Lincoln bedroom at night, dropping his pants, trying to hustle little girls in Little Rock. God, what a degenerate town that is. Phew.

Seriously, if they'd let anything like this leak into the left-oriented film, few would have understood, and many of the film's target audience would have been deeply offended.

....Maybe you need a war. Wars tend to bring out out the best in them. War was everywhere you looked in the sixties, extending into the seventies. Now there are no wars to fight. You know, it's the old argument about why doesn't the press report the good news? Well, now the press is reporting the good news, and it's not as much fun.

The press has been taken in by Clinton. And by the amalgamation of politics. Nobody denies that the parties are more alike than they are different. No, the press has failed, failed utterly -- they've turned into slovenly rotters. Particularly The New York Times, which has come to be a bastion of political correctness. I think my place in history as defined by the PC people would be pretty radically wrong. Maybe I could be set up as a target at the other end of the spectrum. I feel more out of place now than I did under Nixon. Yeah, that's weird. There's something going on here, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you?

Yeah, Clinton has been a much more successfully deviant president than Nixon was. You can bet if the stock market fell to 4,000 and if four million people lost their jobs there'd be a lot of hell to pay, but so what? He's already re-elected. Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate. Or maybe he did, at the end of his life. He got very bitter about the press. And what is it he said? "I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just"? That's a guy who's seen the darker side. Yeah, we've become a nation of swine.

Anyway, I liked the film despite its evasions and obfuscations. I still think Thompson is impossible to quantify. He's simply being edited and manufactured to suit the political desires of the filmmakers (and probably his family).

I'll repeat what I said when he died:

"My dark side will really miss Hunter Thompson. Come to think of it, so will my light side...."