Hey Rube

by Hunter S. Thompson

  —April 23, 2001

  Can the Three Stooges Save the NBA?

  There is too much ignorant squawking these days about the Decline and Fall of the NBA Empire. Nielsen ratings are down, the fan base is shrinking, and even the Commissioner’s office says radical changes are needed to keep the game healthy.

  Many alarming statistics are cited to show that the NBA, as we know it, is withering away right in front of our eyes.

  But none of it is true. It is a landslide of gibberish dutifully parroted by sportswriters.

  What the hell? Somebody has to fill all those holes in the widely cursed 24-hour news cycle. We live in faster and faster Times. Big news that only 200 years ago took nine weeks just to cross the Atlantic Ocean now travels everywhere in the world at the speed of light, and gossip travels faster.

  Any geek with a cheap computer can log on to the World Wide Web and spread terrifying rumors about Anthrax bombs exploding in Dallas or half the population of San Francisco being killed in three days by a brown fog of Ague Fever that blew in on a vagrant wind from Mongolia.… And never doubt for an instant that these things might be true. That is the wonderful perversity of gossip in the 21st Century. Nothing is impossible.

  Some things are more impossible than others, however, and the collapse of the NBA is one of these. The only thing wrong with the NBA—or any other professional sport, for that matter—is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules. The NBA’s problem is so clear that even children can see it—especially high school basketball stars, half-bright manchild phenomena who don’t need college Professors to teach them the difference between Money and Fun.

  There is a famous Three Stooges film clip that says all we need to know about the NBA. Here is how I remember it:

  On a warm afternoon in the summer, the Three Stooges decided to cool off by going out on a nearby Lake in a small rented rowboat and feeling the breeze in their hair. Why not? they thought. Floating around in the middle of a nice cool Lake was the smartest thing they could do on a sizzling summer day.

  So they dressed up in their normal black business suits and set off across town to the Lake—where, after long haggling about money with the boat rental man, they took possession of a 6-foot dinghy with two oars and a small tin bucket for bailing out the odd leak or two of stray lake water.… There were other boats on the Lake, and young couples were drifting around happily in the shade of wide sun umbrellas. It was just another idyllic day in the American Century.

  The trouble started when the boat sprung a leak, as rented rowboats will, and one of the Stooges noticed that water was rising around his ankles. He pointed this out to his companions and they began bailing water out of the boat with their handy tin bucket.… But they couldn’t stay ahead, even by using their black bowler hats as bailing buckets. The leak was worse than they’d thought. The boat was filling up.

  It was then that they put their heads together and came up with a brilliant solution—they would use the oars to punch a hole in the bottom of the rowboat, so the water could more easily flow out.… And when that didn’t work, they punched another hole in the bottom of the boat. And then another. They were getting desperate, and the boat was in danger of sinking.

  Still they bailed crazily with the bucket and three hats. They were far out in the middle of the Lake and none of them knew how to swim. Other boaters ignored them, or laughed when they screamed for help.… What a fine Hoot it was to see these three stupid, fat men flapping around like wild rats in the middle of a calm little lake.… Yes sir, that was the Three Stooges for you, Real Jokers.

  The moral of this story is as clear as a new pane of glass to everyone in the world—except the greed-crazed owners of the NBA franchises. They are dumber than the Three Stooges, and so is that babbling jackass of a Commissioner. Stern should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. But don’t worry. Quick exit, Soon come. And it won’t even be noticed.

  The Game will go on.

  —April 30, 2001

  Kentucky Derby and Other Gambling Disasters

  Betting against the Lakers in the NBA playoffs has never been a sound investment for gamblers—especially not in a lazy year like this one, with the Lakers being the defending NBA champions & favored to win again, despite a lackluster season & more internal bitching & squabbling and crazed jealous treachery than in a tribe of Hyenas in heat.…

  It may be worth noting here that Hyenas are the only beasts in nature that are born physically bisexual & remain that way all their lives. They are also cannibals that routinely eat their young & everything else that looks helpless. People who know Hyenas describe them as “the filthiest animal in nature—with the possible exception of English cows & corrupt big-city police officers in 21st-century America.”

  Indeed. But that invidious comparison to Hyenas and crooked Cops was not my real reason for betting against the Lakers on Sunday night. My real reason had to do with The Spread—which had the Lakers giving 6½ or seven against Sacramento, a fast and flaky team that appeared to have everything necessary to beat LA, except a cure for Shaquille O’Neal Disease.… Which appearance turned out to be true: Shaq ran totally wild, dominating the game so completely that the whole Kings’ front line came away looking like they’d been Beaten & battered all night by a 300-pound Meat Hammer.

  O’Neal totaled 44 points, 21 rebounds, & seven crushing blocks at crucial moments in the game. Poor, rich little Kobe added 29, and the rest of the Lakers scored only 35 among them. That was all LA needed to win—but not enough, ho ho, to beat The Spread. The final score, 108–105, was deceptively close for a game the Lakers should have won by 19 or 20. They played at the top of their form, against a Sacramento team that couldn’t do anything right & played their worst game of the season, and still lost by only three.…

  If the line doesn’t change for the next game, take the Kings & the points. They have a knack for figuring things out in a hurry, and Shaq won’t score 40 points again this season. The Lakers are so bitchy that it would be shameful for the whole NBA if they won another championship.

  That game was not my only gambling experience of the weekend. I also bet heavily on the Kentucky Derby & suffered huge losses.

  The Derby is not my favorite sporting event of the year, despite my deep Kentucky roots & my natural lust for gambling. I have had more truly heinous experiences linked to Churchill Downs than any other venue. And I can tell you, for sure, that Derby week in Louisville is a white-knuckle orgy of Booze & Sex & Violence that, 99 times out of 100, swamps anybody who goes near it in a hurricane of Fear, Pain, & Stupefying Disasters that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

  The behavior of the crowd at Churchill Downs is like 100,000 vicious Hyenas going berserk all at once in a space about the size of a 777 jet or the White House lawn. Going to the Derby in person is worse than volunteering to join General Pickett’s famous Charge at Gettysburg, and just about as much Fun.… Take my word for it, folks: I have done it nine or 10 times in a row, and I still have recurring nightmares about it that cause me to wake up sweating & screaming like some kind of pig being eaten alive by meat bats.

  My memories of the Derby are extremely clear & far too obscene to describe here in any detail. Some involve jails, insane asylums, Rape trials, wife beatings, police brutality, and private graveyards filled with victims of tragic medical experiments worse than anything the Marquis de Sade was ever accused of.

  I went to one Derby party where two teenage girls were deliberately set on fire & tortured by drunken rich people, who then hurled their bodies off a cliff above the Ohio River & laughed about it later. The girls’ families were told by local authorities that their daughters had “run away with a gang of horse gamblers from Turkey who loaded them up with gin and told them they were going to Hollywood to get famous.”

  Things like that happen every year when the Derby comes to town. People “go out to the track,” as they like to say in Loui
sville, and simply disappear into thin air. Some return a few years later with horrible disfigurements & no memory at all of what happened. Others end up in “hospitals down South” and are never mentioned again by people who knew them.

  Omerta is the code of the South, especially after weird crimes are committed by rich people. The usual explanation is a brief mention on the Obituary page of another head-on collision with some unidentified truck far out on the River Road & a “private cremation ceremony attended only by close family members, who wish to remain anonymous.” Horse people have very short attention spans for anything involving humans.

  The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it. You can find more gambling action at any weekend cockfight in rural Arkansas.… An NBA play-off game lasts for two & a half hours on live television, but it is a hell of a lot quicker if you watch it on tape without the commercials.

  That is the only way you can avoid seeing that sleazy little monster, David Stern—who gets paid millions of dollars a year for doing nothing at all except jabber & giggle every two or three minutes about drafting ugly old women into the NBA as potential replacements for overpaid teenage mutants who might develop shin splints or go lame overnight if they can’t take 50 shots a game & get more public love than anybody since Bill Clinton’s years in the White House.

  Okay. I see that I am feeling a bit nasty myself this week—so maybe I should go back to bed & have a few more sick dreams about the Kentucky Derby & David Stern creeping in through my bedroom window with a dead animal in his mouth.

  That is what happens to people who watch too much TV & make long-distance hunch bets on horses named Dollar Bill. Maybe it’s true that habitual gambling really is a fatal disease worse than brain cancer. I will do some more research and report back next week on my Findings.

  —May 7, 2001

  Quitting the Gambling Business While I’m Ahead

  Betting against the Lakers was Right for 2 games—but now is the time to Quit/Retire because the Auman public Rally is Monday in Denver and the DA has for some reason blamed all his “PROBLEMS” on me and I don’t want to RISK getting arrested because of my “gambling background” or some other Trumped-up charge.

  My speech is still secret—but I will print it next week. Beware of the CJS. It will grind you up by accident. Yes, just like Gambling and Lawyers.

  That is not a healthy mix. I know this—but I am doing it anyway. But only this once.

  That’s why lawyers get Paid—to do savage work that nobody else will or Can do, except for money.

  I usually have No Choice—I am usually the One on Trial and needing help at high Risk. It is not cheap to fight back and survive against any system that you Cross or even seem to Cross: $200,000 for being Innocent. Two years to win a Corrupt DWAI case.

  Stay out of Courtrooms—but if you must go in, be Well Armed and Don’t compromise. You are Innocent. Remember That. They are Guilty.

  —May 12, 2001

  The Most Dangerous Sport of All

  ESPN Editor’s Note: Sports are about passion—but all passion is not about sports. On a weekend when most of our readers were consumed with Shaq and Kobe and Super Mario and A. J. Burnett, Page 2 columnist Hunter S. Thompson could not get Lisl Auman out of his mind. In fact, the good doctor is so outraged by Auman’s case—she’s a 24-year-old Denver resident whom some observers believe was wrongfully convicted of felony murder—that he helped organize a rally Monday in Denver on Auman’s behalf.

  Auman was convicted in 1998 of felony murder, which means in this case that she was a participant in a robbery and attempted flight that resulted in murder. In this case, the murder was of a pursuing Denver policeman by another robbery suspect, who then committed suicide. The crux of her guilt or innocence is the debate over whether the items were stolen or were in fact hers, whether she was a participant in the flight or a hostage, and whether she handed the rifle to the shooter or was a victim of fabricated evidence.

  Though Page 2’s editors aren’t making a judgment about the case one way or the other, we believe strongly in indulging passion—especially a passion for justice. And so, though this is a sports site—first, foremost, and almost always—today we are sharing our columnist’s political passion with our readers.

  I am a rabid basketball fan and a veteran sportswriter, but on Monday I had serious business to do. I am a Warrior, and the time had come to Rumble. Many things have happened since last week—many weird things, radical things, Savage 180-degree swings between totally opposite poles like Joy and Fear, Wild passions and violent rages, sudden Love and sudden hate. … I have known them all, and I fear I have come to like them too much. I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion—and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

  But not all of those doctors are still alive today. Two committed suicide, and two others had their Medical licenses lifted for abusing Hospital drugs. Another misdiagnosed his own wife’s Cancer and was forced to retire from Medicine. After that, he went into the psychiatric business and destroyed the mental health of a whole family by convincing all of them, one at a time, that they were fatally Dysfunctional and probably Insane. Their only hope, he said, was to have each other committed to long-term, fearfully Harsh, and impossibly Expensive private Insane Asylums.… The children got the most painful sentences. One spent two years in the lockdown ward of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas; another was put in a strait-jacket and turned over to the notoriously cruel Cocaine Addict Wing at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where “Isolation Therapy” is mandatory for the first nine months.

  Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent? Ho ho. Don’t bet on it, Bubba. Remember Dr. Nork.

  But not today. No. On Monday I was a main speaker at the “Free Lisl Auman” rally in Denver, which drew thousands of people and attracted widespread Media attention. Pictures of me, Warren Zevon, and Benicio Del Toro have been all over the Denver TV news in recent days. The National Committee to Free Lisl Auman has been joined by hundreds, even thousands, of very high-end professionals and volunteers. A Defense Fund has been legally established. Hollywood people have joined up.

  A famous microbrewery has offered its hospitality to speakers and guests of the Lisl rally. Whoops. I almost wrote “Riot” there, instead of “Rally.” But I caught myself just in time. No doubt it was a Freudian slip of some kind, or maybe just an old habit. No! We were not going to have a riot in Denver. It was out of the question. We hired uniformed State Troopers to drop a wire net on any freaks or booze-addled Crazies who got out of control. We are a finely organized Team now—and we were, after all, standing on the white-marble steps of the Colorado State Capitol, with its gold-plated Dome looming just above us. It was a majestic scene, and it was decidedly Not dull. I Guaranteed that.

  Warren Zevon opened the hour-long rally with a few inflammatory words about the Free Lisl Auman crusade and why he is part of it—and then he turned up the amplifiers and burst into his famous song, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”

  Five thousand Criminal lawyers were also in town for the Rally. Monday was the day when the two (2) formal Defense Appeal Briefs were formally Filed with the Colorado Supreme Court: one by Lisl’s public defender and the other by an elite Team of Appeals Attorneys from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which decided in March to join our team, pro bono, and file a solemn, intimidating Amicus Brief in Lisl Auman’s defense.…

  A finely honed speech was uttered by Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Presidential Historian from the University of New Orleans and author of many distinguished books—most recently, Rosa Parks, about the legendary black woman who touched off the whole Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties when she refused to move to the back
of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

  I was a part of that, incidentally, and I have been proud of it all my life. Many of those who stood on the Capitol steps Monday were veteran warriors from the Civil Rights Movement. It was good training for the even More brutal confrontations we would face later.… It is very important to learn, early in life, that you can beat City Hall and that You can change the System. You might be beaten and gassed by Police a few times before you succeed—but that stuff goes with the territory. And you will be proud of it later, just as you will make many smart friends who will stand with you all your life.

  Lisl Auman, a 20-year-old girl with no criminal record, was convicted of Felony Murder in Denver for a crime that occurred while she was handcuffed and chained in a Police car. She is the only person ever Convicted in the history of Colorado for a murder committed while the defendant was in official police Custody—and then she was sentenced to spend the rest of her Life in state prison, without any possibility of Parole.

  That is what this case is about, and why we had this major Protest Rally at the State Capitol on Monday. We are making the people of Denver (and the Colorado Supreme Court Justices) aware that the original Auman trial was a shameful farce and a disgraceful mockery of the whole “Criminal Justice System.”

  The Lisl Auman drama has been played out on a painfully unequal surface, so far. Victory—getting her out of Prison immediately and overturning the savage and unnatural Felony Murder statute—seemed 95 percent impossible at first, even to me.… But no longer. Now I believe we will win.

  The playing field got leveled out in a hurry when the NACDL came in. That was back on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Lawyers gathered here for the game. Of course. Remember that story—when my house was hit by Lightning? Yes sir. That was when the worm turned.