FEAR AND LOATHING

Thompson, fresh from the spooky gig with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, agreed to cover the late presidential campaign for Rolling Stone from the primaries on, armed only with an eye for gnostic drill, an ear for byzantine bullshit, and a pen aimed pointedly at the political gonads of every event and aspirant who crossed his mad path from New Hampshire (mainly watching McGovern "do his thing — which was pleasant, or at least vaguely uplifting, but not what you'd call a real jerk-around") to Florida where he was barred from the Muskie camp over the Boohoo incident which is so unbelievable it must be read (later Dr. Thompson exposed Big Ed as an Ibogaine addict), on through "this goddamn mess" to California, the conventions, the election (the latter new chapters not previously published in RS), and the November reaffirmation of fear and loathing — "Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde." Hunter Thompson has several things going for him: a unique style, an impudent sense of the banal, a wariness of rigged importance, a feel for the emotional expenditure involved in the competition for power. And he is not Theodore White, thank God.