David Foster Wallace Channels Hunter S. Thompson

I don't know if you've ever read Hunter S. Thompson but he's crazy; entertainingly crazy, but he's still crazy. He goes on wild political speeches and accuses a great deal of people of being on drugs, which is something that people on drugs often do. Underneath it all though he was a damn good reporter who gave readers a fresh and interesting look at politics without the usual 6 o clock ho-hum boredom. David Foster Wallace channels the great Thompson in his article The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub, the best piece of political reporting I've read in a long, long time.

It was a very good choice on Rolling Stone's part to send a writer as talented as Wallace on the campaign trail. His description of daily life on the campaign trail is interesting, funny and not too secretly scathing of the whole broken political process. He disects, the yes men, the snotty upper crust journalists, the hanger-ons and the poor schmucks who have to film it all with an eye for detail and a vocabulary that portrays how great a writer he really is.

A lot of the details he catches are the kind of things that you just don't imagine happening on the campaing trail, mostly because reporting on it is usually so bland you'd mistake it for plain white rice if you tried to eat it. The exchange between Mike Murphy, McCain's Aide-de-camp and one of the 12 monkeys on page 10, made me chuckle pretty enthusiastically.

I also really agree with his portrayal of John McCain turning into a salesman while trying to run for president and that the real John McCain is still in a box in Hoa Lo, waiting to come out. I remember watching the 2008 elections and seeing McCain and wondering "How was this once a level-headed man, who I could respect?" It's easy now to see how advisors and marketers can manipulate a peson until he becomes a product they want to sell you. It's sad really.

The one complaint that I'd have against the article is the same thing that's kept me from reading anything other than Foster's short fiction. It's so damn long! I mean it's entertaining the whole way but I think a good editor could've sat David down and helped take a little off to help slim the article down.

Though in the end this is an amazing piece of journalism and an excuse for me to crack open a Blue Moon sit by the window and cry tears of intellectual sadness at the fact that we lost such an amazing talent so soon. Oh, David Foster Wallace, I know you're writing really long, immaculately worded, beautiful stories in heaven right now with Hunter S. Thompson.