[Marxism] A couple of outraged Hunter Thompson fans

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Last night I received a rather hurtful comment on my Hunter Thompson piece
from a gentleman on the West Coast who called my attention to a tribute to
the dead man by Susie Bright at: http://susiebright.blogs.com/. Susie,
along with Nina Hartley, is one of those "sex industry" experts who take
great exception to the idea that prostitutes are exploited. The exchange
below took place between another peeved soul and Alex Cockburn.)

On Feb 25, 2005, at 12:46 AM, Ted Kane wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Though not all of your writers came to simply praise him, it seems to
> me that the sheer number of them that weighed in on the topic of Hunter
> S. Thompson's life and death spoke loudly about his enduring
> importance.  Some of the pieces were good, some not so much; the most
> disgusting, and by a wide margin, was the infantile argument from Louis
> Proyect blaming Thompson for the recent scandals at the New York Times
> and New Republic in which false information was opportunistically
> passed as fact by some unscrupulous reporters  .
>
> The fellow obviously doesn't understand much about literature.  Because
> Proyect can't get past the fact that some amount of what Thompson wrote
> was literally untrue, he can't get to the realization that it
> nonetheless was metaphorically accurate.  The man doesn't understand
> satire, and his whole article amounted to a demonstration that the old
> saw about the left lacking a sense of humor has some basis in reality.
>
> The reductionist argument that Hunter S. Thompson created the
> environment in which Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair thrived is absurd
> on its face and beneath your publication.  And if there were something
> to it, why would all roads lead to Hunter?  Why not blame Paul
> Krassner?  He was publishing The Realist in the late fifties, blending
> fact and telling fantasy at will and without warning.  Hell, why not
> blame Jonathan Swift?  Why, if he were alive today, I'll bet he'd have
> a show on Food Network by now.
>
> Ted Kane
> Long Beach, CA

They're all to blame my friend, except Swift was a better writer and
Krassner far more courageous than HST, who denounced Krassner to Wenner
behind his back and stiffed The Realist for articles commissioned, paid for
and never delivered . Proyect's identification of Thompson's spawn and
consequences was very apropos,  in my view. Though it's not always
fair to blame a man for his imitators, the imitators tell you much
about the man.  Best Alex C



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