It’s tragic that gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson decided to check out before he could report and write about this year’s presidential election. He’d know what to make of a campaign that out-Nixons Nixon, and I’m sure he would have had something Rabelaisian to say about the semiotics of Sarah Palin.
William McKeen, author of Outlaw Journalist, remembers Hunter on this week’s On The Media. At the end of the interview McKeen reads an excerpt from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Listen and weep. Are we still just a nation of used car salesmen (a.k.a. Joe the Plumbers) “with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable”?
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
