fear and loathing

The message of a controversial billboard in Mason City comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin probably got lost in its visuals, a co-founder of the tea party group that paid for the sign said Tuesday.

He said the underlying message remained: The country is headed in the wrong direction.

[full story]

Here’s that message…completely unambiguous…

The really funny thing (and this is about the whole Tea Party movement) they are completely unaware of irony (and history, but that’s another post). “Radical leaders who prey on the fearful and naive”? That’s about as accurate a description of the Tea Party I’ve heard yet.

When one side is leading through hope and change, and the other is trying to tear down by focusing on fear and death, it’s a pretty easy call IMHO, as to which to support.

Speaking of the fearful and naive….

Mark Tlusty, a member of the group and a district chairman of the Floyd County Republican Party, defended the billboard earlier this year while also discussing his fears about health care reform.

“Why would I want someone to take one-sixth of the economy over and just ram it down so many people if they don’t want it to begin with?” Tlusty asked.

This is the sad thing about the TP and HCR, they keep calling it what it isn’t (a government takeover) and then multiply that fear and naivete to unheard of levels. The punchline is, well, stuff like the sign above. Which would be, to be honest, funny if they meant it as parody, but they don’t, which makes it sad.

How long till the Boomers are gone again?

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)

Rated R for drug and sexual content, language and some nudity.

Not to mention a few subversive themes, some seriously whacked out thoughts and a cultural revolution that failed….mostly.

Overall I really enjoyed the re-mix/documentary. It’s not like HST hasn’t been covered before in film. Heck, Bill Murray covered him in 1980, and there’s Johnny Depps now evidently spastic portrayal of Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. So he is no stranger to the film (or even comic book treatment) and as such has officially reached cultural icon status. This status was further cemented with his totally predicted and threatened for 20+ year suicide. When your son calls your suicide a touching family moment, you know you’re talking about a special breed of cat.

Ultimately the thing I found most worthwhile about the documentary was the live footage of Hunter doing his thing. It does, quite obviously, expose Depp’s portrayal a wee bit over the top. Thompson, the man, kept most of his meltdowns on the inside and the fact that most people felt he could hold his drugs like no other makes the floppy and stumbling performance of Depp seem overly comical.

He most certainly was a victim of his own success and his story demonstrates how difficult it is to stay consistent as an outsider when the first signs of success quickly propel one to the center of the circle. When one’s main gift is to tear apart the system from the outside, once one is firmly implanted in the middle, there’s naught left to do but party.

Which he did. Until he died.

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Rating : 7.8 out of 10 for documentaries. It was a bit slow at times, although that could have been my fault. In a strange twist of fate, this was the first movie I saw with mind unaltered in years.

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Trailer