Word: gonzo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nothing but an inept Marcus Welby retread. The plotting is vague, the tedious medical cri ses are easily averted, and the comedy leaden. As always in this genre, there is a young sidekick for the middle-aged hero. This time out, the second banana calls himself Gonzo, purports to be a Viet Nam veteran, looks and acts like a fashion mod el and lives in a very cute van called the Titanic...
...newspaper article is not reality; it is the reporter's closest acceptable approximation of it. The difference between "gonzo" and "objective" journalism is that while AP/UPI/New York Times/Harvard Crimson news articles usually walk a treacherous tightrope between what the reporter actually believes has happened and the accepted rules of "fairness and balance" and attribution for everything, the gonzo piece just spews observations and conclusions that would have no place in formal, tightly constructed "factual journalism...
Even during his tenure as an "objective" reporter--and a pretty competent one--one could see the gonzo straining to get out. In a 1967 New York Times Magazine article on the drug scene, he writes...
...viciousness at the corner of Michigan and Balboa. The sixties died there--or were killed--Thompson has written, and it was a turning point in his writing as well. After a couple of transitional pieces, including a bitter account of Nixon's first inauguration, he plunged full-fledged into gonzo with "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Deparaved," a hilarious and brutal tale with Thompson in the starring role, English illustrator Ralph Steadman as side-kick, and the liquor-filled aristocracy of Churchill Downs as the venal side of America...
...Thompson is at his best when he's writing about politics, not everyday debauchery. Alongside his rise to gonzo superstardom was the rise and fall of Richard Nixon. Thompson's visceral loathing for Nixon comes through repeatedly, from '68 to '72 to Watergate. They are, as both would gladly admit, opposites. Yet, when it's all over, and Nixon is leaving Washington, even Thompson regrets it a bit; the excitement and intensity of the chase is over...