…would he a grumpy-ass liberal, a progressive leftie, a Trumpie (HST was heavily into firearms, of course) or, like me, a sensible centrist?
Well, he certainly wouldn’t have any truck with the wokeys…I can tell you that. He would despise them with every fibre of his being. Plus I somehow can’t imagine Dr. Gonzo approving of Trump…can’t go there. Maybe he’d find Trump’s perverse egoism amusing on some twisted level.
I don’t know who or what HST would be according to the bizarre social-political terms of 2026.
Why am I mentioning Thompson, who apparently committed suicide just under 20 years ago (2.20.05)? Because of a 12.18.26 N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine piece by Tim Arango, titled “Did Hunter S. Thompson Really Kill himself?”
I read it early this morning and dashed off some reactions to the guy who sent me the link:
“Did you read this thing? It’s not just thin and coy and teasing but…what’s the term?….infuriating. The notion is that somehow Hunter didn’t shoot himself all on his lonesome. Arango dances and tiptoes around this possibility, but that’s all. He certainly doesn’t plant his feet and just say it, whatever it is. He doesn’t even offer possible scenarios.
“Plus there’s not a single mention of the fact that the Owl Farm, the Aspen-adjacent property where Thompson lived for decades, is located in Woody Creek and is quite close to the famed Woody Creek tavern, which I visited in the mid ‘90s. Yes, there are ample mentions of Aspen, which has great slopes and is top-heavy with billionaires but so what?
On top of which Arango’s writing is so compressed and turgid and pretzeled it drives you nuts.
What is the exact evidence or even the loose-talk suppositions that indicate “something more than suicide” or “assisted suicide” may have occurred? Arango doesn’t say diddly squat.
It is faintly hinted that either Anita Thompson, Hunter’s widow, or his son Juan might not be letting on about something or other
Last year Anita, now 53, passed along some presumably compelling evidence to Michael Buglione, the sheriff of Pitkin County, and in so doing triggered a three-month-old, still-unfolding investigation by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The fact-digging has been simmering since last September.
But wait…whoa…two thirds through the piece Arango parenthetically mentions that Anita declined to speak with him for the article. Well, why? Anita wants some deep, dark secret to be revealed by going to the authotities, clearly, but she ducks the probing eye of the N.Y. Times? Arango doesn’t even speculate about her motive[s] in blowing him off.
Articles like this make me want to take a swing at someone. Has Arango ever heard of plain declarative sentences? Or, you know, basic instructional story construction?