Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail,

San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973

Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes

from a Decompression Chamber in Miami

There is no joy in Woody Creek tonight -- at least not in the twisted bowels of this sink-hole of political iniquity called the Owl Farm -- because, 2000 miles away in the swampy heat of Washington, D.C., my old football buddy, Dick Nixon, is lashing around in bad trouble. . . The vultures are coming home to roost -- like he always feared they would, in the end -- and it hurts me in a way nobody would publish if I properly described it, to know that I can't be with him on the sweaty ramparts today, stomping those dirty buzzards like Davy Crockett bashing spies off the walls of the Alamo.

"Delta Dawn. . . What's that

flower you have on?"

Fine music on my radio as dawn comes up on the Rockies. . . But suddenly the music ends and ABC (American Entertainment Network) News interrupts: Martha Mitchell is demanding that “Mister President” either resign or be impeached, for reasons her addled tongue can only hint at. . . and Charles 'Tex" Colson, the President's erstwhile special counsel , is denying all statements & sworn testimony, by anybody, linking him to burglaries, fire-bombings, wire-tappings, perjuries, payoffs and other routine felonies in connection with his job at the White House. . . and President Nixon is relaxing, as it were, in his personal beach-front mansion at San Clemente, California, surrounded by the scuzzy remnants of his once imperial guard. . . Indeed, you can almost hear the rattle of martini-cups along the airwaves as Gerald Warren -- Ron Ziegler's doomed replacement -- cranks another hastily rewritten paragraph (Amendment No. 67 to Paragraph No. 13 of President Nixon's original statement denying everything. . .) into the overheated Dex machine to the White House, for immediate release to the national media. . . and the White House press room is boiling with guilt-crazed journalists, ready to pounce on any new statement like a pack of wild African dogs, to atone for all the things they knew but never wrote when Nixon was riding high. . .

Why does Nixon use the clumsy Dex, instead of the Mojo? Why does he drink martinis, instead of Wild Turkey? Why does he wear boxer shorts? Why is his life a grim monument to everything plastic, de-sexed and non-sexual? When I look at Nixon's White House I have a sense of absolute personal alienation. The President and I seem to disagree on almost everything -- except pro football, and Nixon's addiction to that has caused me to view it with a freshly jaundiced eye, or what the late John Foster Dulles called “an agonizing reappraisal.” Anything Nixon likes must be suspect. Like cottage cheese and catsup. . .