On this awful Monday morning I was awoken by the clock radio. The first thing I hear from NPR news is that Hunter S. Thompson is dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. The man killed himself…damn. Somehow I’m not surprised but very very sad. What awful torture drugs and depression can inflict on a person. It’s just wrong… This is not a moral judgment or condemnation of drug abuse. It’s just the cold hard facts. We learned a lot about being honest from Mr. Thompson.
Though I’ve read several of his books it was only a few months ago I learned about New Journalism. Here is a blog post I never finished about this:
Once again Doc Searls points me to the fine links. He reminds me how nothing is really new, just altered. Busting the myth of objectivity in journalism is being altered by blogs and podcasters. [Thank Buddha] Gonzo Journalism “has been called outlaw journalism, literary cubism, new journalism and other words I can’t repeat here.”
Many of us bloggers are New Journalists. We put ourselves in the story one way or the other blending hard news and fiction. Ruby Sinreich says that the best part of blogging is the first person voice we use. When we insert our bias, our opinion, and send objectivity to hell we are being the most real we can. I mean how could you possibly have any objective faculty when your high on more than one substance at a time? This was the essence of Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism.
It seems to me that the best way to understand others is to understand yourself. I don’t mean superficially but introspectively. Deep, deep, deep, searching within your mind. Long hours exercising your body listening to what it tells you. When you understand yourself you can be honest with the world. Let loose all your creativity. Then when you listen, really listen, to others you can process effectively their complicated communications. This way we don’t need societally guilt trip objectivity. We just need to understand our own truths and put others beside ours for analysis.
This might have been a too flowery an attempt at an epitaph and possibly a stretch to connect you to blogging but GODDAMN IT you sure opened up a lot of eyes Mr. Thompson! Thank you.
