Compounding the problem was the presence in Washington, for the first time, of our artist Ralph Steadman -- an extremely heavy drinker with little or no regard for either protocol or normal social amenities. On Steadman's first visit to the Watergate Hearing Room he was ejected by the Capitol Police after spilling beer on a TV monitor and knocking Sam Ervin off his feet while attempting to seize a microphone to make a statement about “the rottenness of American politics.” It was only the timely intervention of New York Post correspondent John Lang that kept Steadman from being permanently barred from the Hearing Room.

In any case, the bulk of what follows appears exactly as Dr. Thompson wrote it in his notebooks. Given the realities of our constant deadline pressure, there was no other way to get this section into print.

The Notebooks

“Jesus, this Watergate thing is unbelievable. It's terrible, like finding out your wife is running around but you don't want to hear about it.”

-- Remark of a fat man from Nashville sharing a taxi with Ralph Steadman.

Tuesday morning 6/26/73 8:13 AM in the Rockies. . .

Bright sun on the grass outside my windows behind this junk TV set and long white snowflelds, still unmelted, on the peaks across the valley. Every two or three minutes the doleful screech of a half-wild peacock rattles the windows. The bastard is strutting around on the roof, shattering the morning calm with his senseless cries.

His noise is a bad burden on Sandy's nerves. “God damn it!” she mutters. “We have to get him a hen!”

“Fuck him; we got him a hen -- and she ran off and got herself killed by coyotes. What the crazy bastard needs now is a bullet through the vocal cords. He's beginning to sound like Herman Talmadge.”

“Talmadge?”

“Watch what's happening, goddamnit! Here's another true Son of the South. First it was Thompson. . . now Talmadge. . . and then we'll get that half-wit pimp from Florida.”

“Gurney?”

I nodded, staring fixedly at the big blueish eye of the permanently malfunctioned “color TV” set that I hauled back from Washington last summer, when I finally escaped from the place. . . But now I was using it almost feverishly, day after day, to watch what was happening in Washington.

The Watergate Hearings -- my daily fix, on TV. Thousands of people from all over the country are writing the networks to demand that this goddamn tedious nightmare be jerked off the air so they can get back to their favorite soap operas: As the World Turns, The Edge of Night, The Price Is Right and What Next for Weird Betty? They are bored by the spectacle of the Watergate hearings. The plot is confusing, they say; the characters are dull, and the dialogue is repulsive.