Thompson to Invade Nixon’s Old Territory

“Hang on, hang on, I’ll be right there!” shouted Hunter S. Thompson, his voice echoing across the room from wherever it is in Woody Creek, Colo., that his telephone sits.

Cough, cough. “I feel terrible.”

The godfather of Gonzo Journalism was feeling more under the gun than usual Wednesday morning as he struggled to wake up, pack and get his persnickety new home-alarm system operating before departing on a quick trip West for an appearance tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, postponed from Tuesday night because of an, er, accident.

He fell off a tractor earlier in the week while clearing brush off the local rifle range. “A tractor does funny things when you take it on a side hill,” he said. “It’s not like a jeep. It’s got a bush hog on the back. You know what a bush hog is? It’ll grind a man up. You want to get the hell away from a tractor with a bush hog on it.”

Jousting with bush hogs may seem like tame work, however, compared with the wild sort of crowd Thompson is likely to be facing tonight. At Bogart’s in Long Beach in April, when he appeared in the first of a handful of recent nightclub dates (as opposed to the college appearances he has been making for years), he was pelted with questions from the mundane (“what do you think of the Lakers?”) to the truly bizarre (“tell us about the time you spent in a hyperbolic (sic) chamber!”)

It was enough to inspire a new volume in his famed “Fear and Loathing” series of writings over the past 25 years on politics, drugs, gambling, Super Bowls, handguns, Samoan lawyers and life in general.

None of it, however, was too much for the unflappable raconteur, who will turn 50 in July.

“I liked Bogart’s,” he said. “It’s different being in front of a crowd as drunk as I am.” And indeed, at the Long Beach show he poured himself a steady stream of drinks from a bottle of Chivas Regal he brought on stage.

A man who prides himself on having played nemesis to former President Nixon (“In 1972, I said he was guilty. He was. It just took two years to get him out.”), Thompson got a chuckle out of the irony of his own appearance in Capistrano: “Nixon’s old stamping ground. Too bad he’s gone--we could send somebody over to pick him up.”

And what’s it like, Hunter, performing in nightclubs?

The biggest problem, he said, has been sound systems. “I have trouble just having people understand me, even when they can hear me. In New York, I did one show to about 2,000 people who were viciously drunk. The sound system was a real horror. I talked for about two hours and thought they could understand me perfectly. . . . I videotaped it for myself, and when I played it back, I couldn’t understand a word I said.”

He has also learned that in nightclubs, “it’s dangerous to be late. People get drunk. In colleges they can’t do that.

“Just a minute--there’s a bumblebee! Yellow dog! Lemme smash it!”

Getting back to business, Thompson said he finds speaking engagements “a lot tougher now that the election is over. When the campaign was going, I usually have an edge on most people because I follow it. Now, I have to be an expert on everything from AIDS to NATO to the wheat surplus to why are we a generation of swine.” (That’s one of his pet phrases and the title of his latest book, published last year.)

Another interruption. This time it’s the driveway motion-sensor hooked to that home-alarm system. “The damn peacocks just set it off. Just a minute.”

When he’s not changing the subject like that, Thompson can discuss politics and journalism with the savvy of a career insider, tempered by the wit of a professional skeptic. He cited, with pinpoint accuracy, a Times poll published in May showing that 51% of the U.S. public believes that President Bush has lied about events in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The poll also found 67% believing that Lt. Col. Oliver North was only following orders and has taken the blame to protect Bush and former President Reagan.

“In the next page in the poll,” Thompson said, “it said if the election were held today, Bush would win again, even though he’s considered guilty, 2 to 1. I think Reagan created a very comfortable sense of royalty (for the presidency). Eisenhower did the same thing, but his replacement was Jack Kennedy. Reagan was replaced by his handpicked toadie.”

The apparent incongruity of the two polls, he said, reflects a combination of the failure of the Democratic Party to produce a serious presidential contender and the “overwhelming failure of journalism” he sees in “the complete tailing off of the investigative, Watergate-type of journalism.”

Far from being a universal hero among journalists, Thompson is resented in some camps for his cartoonish persona, personal indulgences and irresponsible behavior.

“I think the resentment might come from the Peter Principle people. . . . That’s what people told Abe Lincoln about Gen. Grant: They complained that Grant was drinking too much whiskey. Lincoln said, ‘Go find out what brand he drinks and send him a case of it.’

“I’m not sure that fits, but I may represent the kind of fun in journalism, that side of it that the in-boys and the guys-in-the-fibers never got. And I do think journalism can be about as much fun as any job you can have. Hell, I haven’t had a job in 25 years.

“I don’t mind being resented. I don’t respect everybody. . . . But I still say that journalists are the best people to drink with. Who else are you going to drink with--lawyers? Bond salesmen?

“As a rule, we’re a pretty good group.”

Hunter S. Thompson will speak tonight at 8 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $22.50. Information (714) 496-8930.