“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuck-offs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage,” famously stated Hunter S. Thompson, who was known as much for his drug-induced shenanigans as he was as the founder of gonzo journalism, a style in which the author is central to the story he is reporting.  

Thompson — irreverent, acerbic, and sardonic — committed suicide today by fatally shooting himself.  He was 67.

Mimi Hanaoka