That must have been one hangover!

Tim Blair has some things to say about the passing of Hunter S. Thompson. But I like what James Lileks recalls.

It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else’s satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years.

Thompson's brain was already brittle from that bile long before his latest rant about President Bush; pure bile from a brittle mind indeed. But more than 10 years ago when Richard Nixon died, Hunter Thompson shattered any sense of modesty. Thou shall not speak ill of the dead carried civilization for some time until Hunter decided to piss it away. A third rate Nixon hater, Thompson said the former president "that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character". His counter-obituary at the time is exhibit number one. But what was one to expect? He also had little good to say about Vice President Humpert Humphrey.

A mean little coward well armed but not agile, Thompson represented the incurably incoherent drug-induced stupor that helped fray a generation. He had plenty of enablers. The demise of this great republic would be imminent were this cabal of the vaunted counterculture were to ever take office. The closest is perhaps Clinton and his cohort of beautiful people. But even our "first black president" knew enough to tap into a mainstream culture that wanted no more of the extremism of the adversay cultists. For what it was worth Clinton had a thing for people who played by the rules.

No doubt Thompson could write and there were flashes of brilliance, great white noise for a troubled time. But he spent most of his career destroying himself, a man who could write through writer's block with self-indulgent prose. Serious writers grow up leaving Hunter Thompson behind. The youthful indescretions of writers are no guide to maturity.

Louis Proyect over at Counterpunch has a completely different take on Hunter, "a product of the mainstream media." Alexander Cockburn weighs in with a more kindly view.