Moore mad Thompson, please

Well, here I am at work, bored out of my mind. It’ll be another one of those nights tonight, if I end up getting laid; one of those nights where my inner eyelids flash pictures of spider solitaire at me while I’m trying to come. All of a sudden, I’ll have made some move that releases all of the trapped cards, and everything has become crystal clear and then whammo, convulsive orgasm. It’s kind of like having advertisements pumped into your subconscious.

I shall now extrapolate on Hunter S. Thompson, and how he should be an icon to us all.

Of course, everyone is so totally wrapped up in Micheal Moore right now… Not that I have anything in particular against Moore; I value his accomplishments, and his ability to be able to catch the attention of the blinded masses, even if it means occasional dumbing-down and generalization. But Hunter S. Thompson; he really did get down to the truth in his gritty surreal way… And perhaps it was too much for people, and that’s why he didn’t become the idol that Moore is becoming. Sure, there, too are generalizations of character and activities. But they leave you with a cathartic lump of wrath in the pit of your belly instead of a feeling of impatience with the simplicity of the argument. Thompson generalizes to get at the intestinal constipation of anger at a seemingly uneffectable administration. Moore generalizes so that the stupid people can be in on the joke.

One of the most beautiful things about reading Transmetropolitan (graphic novel by Warren Ellis,) is that the City, despite being a fragmented, junkie pile of shit, is also a great fan of our Thompsonesque character, Spider Jerusalem. Despite the extremeism and filth and carelessness, there is a beautiful amount of hope there; Spider is disgustingly popular as well as the happy recipient of many death threats. Because of his rhetoric, people are interested in the truth that government and capitalist corporations thrive on by propagandizing into shiny green fields. His audacity is so saleable that people listen to him even when he goes about cranked out of his mind and destroying their comfortable faith-machines. That, I think, is the glorious bit of humanity that we lack in this age. People are quite happy to masturbate to the propaganda of advertising in Transmetropolitan, but have enough taste to appreciate Spider Jerusalem’s wordage and therefore let him force feed them the facts behind the scandals and controversy. But here in real America, it’s taboo to speak of things that are being hidden; doing so is referred to as “offensive” or “unpatriotic”. Somehow we ended up with special word connotations specifically to form the backbone of our country’s denial of uncomfortable truths.

Certainly, the censorship of speaking against those in power has always existed. Surely, everything was censored while there were shortages in printers. It would be the wealthy investors who would censor according to their likely gains before the government had to concern itself with what was being printed. It’s nice that we now have Farenheit 9/11 as a blockbuster instead of an underground pamphlet or the slips of paper as presented by Martin Luther.



But then again, people who gain power will influence the formation of society’s mores. And perhaps the madness displayed by certain speakers of the truth comes from their (possibly subconscious) desire to not be saddled with the very responsibility that they see lashed by greed and denial… So a bit of craziness will avoid the masses giving them the hierarchy’s post-mortem crown. But all too often, it is likely that the same human weaknesses that the soothsayer was unable to gouge out of his already much-mastered self, are the same faults that the society carries on. Sure, Luther convinced people to have a vernacular bible so that the Catholic Church couldn’t continue to pull the wool over people’s eyes as easily, but he certainly didn’t help anyone’s civil rights.
And who would get to read that bible, anyway? It’s not as though everyman could read; one is still only speaking of the elite. And elitism continues…
Now, one might therefore whine about the pessimism in H.S. Thompson's writing, which is far from subtle. Thompson and Jerusalem both are ripe with a disaffection for the world; as far as their writing claims. But the fact that they write so viscerally and emotionally, with so much venom; it belies the many exclaimations of contempt. But the masses simply take this on as a new trend of hatred for the sake of charisma. Instead of reading subtextually or even thoughtfully, they simply ride out the cheap emotional excitement. You’d think that they’d be able to follow the example of examination and thoughtfulness displayed for them. A writer’s lucky if he can get even a fifth of his message into the minds of the masses with enough facts that they could explain it to others. And that is where Moore gets my vote, even if he does have to dumb things down.