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JOURNALISM UNDER THE INFLUENCE
NEWS FROM THE JUICE BOX SET
Here's a tip for anyone entering the
creative field—artists, musicians, writers
(especially writers)—never play the "influ
ences" game. When someone asks you who
your "influences" are, what he or she is really
asking is: "Whom are you ripping off?" On
the other side of it, claiming your influences
implies that your work contains enough cre
ative DNA that you could claim at least kin
ship, if not equivalent brilliance, with people
who are much better at this sort of thing
than you are.
If the question comes up, it's better to
be honest. Your "influences" are those art
ists whose work jazzed you so much that you
had to go out and do something like what
they do. In my own work (if you can call
this work), there are people who inspired me
with their style, their voice and their drive,
but calling them my
"influences" would be
monstrously presump
tuous. Case in point:
Hunter S. Thompson.
Though there are
many writers who
made me want to
write for a living,
more than anyone
else it was Thompson,
in alt his mad glory,
who made me want
to write like he did:
the personal narrative
voice, the unbridled
wonder and raqe, the
way he could tell the
story and tell you
why the story matters
without breaking his
stride or showing the
seams. Those have
been my goats as a
journalist since Fear
and loathing in Las
Vegas first blew my teenaged mind, and yet I
wouldn't dream of calling Thompson an influ
ence. I'll never go in as deep as he did, never
achieve his level of sheer intensity, and I
sure as hell will never be that good.
In the 40-plus years of Thompson's work
as a jou'nalist, from Scanlon's magazine
to his final days as a columnist for ESPN,
nowhere was he better than in his work
for Rolling Stone. Theirs was a partnership
made in Counterculture Heaven, an ambi
tious magazine seeking to provide a differ
ent voice to the drone of Big Media and a
writer looking for an outlet that would give
him enough editorial breathing room for his
wild talent to take the wheel and his gigan
tic cojones to ride shotgun. The resulting
work elevated the Stone from a semi-slick
music rag for hippies and freaks to a viable
source for real journalism, and it established
Thompson as a war correspondent on the
front lines of Ugly America, a postmodern
muckraker putting His body on the line to
reveal the engine of hypocrisy driving the
EstaOlishment machine. Not to say that
either Rolling Stone or Thompson changed
anything in any material sense, but they did
help open the Information Superhighway to
alternative vehicles like the one you're read
mg right now.
#h»le there have been several biographies
of Thompson and much repackaging of his
work since his suicide seven years ago. this
year has brought us the first really important
collection of Gonzo: Fear and Loathing
at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of
Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster,
2011). Editor and Stone founder Jann Wenner
has compiled every article Thompson did for
the magazine, and the result is a fascinating
look at Thompson's evolution as a writer and
as a burgeoning celebrity and counterculture
hero. It also clears up some of the myths
surrounding Thompson and Wenner's oft-
contentious relationship, by way of never-
before-published correspondences between
the two men, and is an excellent lesson for
would-be journalists on how the writer/edi-
tor partnership should work.
The book is also, and perhaps most
importantly, a study of the way American
politics has changed and yet stayed depress-
ingly the same. While there are other cru
cial pieces in the
book, most notably
Thompson's powerful
and groundbreaking
piece on the murder
of Chicano journalist
Ruben Salazar by L.A.
riot police, Hunter's
bread-and-butter was
political reporting
from the trenches,
from his early cov
erage of the Freak
Power Party's attempt
to get the vote in
Aspen, CO to his final
work on the 2004
presidential race. In
between are all the
pieces Thompson
wrote in his most
productive and most
crazed period, the
campaign and reelec
tion of Richard Nixon
in 1972. Most of that
work can be found in Thompson's book Fear
and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, but
there's something to be said for reading the
articles that spawned the book; there is a
greater sense of the immediacy and urgency
of Thompson's grueling work to get the story
in and on time, and of Wenner and company's
efforts to hammer it into shape.
One gets the nagging impression that
Wenner's motivations for releasing this book
are not entirely simon-pure. The Stone of
today is by no means the Stone of yesteryear,
and while there is still some vital report
ing coming from the magazine, for the most
part, competition and entropy have turned
it into a glossy and ephemeral parody of
itself. Rolling Stone's edge has dulled, and
the magazine is now as Establishment as
they come—one finds harder-hitting work
in The Atlantic Monthly—but once upon a
time, Wenner reminds us, his magazine had
the meanest and most tenacious of all attack
dogs in its kennel.
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone is a
must-have for fans of Thompson and students
of journalism as it has been and should be
practiced. Young writers should know the
work of Hunter S. Thompson, and if they find
themselves inspired to go rake some muck of
their own. so much the better. Just don't call
Thompson an "influence"—you'll never live
up to that.
JohnG Nettles i
Earlier in my journalistic career, I worked
in a town where, on Christmas Eve, some
one would go up in a helicopter and pull a
sleigh and eight tiny reindeer across the
county. Until I realized this was happening,
I thought people were insane to call the
newspaper, asking what time Santa would be
flying over their houses.
I mean, isn't that what the NORAO web
site is for? (see www.noradsanta.org). But
both the helicopter Santa Claus and NORAD
are all too real (did you know, smartphone
users, you can track The Fat Man on your
phone, too? Yes, there's an app for that). As
are my lies to my daughter, each year get
ting progressively more complex as I try to
explain why a man comes into our house to
give us things. In some places, the taking of
the cookies and milk would at least count as
a misdemeanor, not to mention the breaking
and entering charge. So, why do we put on
this elaborate display for our kids?
I'm sure there's a bit of nostalgia. For
exactly what, though, I haven't been able
to figure out. My Christmas memories are
more wrapped up in trips with the family or
specific presents (the My Little Pony Dream
Castle!), rather than with The Fat Man him
self. He's basically faded into the general
trimmings of the holiday season, like the
blinking tree lights or those nutcrackers that
get trotted out each year.
And sure, there are the great photos we
get every year—either of kids looking lov
ingly into Santa's twinkling eyes, or of the
crying, screaming child on a bewildered
Santa's lap. In 12 years it will make for great
blackmail fodder, and there's always some
sweet community event or open house where
you an grab a seat with Santa for a photo
Athens-Clarke leisure Services has some fun
activities coming up, like Santa's Workshop
on Dec. 14 (where kids can make some crafts
under Santa's watchful eye). Breakfast With
Santa on Dec. 17 and the Youth Christmas
Party on Dec. 20. The breakfast and the party
are great events for parents with preschool-
aged kids and younger (See "Miscellany" in
this issue for even more fun holiday events,
and visit www.athensclarkecounty.com/
leisure for more information on registration
and prices).
And of course, there's the mall. At the
various holiday events, you're never quite
sure what, urn, "quality" of Santa you'll get—
always nice, but sometimes younger or less
bearded than one might expect. But when
you visit The Fat Man at the mall, he's usu
ally gone through some kind of Santa school
and has a real beard. Cherry Hill Photo, the
company that provides the Santa service at
Georgia Square Mall, actually specializes in
assembling an army of "naturally bearded
Santas" for malls across the country. For a
jolly laugh, check out www.santaclausschool.
com, which has been teaching the how-tos of
ho-ho-hos since 1937. It even has a dean!
I've met these Santa types in the off sea
son, and they are some hard-core Santas. One
in particular drives around with a sign on his
truck offering reindeer boarding. At Georgia
Square, Santa will be set up until 6 p.m.
Christmas Eve. Be warned that even if you
intend simply to visit and have your child sit
on his knee, you'll probably end up buying
a $30 picture because it's so darn cute.
But aside from the photos, why do we
perpetuate the myth about this jolly old elf?
Is it some weird way to show our power over
our kids? Are we exercising their imagina
tions? I promised my daughter when she was
born that I would be straightforward and
honest with her about everything, but now
I feel as if I've dug a hole for myself that is
already too deep to dig out of. "Oh, just one
more Christmas," I tell myself—so when she's
five, does that mean I'll be sitting her down
and explaining the elaborate ruse about a
bearded man who hands out presents? I can
already see the follow-up question: "So,
what else have you been lying about?"
I'll probably end up telling her anyway; I'd
'*ther she hear it from me than some kid at
school. In all honesty. I did try to explain to
her, about a year ago, that Santa wasn't real.
H*r response? "Oh, Mommy, you're crazy."
Just don't even get me started on the
Tooth Fairy.
Kristen Morales Kiddiertope^awtagpoie com
Kenzie Boadman. 4. laughs with Santa Claus at Urban Sanctuary's recent holiday party The photos of such
meetings are great, but the cold, hard truth is tough to face up to Breaking the news about Kris Krmgle 7 Two
flying reindeer out of eight
8 FLAGPOLE COM DECEMBER 14. 2011
KRISTEN MORALES
