The calculated madness of Hunter S. Thompson has, of course, come to an end. Every pundit and blogger has posted some retrospective look at, or paean to, the legendarily batshit-wild journalist.

My tribute to him is that I don’t have any tribute to him. If any part of him is still around, it can’t be happy with the platitudes that were bandied about over his death. Having sampled a few eulogies, both online and in print, I feel pretty safe in saying that they’re all pretty much crap, and fall into either one of two categories; I haven’t found a third, and I’m not likely to, since plenty of people are secretly glad the old bastard is dead, given his penchant for printing uncomfortable things, and are happy to sweep him under history’s rug.

The first category is the eulogy/obituary penned by his "fellow" journalists. There is a lot of obligatory posthumous reverence, some phony admiration for how he challenged The Man, and an optional personal anecdote. The second is from bloggers who are playing the "I read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" card in a feeble attempt to convince themselves that though they may toil in a taupe-colored cubicle and do nothing more dangerous or daring than using a pirated copy of Microsoft Word or checking their Hotmail account at work, they too are unbridled rebels, living life on their own terms.

Yeah. Uh huh.

The only piece to really stick in my craw as a ridiculous waste of ink comes from the pen of Clarence Page, a conservative but sometimes thoughtful columnist with the Chicago Tribune, who said that if Thompson had only found Jesus, he’d still be with us today. Um… right… See, I’m an admitted milquetoast, knowing Thompson only by his reputation, and have never read any of his work; nevertheless, it seems obvious that he was the sort of person that, if he had found Jesus, it wasn’t for Jesus’ lack of effort.