The 1960’s embodies a time when those who grew to reject the mainstream American values spawned by ‘50s conservative sensibility decides to take a stand and speak out against them. These Americans disassociated themselves from ideals related to consumerism, conformity, and blind acceptance of the U.S. Government’s domestic and foreign policies. As the Civil Rights movement picked up speed and the Vietnam War emerged, the timing was right for members of the political Left to push for the creation of lasting social reform in America and embrace new forms of progressive activism. The counterculture perspective, spearheaded largely by America’s youth and minority populations, emerged in the 1960’s as a optimistic force against the U.S. Government’s aggressive foreign agenda, corrupt political systems, and unjust domestic civil policies. Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 serves as an approach to traditional politics and journalism, characterized by the revolutionary bedrock of the American Counter-Culture. His personal account of the ’72 presidential campaign brings to light the transformation of the ‘60s Counter-Culture at the dawn of a new decade.
In Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 , Hunter S. Thompson leaves no political camp unturned as he tracks the American political establishment cross-country as a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. He accepts his year-long assignment on the campaign trail as a means of representing brutal honest political journalism. “The great American press was a babbling joke-an empire built on gossip and cliches- a final resting place for rumormongers and pompus boobs.” While most journalists traveling on the presidential campaign trail in ’72 write stories that focus on up-to-date developments and information filtered through the candidates’ political camps, Thompson embraces a counter-cultural approach to political coverage and to Journalism itself. He ruthlessly abandons faith and support for taboos associated with traditional, strictly non-fictional Objective Journalism. “Objective Journalism is a hard thing to come by these days. So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here –not under any byline of mind; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction of terms.” By incorporating fictional writing, adhering strictly to factual accuracy, and writing as the primary source, Thompson’s writing looks to include elements of the New Journalism style popularized by Tom Wolfe. The result is his own individual breed of New Journalism that he refers to as “Gonzo Journalism.”
Thompson’s “Gonzo” approach to reporting does not simply look to uncover the motivations and actions of the politicians he covers, but instead documents all aspects of the environment he experiences around him. “I think that’s why it’s so easy for me to write what seems like an original or even bizarre point of view about scenes or situations that a lot of writers tend to ignore, because they live right in the middle of them.” Since his own counter-cultural perspective separates him from any sort of American social majority, he does not trust the seemingly mundane facets of society to remain separate from the news. His writing in Campaign Trail ’72 includes sometimes lucid, but often garish details and observations about people, words, and situations that most journalists wouldn’t stop to think about, let alone write about. “In terms of classic journalism, this kind of wandering, unfounded speculation will have a nasty effect on that asshole from Ireland who sent word across The Waters to nail me for bad language and lack of objectivity. There have been numerous complaints, in fact, about the publisher allowing me to get away with calling out new Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist a ‘swine’.” Thompson holds nothing back while reporting, allowing his exact thoughts and analysis to escape to his typewriter almost instantaneously.
In Campaign Trail ’72 , Thompson functions as both a journalist working to cover politics in America, and a member of the Counter-Culture possessing a strong hatred for corrupt politicians. As he listens to George Wallace give a speech or shakes President Nixon’s hand, Thompson brutally examines the canidates at face value. “The main problem in an democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup their supporters into a orgiastic frenzy.” Searching within the rhetoric and attitudes of political candidates campaigning in ’72, Thompson rarely finds the breed of authenticity that the Counter-Culture and he naturally desire. Through his reporting, he comes to realize that the run-of-the-mill American public thrives upon a politician’s political spin, and is largely “not a nation of truth lovers.” Thompson embraces this concept. Unlike these politicians, however, he does not label his style of fabrication as truth. His literary inventions do not work to cover up the important facts, but instead helps to expose them in a remarkable light. “With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.” The Counter-Culture is not interested in reading about politician’s and politics through the same restricted form as their white suburban middle-class counterparts. Thompson’s shocking journalistic writing essentially acts as an authentic critique of politics and society written in the language of that Counter-Culture. His writing in Campaign Trail ’72 allows him the space to create his own individual journalistic ideal, free from society’s out-dated norms and criteria.
After John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, New Left idealists, Civil Rights activists, and constituents of the Counter-Culture watched Lyndon B. Johnston reluctantly take hold of the reins of the Executive Office of the President. Looking back on the Johnston administration in Campaign Trail ’72, Thompson uncovers his own rational for the expanding disconnect between the Counter-Culture and traditional American institutions. “Johnston did a lot of rotten things in those five bloody years, but when the history books are written he will emerge in his proper role as the man who caused and entire generation of Americans to lose all respect for the Presidency, the White House, the Army, and in fact the whole structure of the government.” According to Thompson, that younger generation of Americans (supporters of the Anti-War movement) watches Johnston fail to uphold their own inherent liberal principles so miserably that the door to the White House is left wide open for Richard Nixon and his Silent Majority.
As the legacy of the Vietnam War comes into focus, members of the 60’s Counter-Culture are unable to stomach the thought of being left in the dark politically for another decade. This sense of anxiety becomes a reality as the events of ’68 leave student activists and members of the Counter-Culture -once “a part of the same trip, that wild sense of breakthrough in the late Sixties when almost anything seemed possible”-feeling alienated and disillusioned. In Campaign Trail ’72, Thompson describes the demise of the Counter-Culture’s political faith and optimism. “Martin Luther King was murdered in April, Bobby Kennedy in June…then Nixon was nominated in July, and in August the Democrats went to Chicago for the final act. By Labor Day it was all over. ‘The Movement’ was finished.” In 1972, Thompson believes that the only place left in politics for the student/youth movement is to fall in-line behind a “consensus candidate”, or “crippling the party with another one of those goddamn protest movements that’ll end up like all others and not accomplish anything except to guarantee Nixon’s re-election.” The years of effort and work that protesters and member’s of the Counter-Culture provide in the ‘60s to combat all wrong doing by the U.S. Government, appears to have little impact at the start of the ‘70s. Young American’s and boisterous members of the Anti-War movement watch as their hopes are quieted, as shown by the words of one character in a 1975 G.B. Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic: “I stopped demonstrating because I didn’t think the Government was in the least bit responsive.” In Campaign Trail ’72, Thompson watches as more members of the Counter-Culture, previously optimistic about their political impact, are left with a zealous desire to drop out of society completely.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 speaks to the American Counter-Culture of the ‘60s in a way that no other traditional political journalism could. Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo Journalism” allows him the freedom to present his readers with an honest account of what he experiences on the campaign trail, while drawing his own conclusions about the nature of the present society and American politics. His connection to the Counter-Culture provides him with a unique perspective and the means to understand the true nature the Counter-Culture as the ‘70s begins.
RwmG
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