Hunter Thompson was in his own way a travel writer. After all,
what was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but a sprawling, wonderful travelogue on drugs?
And so, for gadlingites and Thompson lovers out there, I post this from the
Smoking Gun site. It is not pretty. It is the
police report from the night of Hunter’s death. The policeman who responded to the call that Thompson shot himself
writes that the typewriter in front of Hunter (apparently he never got the hang of Microsoft Word…which, perhaps, never
properly spell checked the term “greedhead”), contained a single sheet of paper with letterhead to the Fourth Amendment
Foundation.
On the sheet was typed a single word: counselor.
The fourth amendment read thusly:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The last deluded words of a paranoid? Or a message on a Bushian trend towards curtailed rights and a Fascist state
in America? Or something else altogether? Was Hunter simply, as many papers have put it, tired of getting old and
simply hopping to go out in a Hemingway-esque gunshot of glory?
Anyone have any speculation as to the meaning of this. Obviously, Hunter referred in his Gonzo work to his Samoan
attorney as counselor…a man who some say was a figment of Hunter’s endlessly creative imagination. Is this, as the SG
puts it, Hunter’s Rosebud?