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Journalist Hunter S. Thompson Commits Suicide

HeadlineFeb 21, 2005

And author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson has died at the age of 67. Police say Thompson shot himself on Sunday night at his home in Woody Creek Colorado. He became one of the country’s best known young journalists in the late 1960s and early 1970s while working for Rolling Stone where his drug-induced books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail were first serialized. Thompson once said, “I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they’ve always worked for me.” Thompson identified the death of the American Dream as his reporter’s beat. He called his style of writing “gonzo” journalism. He said, “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.” In 1994 he wrote an obituary for President Nixon in Rolling Stone and titled it “Notes on the Passing Of An American Monster.” While covering Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign Thompson wrote, “It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.”

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