Goodbye Gonzo

Hunter S. Thompson is dead by his own hand. Anyone who's read anything of his cannot be too sad, or even mystified. Live by the sword...

His greatest contribution to the arts, I think, is Gonzo Journalism,

which throws objectivity out of the window and engages the writer's personal views.

I think this is great, objectivity is a myth anyway, the choice of materials presented and excluded always breathes in an air of the subjective.

No Gonzo from some at the smh, no real journalism either if you ask me. An article entitled

Pope calls gay marriage part of 'ideology of evil'

(and I really love the phrasing he uses here, reminds me of Bush and makes me wonder if the Pope writes his own books.) doesn’t even follow the title, instead they ramble off on tangents reminiscent of one of my first year philosophy essays (conceptually at least; scraped through with a C-). To me, this is disgusting journalism, the misdirection every bit as deplorable as Howard on more troops in Iraq and his defense of this backflip.

I ask you, if the norm of journalism in broadsheets is to deceive, is it any wonder that the government feels that it can do the same and get away with it?

True Gonzo Journalists are commentators like Margo Kingston, and I like when she says on Howard,

'If he gets away with this he really can get away with anything.'

I disagree with her a little, mainly because I think she's living in the past, but if you look at the title of the piece,

'Howard puts more Aussie bodies on the line in Iraq, minus mandate'

then read the closing line which I've quoted above, you see a degree of structure and synchronicity. Good quality journalism which I'll turn to again and again.

R.I.P Hunter. Some, at least, are waving the flag.