Where has all the Gonzo gone?

In this week's Phoenix, Mike Miliard ponders the first post-Hunter S. Thompson presidential election:

In Gonzo, Thompson’s first wife, Sandy, rues his suicide. It was not a “courageous act,” as some called it, she says. It was cowardly. And it robbed America of an inimitable voice at a crucial moment. “This is a time when a together Hunter Thompson could make a difference in this country.”

Could he? Thompson was deeply invested in the idea of the American dream. (Even if he never did quite figure out what it was.) He was an idealist who learned the hard way how to be a cynic. And he could write, right until the end. But his best work, arguably, was behind him. His celebrity and outré personality had long since prevented him from reporting the way he did in works such as his stone classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Most of his latter writing issued forth from the kitchen of his Colorado compound — “Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop” as the subtitle of The Mutineer, the third and final collection of his letters (due out next year) puts it.

What would the “Sage of Woody Creek” make of this year’s election? Would his words have resonance in this blog-besotted age? What, ultimately, is Thompson’s legacy? Who, if anyone, could take up his mantle? And what could a hypothetical young and hungry Hunter S. Thompson achieve in this corporatized, consolidated-media climate, anyway? Contemplating these questions, all McKeen can say is, “It’s very difficult to get through an election year without him.”