A Hero Has Fallen: Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005

pic passed along by CultureGhost
A LAMENT FOR THE FALLEN
The battle remains to be fought. 
A hero has fallen.
What dragons he saw,
from them he did not look away.
The battle remains to be fought. 
A hero has fallen.
A dragon confronted breathes less fire.
Gonzo says be gone. 
And take your foul breath with you.
The village is safer, loud with laughter.
They will laugh again
in Las Vegas someday.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead.  Killed by his own hand in Aspen, Colorodo February 20, 2005.  The Gonzo journalist so good at being bad is gone now.  Gonzo journalism? "Nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds like an epithet," he said in an interview that, for him, journalism "can be an effective political tool."

Hunter S. Thompson was not like Robert Kennedy. As his brother Ted noted in his sad and beautiful oration for his brother in those mad times of 1968, Robert Kennedy "saw wrong  and tried to right it."  A noble goal no less noble unfulfilled.  Hunter S. Thompson saw wrong and tried to write about it.  Others could right the wrong he wrote about.  So it has always been with poets, madmen, and seers.  Some would fight the dragons with swords.  Hunter S. Thompson pointed to the dragons with his fiery pen.

Hunter S. Thompson's  light will not fade now.  We were all in him and his words, and he in all of us. Dragons yet remain.  A hero has fallen.  A battle remains to be won.

Comments

[The CultureGhost]

Excellent.

A mourning period. Then we must march on.