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| quote: | from Hunter S. Thompson
You know, Bush, he’s really the evil one in here. Well, more than just him. We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me. A lot more never say anything. We'll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off in the next week by -- it's always unknown Bush [inaudible] strangers who commit suicide right afterward. No witnesses. They have a new kind of crime.
MARY SUMA: Is that the CIA kind of crime?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Oh, absolutely. Anyone who’s a successful criminal has got a crime. Absolutely no witnesses, no records. We can go on and on. I have to be restrained on the subject. |
http://www.democracynow.org/article...05/02/23/164218
| quote: | Mick O’Regan: Unlike Walter Cronkite, Hunter S. Thompson is a stirrer, a deliberately provocative commentator and a freewheeling iconoclast, infamous for his relentless critique of the American government and military.
He lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and that’s where I found him at the end of a less than perfect telephone line, to ask his opinion of the state of the US media.
Hunter S. Thompson: Well let’s see, ‘shamefully’ is a word that comes to mind, but that’s not true in the case of The New York Times, The Washington Post, but overall the American journalism I think has been cowed and intimidated by the massive flat-sucking, this patriotic orgy that the White House keeps whipping up. You know if you criticise the President it’s unpatriotic and there’s something wrong with you, you may be a terrorist.
Mick O’Regan: So in that sense, there’s not enough room for dissenting voices?
Hunter S. Thompson: There’s plenty of room there’s not just enough people who are willing to take the risk. It’s sort of a herd mentality, a lemming-like mentality. If you don’t go with the flow you’re anti-American and therefore a suspect. And we’ve seen this before, these patriotic frenzies. It’s very convenient having an undeclared war that you can call a war and impose military tribunals and wartime security and we have these generals telling us that this war’s going to go on for a long, long time. Maybe not so much the generals now, the generals are a little afraid of Iraq, a little worried about it, but it’s the civilians in the White House, the gang of thieving, just lobbyists for the military industrial complex, who are running the White House, and to be against them is to be unpatriotic, then hell, call me a traitor.
Mick O’Regan: Do you think that most of the American media, or say most of the influential American media has bought that patriotism line, and as a result are self-censoring themselves?
Hunter S. Thompson: There you go, self-censorship, yes, that’s a very good point. Yes, I would say that. Now there are always exceptions to that but there’ve been damn few. Yeah.
Mick O’Regan: So is it the White House laying down what they think is appropriate journalism, or is it the news media outlets deciding that they have to be patriotic, that they’re under some sort of undeclared duty at the moment, to somehow reflect the patriotism of the American public?
Hunter S. Thompson: Well it goes a little deeper than that, because this Administration is well on the road to seizing power, and Tom Dashell, the Senate Democratic leader the other day accused Bush of trying to seize dictatorial powers. Now that was a big breakthrough, and I’m starting to sense that the tide may be turning against the President; we have to beat this bastard one way or another. And the American government is the greatest enemy of freedom around the world that I can think of. And we keep waving that flag, freedom, yes, these people are flag-suckers. |
| quote: | Mick O’Regan: So at the moment people don’t want to hear that sort of criticism, they want people to rally round the flag and support the military?
Hunter S. Thompson: I think that’s right, and I think the reason for that is that they don’t want to hear it because boy, that’s going to be a lot of agonising reappraisal, as they say. What reality is in this country and the world right now. Yes, popular opinion in this country has to be swung over to “the White House is wrong, these people are corporate thieves. They’ve turned the American Dream into a chamber of looting.” It would take a lot of adjustment, mentally. |
| quote: | Mick O’Regan: You went on to say in that article, which I have in front of me, that ‘even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States.’ Do you think that the event completely transformed the way in which Americans see themselves and their own vulnerability?’
Hunter S. Thompson: No, the event by itself wouldn’t have done that. But it was the way the Administration was able to use that event. Even use it as a springboard for everything they wanted to do. And that might tell you something. I remember when I was writing that column you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things, and I don’t know if I want to go into this on worldwide radio here, but –
Mick O’Regan: You may as well.
Hunter S. Thompson: All right. Well I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. Now you want to keep in mind that every time a person named Bush gets into office, the nation goes into a drastic recession they call it.
Mick O’Regan: It seems a very long bow to me, but are you sort of suggesting that this worked in the favour of the Bush Administration?
Hunter S. Thompson: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I’ve known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened. |
Audio - http://www.indybay.org/uploads/hunt..._aug29_2002.mp3
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/144645.php
Realplayer audio
http://abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/med...nters290802.ram
Last edited by Trancer-X on Jul-28-2005 at 06:21
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