Birth of a Junky
Addiction is dirty business. Politics is dirtier. Today we launch Politics Junky, The National Affairs Desk of Glorious Noise and pay respects to those who got us hooked. May God be with us.
I suppose my addiction started when I subscribed to JFK Jr.'s George magazine. Its tagline, "Not Just Politics as Usual" appealed to me and the image of a powdered Cindy Crawford in full George Washington regalia certainly piqued my interest. It was 1995 and my interest in politics up to that point had been restricted to being one of 10 protesters of Gulf War I in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and drunken debates regarding the legalization of weed. Everything else just seemed so stodgy and boring and the domain of stuffed shirts who puffed cigars at the Peninsular Club.
But George changed that for me. Kennedy's brainchild set out to marry celebrity and politics in an attempt to interest people who normally didn't follow the goings on in D.C. In the publishing world George is considered a flop. But in my world it achieved that lofty goal by inspiring a dopey 24 year old to seek out more political writing that cast off the dust and veered into the ditch of American politics.
As it turns out, George was simply my gateway drug; my Pot of politics. I soon got into pharmaceuticals prescribed to me on dirty scripts from the Good Doctor himself. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a laugh and a good read, but Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 changed my life. Coupled with Timothy Crouse's Boy on the Bus, which covers the same doomed Democratic campaign from a different angle, I learned more about how American politics works than I could have in 100 years of high school and college poly-sci courses. It was the dirt. It was the drama and the chicanery of the Political Machine that fascinated me and turned what was until then a pedestrian interest into a full-blown, teeth gnashing addiction. Those books showed me the life and death struggle of a political campaign and the depths people (including the media) will sink to in order to win.
So yes, Hunter S. Thompson has certainly influenced my political thinking and this site will certainly reflect that influence, but Hunter hated phonies, and so do we. This will not be a site that attempts to mimic his writing style, for that would be the path of fools. No, we only hope to retain the humor in reporting on and cutting criticism of those who claim to represent We, The People of these great United States. May ye Gods strike down anything less!
