Editing Hunter S. Thompson (section)

===''Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72''===
{{Main|Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72}}

[[File:Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973 1st ed jacket cover).jpg|left|upright|thumb|''Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72'' (1973)]]

In 1971, Wenner agreed to assign Thompson to cover the [[1972 United States presidential election]] for ''Rolling Stone.'' Thompson was paid a retainer of $1,000 per month ({{Inflation|US|1000|1971|fmt=eq}}) and rented a house near [[Rock Creek Park]] in Washington, DC, at the magazine's expense. He was also given a deal to publish a book on the campaign after its conclusion, which subsequently appeared as ''[[Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72]]'' in early 1973. Insider books on presidential politics had become popular during the prior decade starting with [[Theodore H. White]]'s ''Making of the President'' series, the first of which appeared in 1961, with additional volumes in 1965 and 1969. Their success raised the overall profile of journalists assigned to cover the quadrennial presidential election in the U.S., and it became a common phrase among them to say they were "...Doing a Teddy White," meaning they planned to write their own insider book on the campaign.<ref name=mckeen />

Wenner had decided that ''Rolling Stone'' would cover the presidential election in part because of the passage in 1971 of the [[Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution|26th Amendment]] to the [[Constitution of the United States]] which lowered the legal [[voting age]] from 21 to 18, making a large part of its mostly young readership suddenly eligible to vote. "We intended to politicize our generation and wrest this stirring force away from the fake politics of the revolutionary," Wenner wrote in his memoirs of the plan to collaborate with Thompson.<ref name=wennerbook />

[[File:McGovern Thompson 1972.jpg|thumb|alt=Photograph of two seated men having a conversation in a crowded busy room, the man on the left is giving "the finger" to the camera.|Thompson with [[George McGovern]] (''right'') in San Francisco, June 1972]]

Thompson's first campaign piece for ''Rolling Stone'' appeared as ''Fear and Loathing in Washington: Is This Trip Really Necessary?'' in the January 6, 1972, issue. The 14th and final installment appeared in the November 9 issue under the headline ''Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls....''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8jh3svh/entire_text/ |title=Guide to the Eric C. Shoaf Collection on Hunter S. Thompson |author=Kate Dundon |date=2019 |website=Online Archive of California |publisher=University of California, Santa Cruz |access-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230413201431/https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8jh3svh/entire_text/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Throughout the year, Thompson traveled with candidates running in the [[1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries]] for the right to challenge the incumbent president, Republican Richard Nixon, in the general election. Thompson's coverage focused mainly on Sen. George McGovern of [[South Dakota]], Sen. [[Edmund Muskie]] of [[Maine]], the early leader, and former Vice President [[Hubert Humphrey]]. Thompson supported McGovern and wrote critical coverage of the rival campaigns.

In the April 13 installment entitled ''Fear and Loathing: The Banshee Screams in Florida,'' Thompson relates how someone having apparently lifted his press credential, and terrorized Muskie and his staff on a campaign train. The incident was later revealed to be an elaborate prank. In another installment, Thompson relates rumors — which he later admitted he had originated — that Muskie had become addicted to the psychoactive drug [[ibogaine]]. The story damaged Muskie's reputation and played a role in his loss of the nomination to McGovern. In another, he tracked down McGovern in a restroom to get a reaction quote after a senator from Iowa had switched his endorsement from McGovern to Muskie.

The series, and later, the book were both praised for breaking boundaries with a new approach to political journalism. Literary critic Morris Dickstein wrote that Thompson had learned to "approximate the effect of mind-blasting drugs in his prose style," and that he "recorded the nuts and bolts of a presidential campaign with all the contempt and incredulity that other reporters must feel, but censor out."<ref>{{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-link=Morris Dickstein |date=1977 |title=Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties |url=https://wwnorton.com/books/9780871404329 |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465026319 |access-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-date=October 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231015213719/https://wwnorton.com/books/9780871404329 |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Frank Mankiewicz]], McGovern's campaign director, often described it as the "most accurate and least factual" account of the 1972 campaign. In one vivid, yet invented anecdote, Thompson describes how Mankiewicz had leapt out from behind a bush to attack him with a hammer. To an uninitiated reader, at first, whether the action Thompson described was fanciful or factual might have been unclear, and that seemed to be part of the point. As biographer William McKeen wrote, "He wrote for his own amusement, and if others came along for the ride, that was all right."<ref name=mckeen />