Journalism Beaten at the Kentucky Derby
Fifty-five years later, Journalism does not triumph at Churchill Downs.
Fifty-five years ago, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman attended the Kentucky Derby with the intention of reporting on it for Scanlan’s Monthly, a new magazine edited by Warren Hinckle. It would be the first meeting for these two men, and together their warped minds created a whole new form of journalism: Gonzo.
Five and a half decades later, the favourite to win the race was called “Journalism.” Is that a reference to our Gonzo progenitors? I like to think so… However, despite a heroic effort in the final stretch, Journalism could not beat the ultimate winner, a horse called Sovereignty.
Well, Hunter Thompson didn’t much care about who won the race in 1970. He was more interested in the crowd. The various news reports I saw today all failed to mention who was vomiting and what hideous slurs were being uttered, but then I suppose only one journalist could ever handle that kind of assignment.
Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they’ll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomiting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It’s hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up. —”The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (1970)
Five years ago, on the fiftieth anniversary of that fateful race, I wrote an in-depth account of Thompson’s Kentucky Derby shenanigans. You can read it here. I say “in-depth” but actually there was one important piece of the story missing. No one ever knew where the word “Gonzo” came from until I wrote this long, investigative essay about it on the 20th anniversary of Thompson’s death:
Yeah, it’s a long read but it answers a mystery that has plagued us for half a century. Writing it was my way of honouring a great writer’s legacy on the anniversary of his death.
The space left by Hunter S. Thompson can never be filled, but the truth is no modern contemporary exists to do what HST did. Journalism is a polished and corporate affair and the work of “Gonzo” has been left to the internet content industry, itself already a shadow of the authentic human art it once was. Where there was hope for an authentic expression of “Gonzo” in the digital age it has been replaced with sponsor dollars and ad revenue, all easily taken away if you step out of bounds. There is a need today more than ever for a modern HST, someone to put on full display the ugly and brutal nature of our society and allows to reflect and hope for something better.
I would look forward to the next issue of Rolling Stone (when it was still in newspaper format) for another Gonzo read! Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was such a great series I had to buy the paperback. Great memories!