Happy Birthday Hunter


From 'Welcome to the Tunnel' by Hunter S. Thompson, written August 11, 1986

'We are in a tunnel. It's been rather dark, and will stay that way for quite a while.' Hugh Hefner, Playboy

"Well....the president took his drug test the other day, or at least that's what they tell us, and although the final results are still hazy because of complications arising from his urological medication, its safe to assume that he passed. If not, he will get another chance.

"Don't worry about it. There are a lot of strong drugs being used in the White House these days, as always, but they are not the ones The Gipper was being tested for. Traces of lithium or powerful antibiotics might turn up, but there will be no mention of crack, ecstasy or black Lebanese hashish.

"The president uses only legal drugs, the products of a multibillion-dollar industry that at one time or another has peddled almost everything from pure cocaine hydrochloride to thalidomide. There is a human growth hormone on the market today -- by prescription only -- that could pump Nancy Reagan up to the size of John Madden in about three months, if that's what she really wants."

....

"Its also worth noting that a new F-111 attack bomber costs $30 million, or about twice the price of the recently proposed 'electric security fence' around the U.S. Capitol in Washington, to make it safe against Libyan 'death squads' and fanatics from the Islamic Jihad."

....

"There is also the War on Drugs, the War on Sex, and the continuing War on Democrats -- all conducted with considerable style and vigor from the action-packed War Rooms in the White House, where Pat Buchanan is definitely earning his salary as communications director.

"There is not much doubt about who has seized the high ground these days. These people have been doing their homework on just about every issue in sight except for the genuinely disastrous national debt, which is mounting into the trillions. But The Gipper is not concerned about that one: he will be long gone from the Big House by the time it hits, and solutions will be presumably left in the hands of lesser, queasier men -- like George Bush, Bob Dole or even the Rev. Pat Robertson.

"Jack Kemp might even take a whack at it. Ho, ho. That should be interesting. The whole Potomac River will boil like the Lake of Fire when that silly little hooter tries to bring his Trickle-down, Supply-side snake oil to the reality of the Pentagon spending a half-million dollars a minute on national defense for the next year."

.....

"... The hardrockers will be running the GOP long after Dutch has gone off to the great rancho in the sky and looking far down the road -- toward another decade of leaky-fisted Republican dominance..."

.....

"We are in for some fast weeks in the passing lane. Hugh Hefner is right about the tunnel, and Ed Meese is still with us. In a generation of swine, the one-eyed pig is king."