an echo of flashbacks...travels with Joe the Assyrian in search of tight fitting policy...how many words does it take for Brodzky to confess that he not only has smoked dope, but also reads the Trib?...a few words about a few Presidents...
My days as Carbondale’s cheap Hunter S. Thompson impersonator were more than 10
years behind me when I walked barefoot in the snow on my ex-wife’s
driveway to get the morning Trib. 
After five months of doing Civil Rights work in Duval County, Florida I endured a week of non-violent (simmering on the edge of violence) post-election race riots. It’s an ugly story but when Joe the Assyrian and I loaded up a rental car in the middle of the night and hauled ass back to Chicago, I was done with it. Friends for just short of 30 years, two political junkies... we had barely a word to say to each other. The most I talked was apologizing to a Georgia State Trooper for driving like a damn fool on his Governor’s Highway. He could’ve arrested me and dumped my stuff alongside the road while the rental company came to retrieve the car, but he let me off with a 105 mph speeding ticket.
In December, one month after the 2004 election, I didn’t care
if I ever worked in politics again. I returned to the vocation
I chose as an eighteen year old high-school drop-out: driving
a cab.
Two months later, when I bent over to get the Monday Trib for that snow-dusted February morning, it had been a month since I quit driving, but my shoulder still ached from being slammed by my own cab door when I was attacked by vicious drunks in the back parking lot of White Tavern in Naperville. Harry, my boss, told me I was the third guy he knew to get thrashed there. An ex-soldier was beaten unconscious. A Pakistani cab-driver got scared and grabbed a tire iron. The same jagoff who slammed me allegedly grabbed the tire iron from the Pakistani and beat him like a baby harp seal. Reportedly he and his bushwhacking brother and friends were involved in each of these incidents, which, if nothing else, prove you don’t have to be black to be attacked at such a place. “You fucking wop, fuck you!” He said while he and his brother attacked me. Black hair is enough.
That tavern gave me bad flashbacks of the similarly named White’s
Bar in Jacksonville, Florida, a white-washed pillbox with confederate
flags painted on it. Just as the Jax bar flaunts the Stars and
Bars in the middle of a poor black ghetto, the Naper bar is
trimmed with Green Bay Packer logos in Bears Country: a happy
go-lucky fuck the neighbors attitude. But some of the townie
drunk holdovers of undeveloped Naperville past were good people,
that’s why I gave them rides, ignored my gut feeling about their
bar, and got my arm slammed.
Standing in the chill morning barefoot in the snow made my shoulder
throb. My partner in always dreaming about the big left-handed
pitching comeback dialed me a voice mail from his San Francisco
Chronicle copy desk: “I want you to hear this from me, so you’re
not shocked when you read the morning paper...” Funny coming
from the good offices of the Chronicle, formerly the Examiner,
one of Hunter S. Thompson’s former employers.
But I was barely awake and hadn’t checked my messages. I had
just rolled off the couch while my quasi-estranged wife wearily
tried to get a handle on a leaping, bouncing, squealing monkey
who made setting an alarm clock completely unnecessary. I was
on my way to selfishly relax upon my throne in the Water Closet.
I needed a brief detour onto the driveway to help me wake up
and retrieve the sports section for easy contemplation. That
tends to be my ritual: sports and comics first, then coffee,
then helping the over-worked momma. That’s a man’s life. That’s
why I usually don’t say anything when she needs to chew me out.
She’s correct. I’m selfish. I take my sports section to make
up for the sports I no longer have time to watch on TV, and
I grab the first cup of coffee because when she gets to it,
she’ll drink the entire pot. Nothing breaks this ritual unless
something really grabs me...like Monkey deciding daddy is a
tree. Instead of mommy, he scampers up my back to leap and squawk
atop my head. Or Hunter S. Thompson blowing a hole through his
skull.
Reading about Thompson’s suicide was certainly a better toilet
scenario than personally falling off dead like Elvis, but it
was a crappy way to start the week and only now, four months
later, can I write about it for the public. There was a time
when I was young and stoned insane enough to abandon my books
and community development work to imitate Thompson beyond stylistic
flairs like starting and ending paragraphs with “Be that as
it may...” and “Ha!”
It went beyond nocturnal ranting long-distance phone calls and the fine art of alcoholism. From there, it could’ve gone all the way into Norman Bates territory... and still can, I suppose.
How far out on the Gonzo meter was I in Little Rock, Arkansas on Election Night in ’92? Reeking of high-grade reefer while dressed in a white on white paisley shirt with a yellow tie under a tan camel hair jacket; wearing blue jeans and black-trimmed white New Balance basketball shoes, without the benefit of a valid drivers license I tried to muscle RJ’s car past an Arkansas State Police barricade.
“You can’t do that,” they said.
“We’re here to see Joe the assyrian,” I implored the officer. “We’re supposed to meet him at Clinton Headquarters and they’re getting ready to seal the building.”
RJ flashed a big goofy grin. Pairy, our video guy, looked scary enough. He had a fresh scar from a tooth he pulled out of his forehead in the morning. He had no memory on whose tooth it was, but he was pretty sure he’d been in a barfight the night before.
“I’m sorry we can’t let you through,” the trooper repeated, but he gave us directions to the nearest parking.
By the time we made it to the lobby at Clinton HQ, it was crowded with journalists and TV camera crews. The building was being sealed. Everyone had to leave. I spotted a glass enclosed reception area and bolted toward it with security chasing me.
“Call Joe the Assyrian and tell him I’m downstairs,” I begged as two security men each cupped a hand on my shoulders. “We’re supposed to be upstairs but we were late getting into town. We drove all the way from Carbondale and he’s expecting us.”
The woman spoke to security with a sing-song southern accent. “Let me call Mister Joe. I know his extension and it will only take a moment.”
The security men, seeing recognition in the woman’s eyes with Joe’s name dropped had already put their hands down before she said anything. “The alternative press will not be snubbed,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Joe the Assyrian,” the woman drawled with familiarity into the phone. “There’s someone from...”
“Carbondale. The alternative press.”
She continued, “Carbondale. The alternative press.”
Soon me and my crew were in the vaunted War Room of Clinton HQ eating bar-b-q ribs and chicken.
“The alternative press is not being snubbed,” I said thoughtfully before cleaning my rib bones in a way that makes a southern cook give a wordless nod of approval. Even a Chicago Yankee pit master like Mike Royko had no use for a rib eater who didn’t understand the fine art of cleaning the bone.
So it was that the bologna sandwiches we ate on the road to Little Rock with Papa Bush reputedly locked into office gave way to southern bar-b-q as a buzz spread among volunteers and staff that the numbers were there and the Presidency was in the bag.
Eleven months earlier I prognosticated that the economy was a kamikaze rocket with Space Captain Bush and his good intentions coming down hard for a crash landing. Everything would be fine if we stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance then went to the mall with Bo Gritz and our assault rifles to hunt for food. Reagan’s original coalition was disowning Papa Bush like a frightening sexually transmitted disease that popped up inexplicably after a drunken weekend in Haiti. I pronounced Bill Clinton the next President of the United States. The Democratic primaries had not yet begun and most Americans had no idea who Clinton was. At first, my article was impossible to place, especially in Southern Illinois where the mainstream newspaper is a Lee Enterprises sweatshop. Even the Where To Go Suck rock ‘n’ roll bar rag that paid me 50 cents per column inch to impersonate Thompson wouldn’t print it: too crazy even for Rolling Stone wannabes. If you could believe the networks, Bush had a 70% approval rating. Perhaps that report was an abbreviated out-of-context reference to something that appeared in Harper’s Index much later: Bush had a 70% approval rating among Fortune 500 CEOs. Clinton was a friend to Big Business, but he still expected the wealthiest individuals to skim the top more to help the bottom.
They hated Clinton. He was right with the brothers. If he was a fuck-around, he wasn’t running with the segregation crackers who pack clout in the Deep South to this very day.
If George Herbert Walker Bush lacked the heartfelt racism of his political allies, he didn’t object to playing the race card to beat Dukakis in ’88. Sissy liberal Democrats want to let black men rape all the white women. See Willie Horton. See Governor Dukakis cut the screen of your bedroom window so Willie can bring it on.
A few years after the Willie Horton ads, death penalty opponents pleaded the case for a convicted murderer. They said he was retarded. The killer didn’t know what he was doing, they said. It was a high-profile case in Arkansas and there was no clemency from Clinton. It wasn’t lack of Christian forgiveness that made his GOP opponents hate him. It was obvious keen political opportunism that made them foam at the mouth. He could beat them at their own game with a shit-eating grin. They’d wipe that grin off his face at any cost to the taxpayers.
Thompson was no big fan of Clinton, either, but during the same November night in ’92 that had loudspeakers pumping U2’s Pride (In The Name Of Love) through the chilly downtown streets of Little Rock, I had my only face to face encounter with the man who wrote that journalism should be a hammer to crush your enemies because they are wrong and they deserve it.
That would be the climax of evening, but earlier, while the sound of U2 filled the air and news had just hit that Bush would concede and Clinton would make his acceptance speech, my crew and I sprinted behind the Assyrian and his crew to hurry up and wait on the State House Lawn. Standing next to me was an Arkansas journalist whose name I neglected to write down and subsequently forgot.
“I’ve been covering him his entire career,” he said with great weariness. “He steps on all his great moments and he’ll step on this one, too. You’ll see.”
Those words running circles in my head remained the only part of my frozen self still moving 45 minutes later when Bill, Hillary, Al, and Tipper took the stage. It was a rousing part of history I will never forget. I never cease to be amazed by how many Americans take it for granted that we can remove a President with an election. I am convinced that stopping the flow of immigrants from oppressed nations will be the death of our democracy. They seem to grasp how precious it is to overthrow a ruling government without a civil war. Despite my detached cynicism and suspecting half the dirt on Clinton to be true, I felt a swell of pride in being an American. I went from clowning the event to being caught up in it.
It wasn’t an easy transition and ultimately, the feeling was
stepped on. Maybe it was wrong to be so pissy. The cold and
the waiting was harshing my buzz and dulling my perspective.
Maybe, even then, it was Dan Rather’s fault. In the last moments
before I was frozen stiff, I had leaned into the CBS News cameraman-director’s
microphone and gave Dan Rather what had once been the official
greeting of the Carbondale punk rock movement, “What is the
frequency, Kenneth?”
The camera-man/director covered the mike and shook his head “No” with a look of horror. Once he was off-line, he took his hand off the mike. Smiling nervously he said, “Oh, man...please don’t do that.”
The guy looked genuinely terrified, like he was going to lose his job because of a smart-ass joke far beyond his control.
“Ol’ Dan doesn’t have a sense of humor about that, huh?”
“No.”
I had ruined his mood, if not his life. He no longer made eye-contact.
Who anointed Dan Rather the spokesman of anyone or anything?
All I really know about him is that he wasn’t nearly the badass
as a journalist that he was as an employer. He created an odd
perception that maybe Baby Bush wasn’t a terrific punk during
Vietnam. Sure, Dubya could fly a jet like crazy. So could the
Son of the Shah.
When President-elect Clinton finally started talking, the crowd began to thaw. At first I mocked Clinton and the staged aura of the event. I delivered the peace symbol to the rhythm of the cheering crowd with an up and down nazi straight-arm. On Pairy’s video you can see Clinton scanning the crowd and wincing briefly with a “what the fuck is that?” expression when I caught his eye. He only missed a half-beat and went back to working the crowd. At some point I joined in the spirit of the crowd and started chanting “Sixteen years! Sixteen years!”
The crowd joined me. Big Bill turned grinning to his Vice President-Elect and Big Al let out a huge smile.
But I was wrong about the sixteen years, just as I was wrong
in that crazy Jan ’92 article finally printed by a freaky underground
magazine that hid doses of LSD in the cover art. Aside from
Clinton’s election I also predicted that Bush’s political career
was being wiped out. I was onto something when I used a frightening
sexually transmitted disease as a metaphor. You make an ugly
sore go away for eight years, but it comes back as a much bigger
and uglier sore surrounded by more of the same. It makes the
memory of that night in Little Rock all the more hideous when
I recall Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”
playing over and over and over at the cold end of that acceptance
speech.
My comic attempt afterwards to follow the Assyrian’s crew into a private meeting with the President-elect ended when a Secret Service Agent grabbed me by the back scruff of my jacket as I was about to walk through the door. He effortlessly lifted my 200-pound carcass and suspended me in front of a wall without slamming me or wavering in his grip while two others frisked me down. Aside from the earlier barricade incident (which we got past once we parked the car) it was the only strike out of the night.
We weren’t on the list to get into the victory party at the Rep, but we dropped Joe the Assyrian’s name and got in. That’s where I ran into Hunter S. Thompson.
I put myself into his path and shot out a quick greeting, which he quickly returned. I felt a wave of awe and satisfaction to see my gonzo journalist costume pretty closely matched what the master was wearing. I was missing two key ingredients. He had an attractive younger woman wrapped in his right arm. On his left side he gripped a beer. There was an awkward pause while I stood there in his way with words silently escaping me. He nodded and started away and, in a ‘hey, wait a sec’ gesture, I impulsively grabbed his left bicep.
The man wrote his share of macho bravado and he had the arms
of a brute. It all came to me in an instant when he turned glowing
with anger. Being silly and wasted in a tight situation can
get you killed, but in the case of grabbing onto Dr. Thompson,
standing there blushing with a ridiculous stoner grin probably
saved me from a savage beating. That would’ve been a good time
to use the line that I accidentally used to alienate and terrify
Joe the Assyrian’s lady friend at nice DC restaurant, something about wanting
to smoke dope out of Nixon’s skull and ride cross-country on
a Harley displaying it as a trophy on the end of a truncheon.
“Doc, I’m on assignment,” I said.
His face went blank and he paused for a moment. “So am I.”
He turned and hunched forward with a Groucho Marx walk.
We don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. He was a corrupt
power-mad lunatic and Dubya makes him look like Pericles. We
don’t have Thompson to kick around either. Joe the Assyrian says it’s wrong
to imply a connection between Dubya and Thompson’s suicide,
but judging by Thompson’s later rants, the scumbag antics of
Bush could easily fit into the gonzo suicide equation. Like
Buddhist monks setting themselves ablaze in Vietnam to capture
American Mass Media, maybe there was method to the insanity.
That’s the argument Bushco keeps giving to justify their profiteering
capers: method to the madness. I don’t know. Certainly the corporate
clowns who paid off stooges to give us their own version of
gonzo in the Clinton years can’t begrudge me a little mindless
speculation.
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