I wasn't old enough to really feel the blow of the death of Kurt Cobain. Don't act like I'm some weirdo from that generation who was the only person who wasn't listening to the late icon. I was 10 years old. Most fourth-graders are lighting farts, not wearing torn grunge pants and drinking all night.
I also didn't feel the full effect of Bradley Nowell's death two years later. Not that it matters, because Sublime didn't blow up until he was buried and I wasn't too in to ska prior to the Bar Mitzvah years.
Hunter S. Thompson didn't scream along to three-chord songs and bust up music charts. Sure, he sold a damn fine amount of books. We all know that selling books wasn't the bread and butter for Raoul Duke, though.
He liked guns. He strongly enjoyed drugs and gambling. He had political things to say, but he wasn't a new-age whiny liberal with a big mouth screeching about massive welfare cuts. That wasn't his style. He did make foreign-policy statements that usually involved asinine strategies toward countries such as Libya, but he could hardly be called a mushy Democrat. Instead, he called Hubert Humphrey names and labeled Richard Nixon a crook when the ex-president died (ah, so glorious that Thompson outlived Nixon).
Had the man ever seen my roommate, Dave, he would take one long, crazed look and probably mutter about how he reminded him of himself at a younger age. Thompson was Dave's hero, and it was truly a dark day for our household. We decided to hold a proper tribute to him. It obviously involved tequila and enough beer to stock a redneck for a decade. We may have been some ether and a galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers and screamers (among other things) short of the stash Thompson would have had, but the sentiment was certain. We were sad he was gone. No more ESPN Page 2 columns. No more fear, no more loathing. No more Thompson.
A few days later, we made sure to see Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale speak at the Kay spiritual center on campus. Seale, unlike Thompson, certainly discussed deep issues in welfare, health care and civil rights. He told the crowd stories about the beginning of the Black Panther Party, the death of Fred Hampton and the fight that began his revolution. I'm sure the AU media will have at least one story about all the details of the speech. The thing that stuck out in my mind was his explanation to us that the atmosphere was volatile at the time of the Black Panthers. It was easy to gain notice because the civil rights movement was in full swing, the Vietnam War raged on and leaders with names like Kennedy, King, Evers and X were being bumped off left and right. Today, the environment is different.
It doesn't take a genius to understand what the de facto leaders of long hairs and showerless revolutionaries think of the current political situation. Evolution is not reliving the explosive, radical '60sand the underground civil war of the '70s. Rather, it is finding the new fight, refusing to back down and taking a few bong rips along the way.
Eventually, leaders die. They leave the movement to those below them and hope the best for them. But those who live seek to inspire the youth and tell us that it's up to us now, that no one is going to do it for us, and that being yourself can't be taught. Hopefully, some of the dead ones are driving too fast on a highway in the sky, keeping an eye on us through a thick stream of smoke from a cigarette holder in their lips and swinging a fly swatter at imaginary bats.
R.I.P., you old scoundrel.
Daniel Cohen is a junior in the School of Public Affairs.
