Justice Rehnquist Checks Out

The paper this past Sunday was dated September 4, 2005 – my 44th birthday.

The headline stated “Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies.”

I couldn’t have asked for a better gift.

Not that things are going to improve much as George W. Bush will surely do everything in his power to load the court even further to the right. But that’s another worry for another day. For the time being, I say good riddance to William Rehnquist, the guy who presided over and championed an impeachment trial that wasted a ton of time and money, not to mention was conducted against the wishes of a considerable majority of Americans.

Good riddance, indeed, to the guy who essentially gave us President George W. Bush when he led the way in stopping the Florida vote count.

Good riddance to the guy who proclaimed states rights over federal power, but only when the cause fit his own ultra-right ideology. In 2003, Rehnquist was dismayed when the majority both preserved affirmative action in college admissions and killed laws criminalizing gay sex. However, in 2004, he had no objections to the federal government detaining terrorism suspects indefinitely while denying them access to courts. Then he turned around and voted against laws created to protect female victims of violent crime and to keep guns out of schools. The guy just couldn’t make up his mind.

On the subject of religion, despite the separation of church and state as decreed by the U.S. Constitution, Rehnquist frequently found a place for God in government, as in 2002 when he wrote the 5-4 decision which permitted parents to use public tax money to send their children to religious schools.

But it was on the topic of race when his concept of white supremacy was truly exemplified. In 1952, Rehnquist composed legal documents that seemed to reflect his resistance to Broad v. Board of Education. And lest one think that the good justice became enlightened along the way, as recent as 1999, Rehnquist directed a gaggle of lawyers and judges in the singing of “Dixie” at a public setting.

Until his death, Rehnquist never did get around to disavowing these despicable acts of racism. And for that alone, we’re better off having him off the Supreme Court – by whatever means necessary.

Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

"He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom.
'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'"
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

For me, this quote has always been the most memorable in a literary masterpiece full of them. It's a dead-on assessment of what Joseph Conrad's character Kurtz meant to the Russian vagabond who leads Marlow to Kurtz. And of what Hunter S. Thompson has meant to me. With news of Thompson’s recent death by suicide, this passage came to mind immediately.

As best as can be derived from Thompson’s literary canon, Heart of Darkness was one of his favorite among a handful of classics – some mainstream, others not so much so – in which he found inspiration. I discovered Heart of Darkness and Conrad in general, thanks to Thompson. He also led me to a few other literary beauties through the years which proved to be of a more didactic nature than I would have originally suspected. Thompson's introduced me to the likes of Conrad and Nathanael West, and caused me to revisit and derive strange pleasures from authors I’d forgotten since my high school years … Hawthorne, Twain, Coleridge. And it was because of Hunter Thompson that I became acquainted with the one and only Sebastian Dangerfield – the protagonist in J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and one of the most delightfully repugnant characters in all of literature.

Thompson’s reputation for pharmaceutical intake and violent tendencies aside, he was able to do what some decade and a half of formal education could not: Interest me in great literature by great writers. This began in 1989 with my acquisition of The Great Shark Hunt; a book that Thompson himself called “my life's work."

Indeed, it was from within these pages that I was able to truly grasp the man and his work. Shark Hunt covers the true beginning of Thompson's writing life – from the early '60s to the late '70s – and includes the years when Thompson was at the height of his powers as a respected contemporary journalist. Two books came out of this golden age, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Today, it's easy to forget, unless you're a true Hunter Thompson aficionado and not merely a groupie, how great these books were and are, given the reputation he has acquired thanks to the cartoonish treatment he received at the hands of that pig, Gary Trudeau. Thompson openly resented Trudeau and once claimed, in so many words, that if he ever got his hands around Trudeau's neck, he may not let go.

Who can blame him? Trudeau's antics made a joke of Thompson’s literary accomplishments. Fortunately, something happened that began to correct this. In 1998, Thompson released a book called The Proud Highway, a collection of his early letters. In it, we learn of the aspiring young writer who, like Jack Kerouac, one of his heroes, wrote for himself and not for others. In reading these letters, his confidence and conviction absolutely burn.

It was at the end of ’89, after spending the year absorbing The Great Shark Hunt many times over, that I had the chance to attend one of Thompson’s “lectures.” Stepping into the Cabaret Metro that cold night in Chicago was like stepping back in time – specifically the time when Thompson was hanging out with the Hell’s Angels. The place was full of guys of all ages in biker leather; guys who knew the legend but had probably never read the books.

In we walked – me in my Polo tweeds and my date, a tall, radiant blond who seemed to catch more than a few eyes. For two hours, I kept returning to the lobby for beers, wondering if Hunter was ever going to make it. Twice a guy came on stage to announce that he was “in the limo and on the way.” Despite the yelping and howling from the seats, Hunter finally came on stage to a wild explosion of applause. Over the next hour and a half, an extremely disjointed Q&A session ensued, composed mostly of questions about drugs, motorcycles and everything except Thompson’s literary achievements. But about an hour into the evening, a guy in a blue oxford button-down shirt stood up and asked “what is your favorite book?”

Without naming titles, he heralded the genius of Conrad and Twain. Then said that “every damn one of you should read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, but I imagine none of you will.” The next day, I owned it.

I can’t say that Hunter Thompson’s suicide surprised me, shocking and sad as it was. When ripping through The Great Shark Hunt for the first time, I came across an article Thompson had written in 1964 on Ernest Hemingway’s final days. It had been just three years since Hemingway had taken his own life with a shotgun. And if Thompson didn’t exactly rationalize the act, he certainly expressed an empathy towards it; a weird understanding of how a writer – or any creative artist – might reach this point.

Though I’ve thought about this possibility often – even as recently as the week prior to it happening – the anticipation doesn’t ease the pain of knowing that he no longer stalks the planet. But like all of us, I still have his work, and through it, his admonition to be a brighter mind, a more passionate artist and to love life more. What else could a writer ask for?

My kinship with Hunter S. Thompson has enriched my life immensely. As artist Ralph Steadman said upon hearing of his friend’s death, Thompson “enlightened” people. Yes, he did.

To quote Conrad, which Thompson so often did, “I tell you, this man has enlarged my mind.”