Ruttin’ Tim Rutten
No. Those puffs of white smoke you see aren't coming from the Vatican"”at least not the one in Rome. Instead, they're emanating from the mouth of journalism's new self-appointed Pope, L.A. Times media columnist Tim Rutten.
In a piece published over the weekend, Rutten dons that pointy little hat and issues a papal ruling on who is and is not really a journalist (perhaps his follow-up column will reveal how many angels can jitter-bug on the head of a pin). Just in case you thought otherwise: turns out that recently departed Hunster S. Thompson wasn't.
It's a rather astonishingly silly and defensive piece kicking around HST's cadaver -- informing us that in the considered opinion of the Holy Collective College of Editors, he wasn't really, you know, um, a journalist. Rules Rutten:
The fact is that it has been 40 years since Thompson published a recognizable work of journalism "” "The Hell's Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga."
If the rest of his work requires a category, it's performance art, not journalism.
My analogy with the Pope, I think, is appropriate. Rutten's piece is written as if a committee of crusty, aging, frightened defenders of some obscure faith have jointly and hastily pieced together a manifesto of dogma — a brief that will be used to excoriate and excommunicate the heretics who are amassing right outside their oaken doors carrying pitchforks and wireless laptops.
I sometimes think that bloggers who proclaim that we are already witnessing the collapse of the Old Media (and daily newspapers as we know them) are overstating things. But reading Rutten makes me wonder if the bloggers aren't right. The Times column has the stench of fear and death all about it. Can the mighty L.A. Times actually feel so threatened by the example of a single journalist who is already dead? Apparently so.
After thumbing through the sacred texts and consulting his divining rod, Rutten feels confident to historically situate Thompson in a place far and remote from the hallowed Inverted Pyramids that mark the Holy Land around Second and Spring Streets in downtown Los Angeles. Tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of two generations worth of aspiring writers might have thought Doctor Gonzo was the real thing. But"¦ NO. He was a faker, a burned out-case, and an apostate who had strayed outside those little narrow grey columns of type that demarcate Rutten's universe:
Historically, Thompson is usually situated among the "New Journalists" who came to prominence in 1960s. But unlike, say, Gay Talese "” who forever changed journalism's notion of what a profile could accomplish "” or Truman Capote, who remade the nonfiction book, or Tom Wolfe, who integrated novelist conventions with feature writing, or Joan Didion, who did the same with literary essay, Thompson's contribution "” Gonzo Journalism "” now seems like what paleontologists call an evolutionary dead end.
Did you get that? Did you get that in your notes, my cub reporters? Maybe from two back-up sources just to nail it down. What Thompson accomplished has led us into a dead end. All that posturing, that sneering at authority, all the capacity to write circles around the short-sleeved dullards that populate your average city desk"”well"”that has apparently led us only to the intellectual graveyard.
The avalanche of homages to HST that has rumbled across America over the past week since his suicide, all those heartfelt recognitions of his talents and verve and pure balls, all of that — we now learn"”was nothing but nostalgia. Poor dumb bastards we are who thought that Hunter Thompson was actually a kick-ass writer who made most reporters look like exactly what they in reality are: knock-kneed dweebs who tremble in the presence of power and authority. Worse, we now learn from Rutten that Thompson had not only ceased to contribute to our secret little brotherhood of Real and Certified Journos"”but had actually corrupted them:
Part of the unhesitating outpouring that followed the tragedy of Thompson's suicide "” and suicide is always tragic because despair is an affliction and not a choice "” was simply sentimental nostalgia for an era when there still were taboos to affront and barriers to knock down. Thompson certainly did that, but his work also can be misread as permission for so much of the tedious narcissism that now infects our journalism, as it does so many other aspects of our collective lives. The impulse that now pushed reporter after reporter into the first person or makes them think that every story must include a full recitation of their backgrounds and predilections "” personal and political "” is Gonzo's deformed offspring.
I could ask just what newspapers Tim Rutten is reading. But it might be more appropriate to ask — in the wake of Gonzo"”what it is he's been smoking? Rutten's right that much of American journalism, and certainly that of his fluffy home paper, is indeed infected with a "tedious narcissism." Tedious as hell"”as the Times and just about every other paper in the country adheres to the obsolete he-said/she-said language of insurance company reports to fill their news columns. So deathly afraid that any trace of human bias, or insight (God Forbid) might actually appear in one of these news reports they are dutifully scrubbed by squads of Newsroom Elders who guarantee every rough edge and and every stitched seam will be filed off and sealed up before being pushed out to the public as perfectly symmetrical ingots of composite and inert News Product.
Where Rutten is just plain making things up is when he says, thanks to Hunter Thompson's legacy, American reporting is now chock full of narcissistic first-person accounts in which the reporter elevates himself and his prejudices over the substance of the story. (In which newspaper does that happen? Certainly not in the Times). Where Rutten begins to insult us is when he accuses writers that do so of being Thompson's "deformed offspring."
Deformed offspring? Why not just say Satan's progeny and get right to the point.
I know Tim Rutten and he's a nice guy. And he can be thoughtful if he wishes. But this column is — to use a Gonzo term"”just plain unadulterated bullshit and it reveals as rather staggering cluelessness to the contours of journalism's recent past and near future. American mainstream journalism remains as tightly corseted as ever within the traditional bounds of an industry formula that looks at objectivity not as a good faith process, but rather as an artificially balanced final product that can often take us far from any truth. Let some 25 year old reporter walk into the newsroom with as much as copy of Fear and Loathing under his arm and he's likely to be immediately branded as a security risk; as some delusional punk who thinks he can say something with some fire and passion in his writing and be rewarded for such creativity. Well, not in this world, pal.
Maybe Rutten should spend some more time in a Journalism School and judge for himself: are the majority of students drawn recklessly toward the deformed, narcissistic, outlaw standard set by Gonzo? Or do they, instead, spend their nights sleepless, wetting their beds, worried they won't be hired on as fully compliant clogs by some gargantuan corporate employer like Gannett and then assigned for the next 10 years as junior assistant deputy to the assistant suburn lifestyle editor-- a post whose stability and predictabilty they deeply, oh so deeply, yearn for?
If American newsrooms (and journalism class rooms) only had an enth of the disease that Rutten claims is dragging down his world, this country would be a much safer place. Look at the acquiesence that the U.S. media affords this Bush administration (which has decided in return to ignore and bypass the press) and you tell me how many of Thompson's "deformed offspring" are to be found with full credentials in any government briefing.
Instead, we find all sorts of other "performance artists" of quite a different ilk passing themselves off as journalists. Can we mention Judy Miller, who fancies herself as some sort of liaison between the White House and its exile toadies much more than she does an objective reporter. Or the insufferable Tom Friedman who poses on the Charlie Rose show as a wise uncle teaching us rubes the give-no-quarter realpolitik of foreign policy, instead of spending his time doing some old-fashioned, quiet and self-effacing reporting (that does not include tennis dates with cabinet secretaries).
Perhaps we should re-evaluate all this another forty years out from this week. Shall we wager who will still be remembered and regarded and emulated in the hearts of the J-School classes of 2045? Whose writings will be consulted to ignite the flames that burn deep in the soul of any aspiring journalist who anxiously awaits the possibility to rip through the ever-present veils of hypocrisy and deceit. Will those students of four decades from now be popping bennies to stay up all night to be able to finish off a tattered copy of one of Hunter Thompson's books? Or will they, instead, opt for the collected writings of Miller, Friedman and... maybe...Tim Rutten? Need we even ask?
Tim, you are invited to respond in full right here. In pure or deformed prose, as you please.
February 28th, 2005 at 4:42 am
And so the race to the botton, to the average, to the mediocre continues and, perhaps, at an ever accelerating pace.
It has been said in these parts before, and you say again today, that good reporting, good journalism isn’t that which is stripped of all bias, opinion, and, thus, analysis. Fair and balanced in today’s media is simply math: one Righty, one Lefty. Unfortunately for us, conclusions are never reached in that sort of system.
I think it was Impressionism’s (Impressionist?) painter Pisarro who had begun his career painting landscapes. He would do them in place, which is to say he would sit with his canvas and his paint in the countryside and paint what he saw. And they were very good and accurate. But they were sterile too. So his teacher suggested a minor change in technique; he told Pisarro to visit the countryside, observe it carefully, and then return to his studio to paint what he saw. In this way the resulting painting came to be not just a clear picture of what he had seen but also it came to include part of the painter – what he had felt as he sat in the country over a period of hour(s). And it was so much better.
The facts (and only the facts) are easy. Understanding what the facts mean, well, isn’t that the service journalism should provide?
February 28th, 2005 at 5:41 am
You are absolutely right about the obtousness of the MSM. I gave up over the Gary Webb fiasco when the TIMES, which had previously proclaimed a certain drug kingpin (Ricky Ray?) the source for South Central’s Crack, changed their mind and said the guy was a minor player. From that moment on I realized that a reader of our various respectable organs had to treat them as the US version of PRAVDA! Still Rutten is probably right that HST is a bad example for the careerists who don’t have the chops to do it right. Just as the lession of WoodStein became not the importance of keeping the powerful honest but instead was a roadmap for personal glory – get ahead by bringing someone down, the bigger the better! Oh and by the way I wish the inverted pryamid was still followed since I can’t begin to count all the times the lede gets burried!
February 28th, 2005 at 5:47 am
My first impulse was to ask “Who died and made Rutten Pope?” but Marc had already answered that. My next impulse was to ask who told Rutten HE was a journalist.
Does it take the possession of the J.O.B. to be a journalist? Not even Rutten would buy that one. OK, how about Graduating from J.School? OMG, what about all them American revolutionary folk and even Horace Greeley out of the mix. OK, how about this? Hey Rutten… are you listening… How about someone who writes on current events and is published? Does that make one a Journalist?
I’ll have to acknowledge that some “journalists” are hacks, and some are superior (Marc, Rosedog you two are extremely close tot he latter – no suck up, just fact)(addendum to the parenthetical comment – too bad that both of you are to the left of center and therefore usually wrong about many things.
Marc, perhaps you could enroll Rutten in your classes… you would have to guard agains the urge to flunk him on principle, but I’m sure you could handle that.
February 28th, 2005 at 6:00 am
I just want to add one thing. Just read on POLITICAL ANIMAL that the TIMES has collected in one piece the series by Peter Gosselin that showed how the American Middle Class is having more and more of society’s risks thrust upon them. This is the type of article we should see more of and not the phony “on the one hand, on the other hand” crap exemplified by the Swift Boat stories.
February 28th, 2005 at 6:12 am
Yeah, that Rutten is nothing but a cruel faggot…
February 28th, 2005 at 8:07 am
In apology for excesses of years past, HST had this to say about a certain incident:
“I never said that Muskie was taking Ibogaine. I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that a strange Brazilian doctor had been showing up at his suite to administer heavy shots of some strange drug called Ibogaine. Of course it wasn’t true. I never said it was true. I said there was a rumor to that effect. I made up the rumor.”
Until that last sentence, he’s just a plaintive journalist trying to cover his ass, too little to late. But with that last sentence, he’s … Hunter S. Thompson. The Thompson I know and love, precisely because he’s so unabashedly pathetic in his self-portrait of excess. Isn’t this why we REALLY love Thompson? Not because he’s any more truthful than those he professes to despise, but because he could tell such whoppers with such wide-eyed innocence? Who couldn’t love a boy like that?
I loved Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I loved Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. I loved Hunter S. Thompson, period. After a while, it seemed he was milking a formula, but he had a good run, for a while there.
But … just because he was a fascinating diarist, satirist, humorist, surrealist, commentator, whatever-you-want-to-call-it (all of those labels fit one passage or another of most of his post-Hell’s Angels writings), is it really necessary that his most original work be called journalist? “Performance artist” – it fits, in a way. That’s not to put journalism above his artistry, or even his artistry above journalism. There’s good art and bad art, good journalism and bad journalism. For all we know, Thompson would say Rutten’s got a point, and would agree with him on the “deformed progeny” diagnosis as well.
To be frank, some of the snippets you quoted, Marc, sound like pretty average blogscreed these days. Thompson was better than that, at his best. His mediocrity (also amply evident, in his later writings) is hardly inimitable. We’re swimming in imitations now. (Many of them unwitting.)
Thompson was a kind of proto-blogger, come to think of it. He pioneered the concept of virtually unedited prose getting straight to the reader. Like many inventions, it was almost an accident, an unintended consequence of almost blowing his deadline. And like many inventions, it was also a consequence of a previous invention: the fax machine.
Well, these days we all have modems, and thus we all have the Mojo Wire. Problem is, not many of us have his Mojo. He will be missed. But, unfortunately, also endlessly imitated. Why not just say he was an original, and close the casket – on the style as well as the man?
February 28th, 2005 at 9:15 am
Here’s a clip from another contrarian Thompson memoriam that was published in the SF Chronicle this weekend. Of course the Chronicle – which is really the old Examiner and used to publish an HST column regularly – also included more respectful remembrances by old friends Steadman and David Weir. It’s obvious, incidentally, that Ruten has the varieties of journalism confused with writing “news” – anything that’s published in a periodical – i.e. daily/weekly/monthly journals – is journalism by definition. I think that marc’s invocation of Thomas Friedman is the clearest rejoinder to Ruten’s straitjacket – because Friedman (and I have a hunch that he’d admit this if he had a couple of drinks in him) isn’t reporting news of the Middle East, he’s reporting Tom Friedman’s personal, idiosyncratic hopes and dreams for the Middle East larded with necessarily selective factoids and snippets from conversations. Call them bullshit or call them brilliant, but they’re no more news in the reportorial, front-page sense than most of what HST wrote. The other obvious point about Thompson is that, among other things, he was a humorist in the vein of Mark Twain’s tall tales. We don’t look back on Mark Twain and call him a journalist, but he was and even his overt literary fiction was rooted in the style he honed as a scribe for dailies, weeklies and whatever. So Ruten is full of shit, but I think that Michael Turner’s points should be duly and well taken and I would rather see Thompson laid respectfully to rest than serially imitated in all of his glory and excesss. Also I wouldn’t use the death of Thompson to even begin to imagine for a minute that by some magic – or disaster – the mainstream media will ever be surpassed by the blogosphere. The blogosphere, no matter how hard it tries, how essential or entertaining we might imagine it to be – or how trivial, trite and deep into the gutter it is capable of descending – is a parasite on the MSM. Not, as they say, that there’s anything wrong with that – it’s just a “fact”. Anyway, for what it’s worth…here’s a snip from The Cron’s A.S.Ross waxing cranky on the Hunterfest.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON: DEATH OF AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL
Gonzo king’s brilliance had burned out
Hypocritical reverence for drug-fueled scribe
– A.S. Ross
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Not since the death of Princess Diana has so much worshipful ink been spilled on the occasion of a mere mortal’s passing. He was a giant among men. Who cared that for years he had been a largely burned-out case, more of a circus act than a serious writer, reveling in adolescent stunts with firearms, alcohol, narcotics — the predictable paraphernalia of the self-styled outlaw who wowed the chattering classes and other assorted rubes and poseurs long after his appeal had worn off for almost everybody else?
Indeed, by coming not to bury Hunter S. Thompson, but to praise him — unreservedly, remorselessly, endlessly — his adoring acolytes, who shared the same trade, may be saying more about themselves than about the journalistic practitioner who ended up fantasizing about shotgun golf for ESPN. com.
For it was through Hunter Thompson, in life and in death, that we journalists could do what we do best — live vicariously, through others. Wild times, no restraints, so removed from our more humdrum reality. Ah, but if we can just speak of “Hunter,” we’re there, in our own minds, fearing and loathing and congratulating ourselves on our infinite cool…
The drooling eulogies also do Thompson a disservice because they ultimately fail in the one thing he presumably would want, and based on his early work — especially his Kentucky Derby piece in Scanlan’s and the book “Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs” — deserves to be examined critically as a writer who is part of a rich American literary tradition.
In fact, Thompson, wherever he is, might be contemptuous of the journalistic embalming his erratically brilliant, very flawed character has undergone in death. “Absolute truth,” he once warned, “is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
A.S. Ross is The Chronicle’s executive foreign and national editor.
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle (if you go to this URL be sure to check out David Weir’s very funny anecdotal piece as well.)
February 28th, 2005 at 9:23 am
Did HST write Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?
February 28th, 2005 at 9:28 am
“Did HST write Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?”
No, I’m pretty sure he wrote it by himself…
February 28th, 2005 at 9:29 am
LOL! Exactly.
February 28th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Wonderful and inspired rant, Marc! Rutten—who, as you say, is a generally good guy and who often writes useful stuff regarding media—is prissily off base here.
What is often missed by those who focus on HST’s excesses, both written and lived, is that Thompson wrote out of passionate engagement with his subject matter. It was precisely that ardor-filled wrestling match—which is, by definition, a messy and risky business—that, when he was at the top of his game, managed to accomplish extraordinary feats of illumination benefiting rest of us.
(Unlike—as you mentioned—the deeply annoying Thomas Friedman and his ilk who, even when he does venture outside the pristine boundaries of the power lunch and actually travel to, say, the Middle East, never bothers to leave the confines of his own calcified world view to truck with the untidy life experiences and historical contexts of the actual locals.)
Even now, re-reading HST’s elegy for Richard Nixon—published quite late in the game, in 1994—his assessment of the MEANING of Nixon the person and of his presidency is so vivid it rattles whatever long-ago settled thoughts I might have had about RMN, forcing them to align themselves in a slightly different order.
Here, for the record, are the first few paragraphs, all fraught with the first person, of course. Yet, if you examine it, this is not a first person that’s used in a self-indulgent or self-referring way really, but—as with good poetry–rather employed as a reflective surface to mirror back Nixon’s image, however at a far closer range:
“Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing–a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that ‘I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.’
I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, andI am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together….”
February 28th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
Here are two more sections from the center of the piece that address precisely what Rutten was saying, proving him instantly wrong. Thompson takes the available facts and recombines them in such a way as to give them genuine meaning. In other words, he takes a freaking Point of View—and he was talented and insightful enough to do it breathtakingly well. It’s art, yes, to be sure. But not performance art. That’s journalism, bud.
“Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism–which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
“Nixon’s meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy “my dog Checkers” speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election….”
[AND ONE MORE]
“Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him.) It was Hoover’s shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon’s downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director’s ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.
Hoover was Nixon’s right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee’s flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.
For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate….”
****
If you want to read the rest, here’s one link (There are lots of them on the web; I simply picked the first and easiest.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/thompson02212005.html
February 28th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
That’s a great piece…here’s a funny footnote -
Thompson on covering Nixon in ’68: We were at this American Legion hall somewhere pretty close to Boston. Nixon had just finished a speech there and we were about an hour and a half from Manchester, where he had his Learjet waiting, and Price suddenly came up to me and said, “You’ve been wanting to talk to the boss? OK, come on.” And I said, “What? What?” By this time I’d given up; I knew he was leaving for Key Biscayne that night and I was wild-eyed drunk. On the way to the car, Price said, “The boss wants to relax and talk football; you’re the only person here who claims to be an expert on that subject, so you’re it. But if you mention anything else — out. You’ll be hitchhiking back to Manchester. No talk about Vietnam, campus riots — nothing political; the boss wants to talk football, period.” He seemed very relaxed. I’ve never seen him like that before or since. We had a good, loose talk. That was the only time in 20 years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn’t lying.
HST: Rode with both The Hells Angels & R.M. Nixon. Amazing…
February 28th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
damn, i hate when that happens
February 28th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately for me I grew up on Thompson and just graduated from J-school at Cal State. I probably will never work in a newsroom although I leave the door open. They aren’t inviting me in either. That’s a legacy of fear. Dr. T had it.
February 28th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
“HST: Rode with both The Hells Angels & R.M. Nixon. Amazing…”
Makes spiritual sense somehow because, according to Thompson, both the Angels and Nixon operated from a similar Old Testament ethos, namely: It’s our God given right to f*ck with anyone who attempts to f*ck with us, so don’t try it, Jack, because we’ll give it back to you a lot badder and meaner than you ever dreamed.
February 28th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Ooops. That was me.
February 28th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
damn, rosedog, you just inadvertently helped me understand Ariel Sharon…
February 28th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Often enough the past 30 years I have found myself about 3 paragraphs into some article–usually in a periodical other than a newspaper–and felt like the author was pouring his/her undigested impressions about “life” and his/her most cinematic escapades (fictional or non-) therein over me in the guise of reporting events.
At such times I have cursed Hunter Thompson, that he should have begotten such bedazzled, inept (yes) progeny. So I share some of Tim Rutten’s regret.
But to hold Thompson responsible for the ineptitude of his imitators is like holding Vermeer responsible for the Holly Hobbies because he drew women in headgear.
Thompson laid down the gauntlet at the door of the great journalistic conclave. At a minimum, he wanted both the “reporters” and the “commentators” simply to abandon hypocrisy. For the commentators, he asked that they print more or less the same opinions they expressed at the hotel bar the night before. As for the reporters, he demanded that they at least not contradict the veritas they described while viewing the world thru the vino glass.
Rolling Stone was running 2 series on the 72 presidential campaigns: Hunter Thompson’s, and also Timothy Crouse’s experiment in metajournalism–”Boys on the Bus.” For a few minutes, the reporters were the story, and it is really Thompson who first focused on them.
It is true, to some extent, that ever since there has been a strain of journalism that has been tainted excessively by the reporters’ sense of self-importance. But, again, the fault lies somewheres else, not at Woody Creek.
We need more honest, unhypocritical newswriting, not less. And we should respect the memory of those who model such writing, not deride it..
February 28th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
rosedog – how can you quote those two paras and stop one sentence short of the best line in the whole obit!:
“Nixon laughed when I told him this. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.” “
February 28th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
You’re absolutely right, Mork, it’s a great line. I’d be hard put to pick a favorite out of that piece. The second line in the whole thing, the one about “a political monster straight out of Grendel” would probably get my vote. It lauds and condemns in the same breath with such gaudy, unsupportable brilliance… I love it.
(And I agree with Reg about Sharon, although that’s a much longer conversation.)
February 28th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
I’ve thought about this today and would just like to say that HST’s writings were in the great tradition of the 18th century pamphleteers who by our standards weren’s “journalists” but were damn fine observers of their times, Tom Paine made no attempt to be objective or “fair and balanced.” But his writings still engage us. The idea that journalism is an objective discipline is pretty new and would have amazed the Founding Fathers who were all targets of one screed or another. Funny, but I seem to recall that political participation was much higher then when everyone had a partisan paper ready to slime the other guy. Journalism has become too timid and the real problem lies with the celebration of the Conventional Wisedom. Tom Friedman regularly visits the Middle East, that was his beat as Beruit and Jerusuleum Correspondant for the NYT. He got his column for being “sound”. Raymond Danner lost his for not being sound on Central America. Mark, you could never be the TIME’s man in Chile. Everyone knows this and plans careers accordingly. So maybe Rutten is right! What HST did was not journalism as we know it.
February 28th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
(I promise this will be my last comment. Sorry for being in overdrive.)
Richard l.c. I know Friedman’s been to the Middle East a zillion times, and he’s obviously a very bright, well-educated man. (I probably expressed myself poorly above.) What I meant was, although his body gets off the plane, in my opinion, Friedman’s perceptions in country (whatever country that might be) never venture far from the psychological Green Zone of his preconceptions—hence his “sound” views, as you put it. (Wonderful term, that.)
February 28th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
Re RLC’s observations, I heard Warren Hinckle (or was it Hinckle’s ghost?) reminiscing on our local NPR talk show about Thompson and he argued that HST didn’t invent a new brand of journalism so much as he was a throwback to the old one of the nineteenth century – common to which were often outrageous pamphleteers who relied on hyperbole as much as reportage, editors who were known to challenge each other to duels and reporters who were routinely run out of town – with the whole enterprise fueled by prodigious amounts of whiskey. Hinckle claimed, I believe correctly, this was particularly true of journalism rooted in the West (where, of course, Mark Twain began his writing career chronicling the madness of the Gold Rush.)
February 28th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
aaarhg…
February 28th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
Just look at what the bloggers over at pressthink want from journalists. It isn’t the candor of Thompson I can tell you that. They want shills for the administration straight out of Nixon/Agnew. It’s all come around full circle.
To his credit my J-school editor at CSUN used Marc Cooper as a role model journalist. I told him I admired a guy my age who got kicked out of school for his principles.
Those were Thompson’s times chronicled the best way imaginable. I know because I was there with him.
February 28th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Elegant and eloquent post Marc. Eventually, and probably in the not-too-distant future, dailies will be forced to abandon the whole archaic discourse of objectivity bit. The people that subscribe to these newspapers are all aging, and the market for such things is slowly drying up. There are younger readers out there, but they want more subjective, opinion-based journalism. Blogs are one of the few places you can get this kind of content on a daily basis, even if most of it isn’t original reporting.
February 28th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
First of all, absolutely excellent piece. Secondly, I disagree in the assessment of one Righty and one Lefty made above. In the lead up to the Iraq War, a poll was done of a combination of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and PBS, and found that 397 guests commentators were pro-war, while only 3 were anti-war. That hardly constitutes a Lady Justice balance of 1 and 1 to me. Though that might be secondary and pointless, I couldn’t help but point that out.
Then your assessment of the mighty LA Times feeling the heat from the bloggers, I couldn’t agree more. John Stewart ripped the MSM pretty nicely on his Gannon segment when he showed the screen chart on how the news cycles are now reported by birdcage rags like the Times and the Post…blog #1 to Blog #2 to Blog #3 to birdcage rag.
February 28th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
The only thing crazier than asserting Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t a journalist, is the implication that the blogosphere – which has virtually zero revenue base to sustain the rudiments of a journalistic infrastructure, and wherein the only guys who have anything resembling some sort of consistency tend to be professional journalists who happen to maintain a blog – could even begin to produce anything of the caliber of, say, John Burns’ reporting from Iraq for the New York Times – and, if perchance it did, one of the “bird cage rags” that have a readership that advertisers are actually willing to pay to reach would grab him/her up in less than a minute.
Josh Marshall’s wonderfully obsessive Social Security Watch is the only current example I can think of where a blog is a consistently better source of information on a particular issue than the MSM – and he has to scour the MSM in order to produce it. While there may well be “younger readers out there..(who) want more subjective, opinion-based journalism” (which is why, when we geriatric cases were young we bought Rolling Stone for HST and, to a lesser degree, for crap like P.J.O’Rourke’s, although the mag is now mostly a piece of shit), I’d also like something easily accessible in my golden years that just resembled good, grounded reporting from people who’ve earned my respect based on their track records as honest pros. Frankly, the blogosphere, whatever else it’s done that’s admirable and exciting, on a good day doesn’t itself produce 5% of what I can learn from a careful reading of The New York Times. What it does do well is help me glean that essential stuff that I don’t find in the Times by linking to world press and other more obscure sources that are breaking buried stories. But I’ve got to choose the blogs I read very carefully and if I were a complete moron it would be easy to get lost and end up being spoonfed at the same level of honesty and seriousness one gets from Rush Limbaugh, which certainly qualifes as “subjective, opinion-based journalism” (as does Ann Coulter).
Let’s get real about what the blogs are good for (links and “likemindedness”) and why they are also incredibly limited (amateurishness and complete lack of editorial oversight). Also why, if approached indiscriminately, blog fans can end up ingesting less reliable sources of information than the worst of the dailies. The question of “objectivity” is complicated, but it’s not moot – and I don’t see a steady diet of psuedo-gonzo as the obvious antidote to the hubris of Dan Rather or the calcification of the Washington Post. Seymour Hersh is, frankly, my ideal of a journalist and there’s nothing like him – not even close – in the blogosphere. You have to be one of the sclerotic subscribers to the stuffy New Yorker in order to access his reports firsthand. Proud to be one…
February 28th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
That was a brilliant take on the current state of journalism. By the time I left J-School in 2001, I needed detox to rid myself of the gaseous toxins wrought by being surrounded by careerist yes-men. And things only got worse after the Jason Blaire fiasco.
As a high schooler, I read Tom Wolfe and, yes, Hunter S. Thompson, and was enthralled by the possibilities. Then I had stale writing styles, rigid “rules of objectivity,” and plain boring people jammed down my throat. My senior year, I finally had an inspiring instructor, a guy who did things like pose as a warden to expose prison corruption back in the 70s. His lessons went over all my classmates’ heads, who went on and on about how “unethical” it all was, despite the fact the guy’s articles lead to a massive statewide reform within a year of their publication. It was then I knew that journalism was not the path I wanted to take.
I’m a screenwriter now. Blame them.
March 1st, 2005 at 8:01 am
Yeah I’m a screenwriter too. It pays about as much as my blogging and less than the books if that’s possible.
Blogs do very little original reporting. It’s obvious most never pick up the phone or actually interview someone. What they do is commentary. You know what they say about that. The best of that is still found on the op-ed pages of real newspapers.
Why won’t this damn thing remember my info?
March 1st, 2005 at 9:26 am
I’d like to take a (I was going to say brief) second to defend my day, and by that I mean the lovely bloggers who occupy so much of my grey matter.
1st – original reporting isn’t everything. We live in a time where we get scads of information. Spending more time organizing our thoughts, listening and analyzing arguments, and exploring our own methodologies and prejudices seems very valuable.
2nd – there are several blogs that report (and by report I don’t necessarily mean filing freedom of information acts or digging up private indiscretions, I include presenting disparate, unassimilated info in a cogent, honest, and meaningful way). Certainly Josh Marshall reports. Juan Cole reports. I would argue Jay Rosen reports. The Smoking Gun reports (albiet not completly reliably). Drudge reports. Even Wonkette got a little reporting done.
I think this whole thing is very complex. Sure, Hersh is a great reporter and it’s wonderful to read his story and be so confident that his reporting is so sound. But there’s nothing wrong with a renegade, HST inspired approach either. Certainly Marc’s Vegas writings fall somewhere between the two (stuck between Hersh and the Dr. – not bad). Readership is diverse. If you haven’t figured that out by now you’ve missed the whole blog thing entirely. I would like more varation from my news outlets, but also better labeling.
March 1st, 2005 at 9:29 am
And isn’t this post from Suburban Guerilla a kind of reporting?
http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/in-memoriamtoday-im-going-to-do.html
March 1st, 2005 at 11:24 am
Mavis – I absolutely should have added Juan Cole when I cited Josh Marshall…
March 1st, 2005 at 11:28 am
Also MB, I agree with most of what you say, but I think you shoot the argument in the foot when you bring Drudge into it. He’s the posterchild for most of what’s problematic about the blogosphere and why it’s always more likely to play the role of heckler than main attraction.
March 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Agree with Reg. Hecklers outnumber the reporters in the blogosphere and the ones that are, are well, real reporters.
March 1st, 2005 at 2:07 pm
I’ve got to admit I don’t read much Drudge for a couple reasons – most prominant being that his web address magically freezes my browser (the others being that he’s an awful man and unreliable source). I’m inclined to stand by my inclusion but I’ll let your corrections pass until I can do more research myself.
March 1st, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I wasn’t saying Drudge shouldn’t be included…he SHOULD BE. He’s sure as hell not my idea of a way to spend precious eyeball time, but he’s one of the most popular sites on the web. Arguably the “New York Times” of bloggerdom… Also, as you point out, a truly gawdawful human being…which is why I have such a semi-jaundiced view when I look at the sum of the parts of the blogosphere, as opposed to the handful of sites I trust or find useful.
March 1st, 2005 at 5:11 pm
nuts…hate that double post thing
March 1st, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Mavis — great point #1 — original reporting isn’t nearly as important as deeper thinking.
But deep thinking is hard, to get to complex, nuanced conclusions. That lead to either support for or against some proposed policy, like personal accounts in SS (good), despite transition costs (high).
What’s missing are honest descriptions of likely alternatives.
Stay and fight in Vietnam for 5 more years and lose 20 000 more Americans. Leave Vietnam and let the N. Vietnamese win and murder 800 000; with Killing Fields next door in Cambodia.
Who wants to say they support the bad consequences of the policy they support? (I support the Iraq war; that means I’m partly to blame for Abu Ghraib. Yep. Don’t think it’s so bad. Certainly not as bad as doing nothing in Rwanda; or Sudan. Unreal Perfection is not an option.)
The critique of Dr. Gonzo is the lack of honest alternatives. The power comes from passionate truth about the current negatives.
April 1st, 2005 at 10:48 am
Perfection is not an option, and neither is objectivity, because we’re dissolved in the soup we’re tasting. But as a lot of us knew beforehand, and as you know now, we didn’t *have to* invade Iraq, and certainly not before we had the army we wanted. Inspections would have worked, would have revealed the same thing we know now, and would have avoided *creating* a swamp for the breeding of terrorists.
Maybe the point here is that, as a famous philosopher said (ID, anyone?) “there is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact.” But when you express a claim of fact incorporating your point of view, some will nod their heads and accept it, others will feel obligated to voice their utterly different take on the same issues (see below). But trying to avoid this by being “objective” is like flying a spaceship to the sun, and avoiding the obvious severe heat problems by flying only at night.
The centrist political correctness pervading the mainstream media isn’t at all similar to the absence of a thumb on the scale. It’s more like a very strong thumb pushing, pulling, or whatever it takes, to show balance no matter what the actual weights are.
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Stay and fight in Vietnam for 5 more years and lose 20 000 more Americans. Leave Vietnam and let the N. Vietnamese win and murder 800 000; with Killing Fields next door in Cambodia.
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How about, take a clue from the French and *not* follow in their bloody footsteps in the first place, thus not bombing Cambodia and Laos, shredding the society there and creating a power vacuum the Khmer Rouge could step into? Also, 5 more years would mean 20,000 more Americans and how many Vietnamese? We killed 2 million of them while we were there.
As for Iraq, to the degree you’re “to blame” for Abu Ghraib, you’re also to blame for our way-overstretched military, for our fractured alliances, for Iraq on the road to Khomeini-ism, and for our deficit being sent into hyperspace.
Clinton has taken the hit for Rwanda, even went there and apologized. Think you’re going to see Bush recognize reality any time soon? Dream on. In his world, it’s not wrong until you admit that it is.
Geez, and I haven’t even gotten to the “private accounts” shinola yet.
-F.
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:42 am
LAT national edition lives on
It’s down to 24 pages in black and white, on odd-sized 11-by-19 inch paper, the New York Times says. There are no paid ads, and “national” really means 1,500 mostly free copies in Washington and a few hundred in New York. That it survives at all means …