{"id":28615,"date":"2023-09-18T20:53:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T03:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=28615"},"modified":"2023-09-18T20:56:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T03:56:04","slug":"hunter-s-thompson-in-chicago-1968-the-battle-for-the-democratic-partys-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/09\/18\/hunter-s-thompson-in-chicago-1968-the-battle-for-the-democratic-partys-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter S. Thompson in Chicago, 1968: The battle for the Democratic Party’s soul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

50 years ago this week, Thompson went to Chicago to cover the Democratic National Convention. This is what he saw<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By TIMOTHY DENEVI<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

PUBLISHED AUGUST 29, 2018 3:00PM (EDT) (Salon.com)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\"HunterHunter S. Thompson; 1968 Democratic National Convention\u00a0(AP\/Salon)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpted from “Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism<\/a>” by Timothy Denevi. Copyright \u00a9 2018. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty years ago this week, Hunter S. Thompson, a 30-year-old journalist working on his second book, traveled to Chicago to cover the 1968 Democratic Convention. On Wednesday, August 28, after witnessing from the press gallery the defeat of the party\u2019s anti-war platform by its establishment forces, he returned to his hotel, the Sheraton Blackstone, where a major protest was developing. He was standing at the corner of Michigan and Balbo when Mayor Daley ordered his police force to attack the thousands of unarmed demonstrators. His press pass was clearly displayed, but he was beaten and tear-gassed; along with the other journalists at his side he was forced against the Hilton\u2019s plate-glass window, which shattered.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward\u2014after fighting his way back to his hotel room\u2014he headed back to the Convention hall, where, from the press gallery, he watched the culmination of the conflict between the party\u2019s anti-war faction and its establishment base: an uproarious floor vote for the party\u2019s presidential nominee.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advertisement:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"freak-kingdom\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1968 the Chicago International Amphitheatre was like an old Roman grandstand that for millennia had somehow managed to escape the fire. Its balconies hung right over the floor. Its lower gallery could only be accessed through a maze of narrow tunnels. Its carpets were red. Its speaker\u2019s podium employed the same sky-blue theme as the Chicago Police Department. “promises kept,” the fa\u00e7ade read. Here, for an entire week, the Democrats had sat on top of one another arguing over the nature of their shipwrecked fate, and now, on Wednesday night, nominating<\/em> night, they were ready for an all-out fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, one of Mayor Daley\u2019s most effective tactics had been preemptive: before the convention he\u2019d helped orchestrate an electrical-workers strike, which had the cumulative effect of preventing the networks from broadcasting live at any Chicago locations other than the amphitheater. As a result, the cameras on hand for the police riot at Michigan and Balbo all contained film, which meant they still needed to be developed and cut\u2014a time-intensive process\u2014and for an hour and a half, the footage remained unseen. At nine thirty David Brinkley interrupted the nominating process to say: \u201cThe tape you\u2019re about to see was made thirty or forty minutes ago.\u201d Throughout the floor, many of the delegates and aides and congressional leaders who\u2019d been at the amphitheater all evening were learning about the violence for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advertisement:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this point Hunter S. Thompson had made his way to the press balcony, its precipitous apron, where, wild-eyed and stinking\u2014the tear gas still in his skin\u2014he watched the proceedings. When the Alabama delegation, led by infamous seventy-one-year-old Birmingham segregationist Bull Connor, nominated the football coach Bear Bryant for president, Thompson started bellowing down at them, \u201cMARTIN BORMANN!\u201d\u2014the name of Adolf Hitler\u2019s personal secretary and Nazi Party Obergruppenf\u00fchrer who for years had been rumored to have escaped to Argentina. \u201cMARTIN BORMANN! MARTIN BORMANN! MARTIN BORMANN!MARTIN BORMANN!\u201d he screamed at the delegates\u2014many of them close enough to hear. In a letter a few weeks later he\u2019d describe the moment: \u201cThe Jesuit priest sitting next to me kept me from hurling my binoculars . . . and Daley\u2019s thugs, sitting all around me, luckily didn\u2019t know who Martin Bormann is\/was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Down on the floor the convention chair, Carl Albert\u2014an old little Oklahoman with a very big gavel\u2014kept trying to move things along. But by now word of the Battle of Michigan Avenue had spread through the delegates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A few rows back, Mayor Richard Daley was sitting with the Illinois delegation. He was approaching seventy, balding and fleshy, his purple lips locked tightly together: a man who\u2019d spent his entire adult life in politics; who in 1960 had helped Jack Kennedy take Illinois and with it the presidency; who\u2019d opened the convention on Monday by saying, \u201cAs long as I am mayor of this city, there is going to be law and order in Chicago\u201d; who\u2019d supported Hubert Humphrey since the spring over the likes of Bobby Kennedy because, Vietnam aside, this year it was the vice president\u2019s turn. He was the last unquestioned party boss the Democrats would see: powerful enough, under the current allocation system, to swing the delegates loyal to him in such a way as to determine the future of the country itself. That night, as news of the violence spread, Lyndon Johnson, watching from the White House, got in touch with Daley: if the current president were to board Air Force One and fly to Chicago at that instant, would there be enough support to give him the nomination he\u2019d declined to pursue four months earlier? Daley said yes; he promised Johnson he could get the delegates. But just as the president was considering such a dramatic turn of events, his Secret Service detail told him it wouldn\u2019t be possible: there was no way they could ensure his safe passage to the amphitheater. In the end Johnson decided against it. The possibility of yet another disastrous assassination\u2014his own\u2014would be too much for the country to handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around 10:00 p.m. Senator Abraham Ribicoff, the former governor of Connecticut, approached the podium. He was fifty- seven years old. He wore a slim black tie and dark suit; when he spoke, the pointer finger of his right hand chopped down at the air in front of him. That week he\u2019d written a nominating speech for George McGovern\u2014the South Dakotan had been a late, antiwar entry into the race\u2014but after what had happened at the Hilton he couldn\u2019t stay silent. \u201cAs I look to the confusion in this hall,\u201d he said, \u201cand watch on television the turmoil and violence that is competing with this great convention for the attention of the American people, there is something else in my heart tonight, and not the speech that I prepared to give.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daley watched in disbelief\u2014a lidless, fish-eye glare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd with George McGovern as president of the United States,\u201d Ribicoff continued, \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago . . .With George McGovern we wouldn\u2019t have the National Guard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crowd erupted. Chairman Albert smacked his gavel. Richard Daley, standing up straight now, cupped his hand to his mouth like a megaphone. \u201cFuck you!\u201d he screamed toward the podium. \u201cYou Jew son of a bitch! You lousy motherfucker! Go home!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone in the vicinity could hear, including Ribicoff, who nodded slowly. \u201cHow hard it is,\u201d he said. \u201cHow hard it is . . . How hard it is to accept the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

READ MORE: America is married to the mob: But now the crime boss in the White House is feeling the heat<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson watched from the balcony. When the convention was over he\u2019d write in a letter to Ribicoff (whom he\u2019d never met): \u201cEverything you did that night seemed to rest on a bedrock of human decency . . .There was an awesome dignity in your han- dling of Daley and his thugs, and for a moment that whole evil scene was redeemed\u2014but only for a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was unprecedented: a senator had just accused the head of his party\u2019s elaborate machine, on national television, of using government-directed violence to silence dissent, punish rivals, and prevent the press from publicizing what was really going on. Ribicoff had called out Daley\u2019s tactics for what they were. During the convention you had a hodgepodge of local and federal authorities loosely associated around a single issue, the country\u2019s militaristic campaign in Vietnam, and when one of these factions had turned out to be willing to go so far as to beat the antiwar opponents they at the time all shared, the others\u2014including the current president of the United States, his chosen successor, and the recently nominated Republican rival\u2014justified this violence by explaining it away with hollow catchalls like nationalism and patriotism and weakness, as in: these protestors were really just a bunch of plotting communist outsiders who deserved what they got because they were too contemptibly weak to back up their chants and speeches in the street fight they\u2019d brought on themselves. \u201cThe city of Chicago and the people of Chicago didn\u2019t do a thing that was wrong,\u201d Hubert Humphrey said afterward. \u201cThere are certain people in the United States who feel that all you have to do is riot and you can get your way. I have not time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, just after 11:00 p.m., it became official. With Pennsylvania, Humphrey\u2019s delegate count finally broke the threshold. The nomination was his on the first ballot. He\u2019d represent the Democratic Party against Richard Nixon in the general election. The next day, during his acceptance speech, he\u2019d find it appropriate to quote Saint Francis of Assisi: \u201cWhere there is hatred let me sow love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward\u2014now it was Thursday afternoon, the last of the convention\u2014Hunter Thompson was kicked out of the amphitheater by Mayor Daley\u2019s security agents, who appeared to be escorting away any and all members of the press, regardless of their behavior or political bent, without explanation. He spent the rest of the night wandering the city, drinking and writing, unable to sleep; whenever he tried to explain what he\u2019d seen he broke down crying. At sunrise on Friday morning, on his way back from a Ramparts magazine party, he was crossing to his hotel from Grant Park when out in front of the Hilton he came upon Blair Clark, Senator Gene McCarthy\u2019s campaign manager (and the former vice president of CBS News). Clark was pacing up and down the sidewalk. His eyes, Thompson noticed, were shining with tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside the lobby, people were running and screaming and holding on to one another. Some appeared to be bleeding profusely. Thompson tried to find out what had happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a few minutes earlier, dozens of police, accompanied by members of the National Guard, had stormed the operations suite of the McCarthy campaign on the fifteenth floor, and with their billy clubs they\u2019d beat the young staffers who\u2019d been volunteering for the campaign since New Hampshire. The police would later claim they were pelted by debris thrown from McCarthy\u2019s headquarters, but that was impossible; the windows to the suite had been shut and locked for hours. Richard Goodwin happened to be in the room when the violence broke out\u2014he\u2019d stopped to say goodbye\u2014and as everyone was being herded downstairs in the lobby for arrest, he sent a message to McCarthy to gather up his Secret Service detail and come immediately. The senator promptly arrived with his suit-wearing agents and demanded to know who was in charge. But the cops and guardsmen shrugged; together they melted away, back out onto the street. \u201cJust what I thought!\u201d McCarthy called out after them. \u201cNobody\u2019s in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now the sun was coming up over the lake. It was Friday morning, August 30: the tail end of the very worst political convention in American history. Hunter Thompson stood there in the Hilton lobby watching its final bloody act\u2014the curtain falling as a recent presidential candidate and his Secret Service detail faced off against the combined members of the National Guard and Chicago police, whose victims lay wailing and bleeding on the lobby floor. How could America continue to exist in the manner it was once conceived if its mechanisms could be appropriated so easily in the name of everything the Republic was meant to stand against?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was the ultimate horror,\u201d Thompson described afterward in a letter to a friend. \u201cThe final groin-shot that only a beast like Daley would stoop to deliver. It was an LBJ-style trick: no rest for the losers, keep them on the run and if they fall, kick the shit out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By TIMOTHY DENEVI<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Timothy Denevi\u2019s most recent book is “Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism<\/a>.” He teaches nonfiction in the MFA program at George Mason University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

50 years ago this week, Thompson went to Chicago to cover the Democratic National Convention. This is what he saw By TIMOTHY DENEVI PUBLISHED AUGUST 29, 2018 3:00PM (EDT) (Salon.com) Hunter S. Thompson; 1968 Democratic National Convention\u00a0(AP\/Salon) Excerpted from “Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism” by… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1097,1096],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28618,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28615\/revisions\/28618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}