Think about a piece in November, rather than now, & let me know. Also consider the possibility of coming out here sometime in September to speak at one of my rallies. At the moment I’m looking around for a name band to anchor a list of “speakers.” Do you know any? There wouldn’t be much money involved, but I think we could cover all expenses … and there’s also the added attraction of getting in on a winning campaign for a change. My chances, at the moment, are booked about 40/60, & I haven’t even begun to whip on the bastards.
In preparation for the campaign I have shaved my head right down to a bright bald dome. Very strange & menacing. I have also joined the International Association of Police Chiefs & plan to attend their conference Oct 3 in Atlantic City. Hinckle has first shot at this story, but if he doesn’t want it maybe we can work something out. I’m also trying to persuade him (Warren) to hire a Scanlan’s press boat for the America’s Cup races—to enhance the coverage. I want to hire the Grateful Dead to play on the foredeck & sail right into the Newport flotilla with a gang of drug-crazies on board. But so far I can’t get this act confirmed. If it works I’ll be in NY for the races & maybe I can get you on board.
OK for now. Send word on all fronts. Thanx …
Hunter
**George Kimball just left today, after a vicious three-day strategy conference. He’s running for Sheriff of Lawrence, Kansas, but with no hope of winning. This is a strange phenomenon—Albert in Berkeley, Oscar Acosta in LA (he got 110,000 votes), Kimball in Kansas & me in Aspen—with no prior collusion.38
Very odd. …
ASPEN TIMES CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENT:
Thompson lay out a stark campaign platform in this paid advertisement in the October 8, 1970, Aspen Times.
October 8, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
ONLY SERIOUS PEOPLE CAN LAUGH
F. FELLINI
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
Contrary to widespread rumors and a plague of wishful thinking, I am very serious about my candidacy for the office of sheriff in the coming November election. Anybody who thinks I’m kidding is a fool—739 new registrations since the September primary is no joke in a county with a total vote of less than 3000, so the time has come, it seems, to dispense with evil humor and come to grips with the strange possibility that the next sheriff of this county might very well be a foul-mouthed outlaw journalist with some very rude notions about lifestyles, law enforcement and political reality in America.
Why not? This is a weird twist in my life, but despite the natural horror of seeing myself as the main pig, I think it has to be done. Or at least tried. We have come too far to back off now; the experiment that began last year with the Joe Edwards campaign is coming together, and this time Aspen is ready for it—not only for a new kind of sheriff, but for a whole new style in government, the kind of thing Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he talked about “democracy.” We have not done too well on that concept over the years—not in Aspen or anywhere else—and the proof of our failure is the wreckage of Jefferson’s dream that haunts us on every side, from coast to coast, on the TV news and in a thousand daily newspapers. We have blown it—that fantastic possibility that Abe Lincoln called “the last, best hope of earth.”
This is the nightmare that our politicians have forced on us, even in Aspen. This valley is no longer a refuge or a hideout from reality. For years that was true; Aspen was the best of both worlds—an outpost of urban “culture” buried deep in the rural Rockies. It was a very saleable property, as they say in show business, and for 20 years the selling-orgy boomed fat and heavy.
And now we are reaping the whirlwind—big-city problems too malignant for small-town solutions, Chicago-style traffic in a town without stoplights, Oakland-style drug busts continually bungled by simple cowboy cops who see nothing wrong with kicking handcuffed prisoners in the ribs while the sheriff stands by watching, seeing nothing wrong with it either. While the ranchers howl about zoning, New York stockbrokers and art hustlers sell the valley out from under them. The county attorney has his own iron mine and his own industrial slum at the mouth of the valley. The county commissioners are crude, dimwit lackeys for every big-city dealer who wants a piece of the action. These rapists should be dealt with just as harshly as any other criminal. This is 1970—not 1870. The powers of the sheriff’s office can be focused in this direction. Why not?
Hunter S. Thompson
ASPEN TIMES CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENT:
Thompson’s second paid advertisement appeared in the Aspen Times on October 22, 1970, next to a photo of the Freak Power candidate glaring at smug-faced incumbent Sheriff Earl Whitmire.
October 22, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
“THE EARTH BELONGS TO THE LIVING … NOT TO THE DEAD”
THOMAS JEFFERSON, IN A LETTER TO JOHN W. EPPES, JUNE 24, 1813
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines “Freak” as “… any abnormal product or curiously unusual object …a person or animal on exhibition as an example of some strange deviation from nature; monster. …” Indeed. A very heavy image. And the same dictionary defines “power” as … “the ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.” So in the context of semantics or straight word logic, the phrase “Freak Power” is a sloppy contradiction of its own terms. How, after all, could a group of deviates and monsters be capable of acting together to accomplish something? They would be helpless and impotent, almost by definition, a noisy hellbroth of quirks and demented energy far beyond any channel or focus. Yet, despite the obvious irony of the phrase “Freak Power,” NBC, the Los Angeles Times’ finest traveling police reporter and maybe a few people in Aspen have apparently taken it at face value. And shuddered somewhere in between glee and horror at the thought that some mob of buggering, drug-crazed geeks might be ready to seize the county courthouse and put all the burghers on trial for their lives.
In truth, that phrase was a crude, but super-effective piece of political theatre—which worked too well, so now is the time to bury it and move on to the serious action: the task of returning local government to the people who live in this valley, instead of the greedheads—and their local agents—who only want to invest here.
Which raises a point about Freak Power that I’d like to make before we close the coffin. For some reason that has to embarrass me as a writer I failed to make it clear that I use the word “freak” in a positive, sympathetic sense. In the ominous, ugly-splintered context of what is happening in 1970 Amerika a lot of people are beginning to understand that to be a freak is an honorable way to go.
This is the real point: that we are not really freaks at all—not in the literal sense—but the twisted realities of the world we are trying to live in have somehow combined to make us feel like freaks. We argue, we protest, we petition—but nothing changes.
So now, with the rest of the nation erupting in a firestorm of bombings and political killings, a handful of “freaks” are running a final, perhaps atavistic experiment with the idea of forcing change by voting … and if that has to be called Freak Power, well … whatever’s right.
H.S.T.
Hunter S. Thompson
for Sheriff
Committee
Rev. Thomas Benton,
Spiritual Director
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Everything had gone as planned: Thompson lost the election, but gained plenty of material for his stalled “Death of the American Dream” book.
November 23, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Well …I thought I might as well answer your letter of Nov. 3—election day as it were—and confirm the tragic rumor concerning my loss. The margin was roughly 1500 to 1065. The GOP candidate got about 150 votes—after the party abandoned him massively, by means of a huge telephone campaign on election eve, and avoided that crucial three-way vote split that we were counting on. In the other (County Commissioner) race, the Democrats abandoned their
candidate and swung massively to the GOP incumbent, producing the same kind of final tally. Against us.
On election night our Jerome Hotel headquarters was a scene out of some other world. Every freak in Christendom was there, it seemed, including those from Life, Harper’s, LOOK and a film crew from London—along with the camera crew from Woodstock and a bona fide Swami from India. It was a fantastic scene and naturally we all loaded up heavily on mescaline & tequila … to ward off the chill. I’m enclosing 3 photos: one, the classic Hoover & Friend shot, and two others from election night … the “thumbs down” shot came at the moment of the axe, when the down-county trailer-court precincts reported in … and the other, with all the cameras, was taken during my “final statement,” which was made in a total mescaline frenzy and I remember nothing of what I said except: “This is my last press conference. You won’t have Hunter Thompson to kick around anymore, you motherfuckers. …” The whole thing is on film & appeared the other night on British Indep. TV. The Woodstock crew is still haggling over who owns the rights to the two weeks of film they shot. They’re trying to sell it as a film titled Stoned on Politics. I got a copy of their sales pitch from a producer (?) they approached; they don’t seem to want me involved in the film in any way … which will almost certainly lead to bad trouble.
But what the hell? At the moment I’m concerned with other things. Like how to cope with this “Final Notice Before Seizure” that came today from the IRS. They want $2200 by midnight on Saturday, Nov. 28. After that, they say, they’ll come out here and seize everything I own. Tonight I called Warren Hinckle and demanded at least some part of the $5290 Scanlan’s owes me … and he was of course sympathetic, explaining that everything would be OK in a few days when the current issue of Scanlan’s comes across the border from Quebec in a fleet of black trucks. In other words, my ability to pay the IRS depends on Hinckle’s ability to smuggle 100,000 sabotage-bomb manuals past U.S. Customs in huge trucks. I’ve seen that issue; I helped them put it together in SF & as a matter of fact I have two articles in it (one is the lead piece), and I know Nixon won’t want it let loose in the U.S. One of the worst items it contains, in fact, is a two page ad for the Aspen Wallposter, half of which is a full page color photo of Nixon with blood drooling out of his mouth, a Wallposter cover that we couldn’t get printed anywhere in Colorado. Horrible, horrible …
Anyway, I assume you see where I’m at. The Repression has come down on us full-bore here; the Fatbacks are trying to Mop Up while they’re ahead … sensing a mandate, perhaps, or maybe just trying to croak us completely before May, when the Mayor and entire City Council will be up for election again. And that will be a very heavy election … because the one wild fact that got lost in the overall results of this past election is that we won the city of Aspen. The county vote destroyed us by such a huge margin that it offset our victory in town. (In my own precinct, for instance, I lost by 300 to 90.) But there is no escaping the harsh truth that all four city precincts voted for a Sheriff’s candidate who insisted, throughout the campaign, on his right to keep on eating mescaline after he was elected. I refused to compromise on this issue—or any other, for that matter—and still got a 40/60 split on the vote. The entire vote; not just the Freak Power segment. In other words, I got a bigger percentage of the vote in Pitkin County, which is hugely Republican and where Freaks make up roughly 30% of the electorate, than Jim Buckley did in NY State.39
Contrast this to the showings of the Peace & Freedom candidates in California, the Raza Unida in Colorado or even the liberals in New York …and then ponder the implications. I’m still not sure what they mean myself, but another odd factor to add in might be the up-coming 18-year-old vote and the fact that I won the straw vote at the local high school by something like ten to one. In other words, I’d have won easily—even admitting that I smoked grass and ate mescaline whenever I felt like it—if the 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds had been eligible to vote.
This harks back, I think, to our conversation in the Waldorf bar last May, and your notion that I was (am) somewhere far out on the leading edge of the National Reality. Maybe this country is almost ready for Freak Power on the highest levels of national politics. Maybe a presidential candidate in 1972 could actually gain votes by admitting that he smokes marijuana and laughing about it on network TV. That’s essentially what I did. In fact I dismissed marijuana as a low-level “stupor-drug” and said I preferred “more active” things—such as mescaline, and occasionally, Acid.
We were all astounded by the (lack of) reaction to this kind of talk—from a candidate for Sheriff, no less. I have a tape of a public exchange between me and an ex-SS officer (a valid Nazi) about mescaline, and he ends up saying, “Well …I have to admire your honesty, it’s incredible. …” And I think the fucker voted for me. If nothing else, I turned him around in public—with about 100 people gathered in a room to hear me talk—so totally that our exchange produced at least 10 votes out of that hostile crowd, and maybe 50.
This was the most outlandish aspect of the campaign—the fact that we could actually overcome the multi-onus of a candidate who was not only insanely ugly, stone bald, and advocating “Freak Power” with casual references to “pigfuckers” and “shitheads” and “greedy scum” … but who also admitted to committing felonies as a way of life and whose massively-distributed campaign posters featured a double-thumbed red fist clutching a peyote button.
This is something to talk about … and I’m doing it right now for Rolling Stone. We have another huge “Freak Power” feature coming up in about two weeks. It was due today, in fact, but Wenner agreed to postpone it until I could sort the whole thing out … and he also mentioned that it was going to run as a major piece, with many photos, rather than a brief news-item-type follow-up to the original piece. Probably around mid-December … for good or ill.
So …we come to the question of THE BOOK. Indeed. And the only real question, right now, is whether this Aspen politics gig should be the framework for the whole thing, or perhaps just a couple of chapters in a long rambling gig about politics in America. What occurred to me the other night is that somehow this Aspen political freakout—particularly my own brutal involvement—might be the same kind of accidental framework for a book that my Hell’s Angels involvement provided. Maybe “The Battle of Aspen” might be a working title for a book that would actually delve into politics far beyond Aspen … all the way back to New Hampshire in early ’68, Chicago, election day in LA and all the other things. Because all that really led to the scene that just happened here. Without Chicago I would never have run for Sheriff—or even launched the Joe Edwards campaign. So it all makes a very definite kind of progressive sense—at least in my own mind, and hopefully in print.
So … what do you think? If you want to go with “The Battle of Aspen,” that decision will amount to far more than just a working title. It will amount to that definitive framework that we’ve lacked ever since you shackled me with that nebulous “American Dream” bullshit. Which has hamstrung me ever since.
What I have in mind—if the B/A idea works—is an opening chapter based very heavily on the Oct 1, ’70 Rolling Stone piece.40 In other words, the book would open almost exactly like that article opens … then with a flashback to Chicago and perhaps the NRA gun-control piece … then into the Sheriff’s campaign and another flashback to Nixon & McCarthy in New Hampshire (also Kennedy) and others, including the foul ghost of Humphrey …and LBJ … then as a sort of screeching climax, the final third of the book would be a detailed account of this past election, the framework for which you’ll be able to see very soon in Rolling Stone. We could also use the (Scanlan’s) Jean-Claude Killy piece in there, on the strength of its connections to Ski/Aspen and the Chicago Stockyards Amphitheatre and other, less tangible connections that might be even more pertinent, in the end, than the others.
If this idea grabs you, let me know at once. Probably we should talk about it on the phone—maybe at some length. Because once I get st
arted on that “Battle of Aspen” framework, there will be no turning back.
My advisors, in fact, are already gearing up (down?) for the Presidential campaign in ’72. They seem to think that I could beat Nixon handily with the same kind of campaign we ran here—now that we know the ropes, and which mistakes to avoid. Naturally, I refuse to run—unless they offer me the Democratic nomination and about 100 million dollars to blow on a brutal, mind-bending campaign that would stagger the National Consciousness. (You would have been stunned, by the way, at my public performances—with a fleet of mikes and cameras & even huge glaring lights in my face; at first I couldn’t believe it myself … but after the first few scenes I found myself actually digging it; very strange, maybe a sort of Hitler instinct … but there is something very wild in being able to look out at a huge crowd and actually communicate with it. …)
Which is neither here nor there. For now, what I need from you is a definite opinion inre: “The Battle of Aspen.” Should we do it that way? Will it make us all rich? Will you send me $5000 when I send you a third of that book? Have I made myself clear in terms of what it will/might/could be? Do you have any other, better ideas? Alternative frameworks? Titles? Vagaries? Dead-end fuckarounds?
Until I hear from you I’ll be down here in the War Room (that’s what we named it during the campaign) hashing out the new Rolling Stone piece. But meanwhile I think we should deal very quickly with this Battle of Aspen idea—because if you like it, it’s already happening … and if you think it won’t work, well, I think you’d better come up with a real ballbuster of an alternative. Because we’re way, way overdue … and I’m getting hungry.
OK for now. Call when you get this digested. Ciao …
Hunter
Fear and Loathing in America Page 47
