Talk:Hunter S. Thompson

The Saigon Health Insurance Story May or May Not Be True

I've just read Jan Wenner's Memoirs published in 2022 and he disputed as "patently not true" the anecdote about having cancelled HST's health insurance in a war zone. In fact, he says, he raised the question of LIFE insurance with HST before going to Saigon, only to be brushed off by HST. He went on to purchase a policy for him naming Sandy and Juan as the beneficiaries. He health insurance cancellation anecdote, he says, was totally made up for laughs as part of HST's college lecture routine. Wenner asked him to stop telling it but the story lingered. Wenner is a primary source for this material, and has meaningfully disputed what previously appeared as an allegation in the article. As such I have taken it out, and I think it should remain out. ahess247 (talk) 18:30, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Rather than taking it out, we should cite both sources and say what the two have two say differently. We can say "Hunter Thompson frequently stated <yada yada yada>. However, in his own memoirs, Jan Wenner disputed this saying <yada yada yada>. It's not our place to decide among the two parties who is more likely correct. It's a notable story that Thompson told, Wenners rebuttal is certainly relevant, but not as a means of removing the information, rather as a means to add to the information. --Jayron32 18:48, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure I agree yet but will leave your edit as is for now. I think that entire section is awkwardly constructed and could stand a good-faith rewrite. ahess247 (talk) 21:21, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

My whole point is that what we don't have is any kind of secondary source that has analyzed the story and assessed the likely veracity of either part of it. Instead what we have is two people (each of which may be describing things in their own self-serving way) with different recollections of past events. Wenner has no greater likelihood of telling the true story than does Thompson, and it's not our place to decide that Wenner's version of the story is the correct one. That he denied the claim is a thing worth noting; however to say because he denied the claim, we should assume that Thompson lied, and that if Thompson lied we should remove the text from the article entirely, is a bridge too far. That's putting too much of our own interpretation on the source texts.--Jayron32 10:54, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I've spent a few hours consulting the source material on this period. There is a lot of inconsistency. HST complains about the matter in letters. Wenner tells it differently. The McKeen biography spins an entirely different take on the episode. It's clear that Saigon was a turning point in the HST/Wenner/RS relationship, and as a result I think this entire section should be treated differently, and I don't simply mean the part about the insurance, whether it was health or life. This was time and place that the HST/JW/RS relationship began to break down. ahess247 (talk) 14:01, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. I think that some discussion of the breakdown of the relationships is worth mentioning; the disagreement over the insurance is probably a part of that, but not likely the whole story. --Jayron32 14:53, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Agree. ahess247 (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Combine some sections

I think Hells Angels and Late 60s sections could be combined into one. I think the Birth of Gonzo and Rolling Stone years could be combined into one.

I think the Campaign '72 section is incredibly short and lacking context, and jumps suddenly from 72 to the death of Nixon in '94. It was a much more significant accomplishment than we give it credit here. On this specifically I'm prepared to draft a few paragraphs today. ahess247 (talk) 14:48, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I have started on this but not finished. ahess247 (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Finished with this section. I deleted the Nixon death stuff from 1994 which wasn't really germane. I don't think it's worth adding the chat with Nixon about football which was made remarkable in my view only by the fact that Nixon was the sitting president at the time. ahess247 (talk) 22:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Here's the bit that I removed. Some of it could be salvaged for use elsewhere: ahess247 (talk) 23:01, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Thompson went on to become a fierce critic of Nixon, both during and after his presidency. After Nixon's death in 1994, Thompson described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time", and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." Following Nixon's pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974, Hunter ruminated on the roughly $400,000 pension Nixon maneuvered his way into, by resigning before being formally indicted. While The Washington Post was lamenting Nixon's "lonely and depressed" state after being forced from the White House, Hunter wrote that '[i]f there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his [Nixon's] rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.' There was however one passion shared by Thompson and Nixon: a love of football, discussed in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

References