Walter Cronkite and His White-Slavery Racket
Hi. The cold in this city is unbearable and landed me in bed for the last 30 hours with some sort of flu, fever and severe chest congestion coupled with extreme depression. I’m miserable and thought you should know. I haven’t forgotten about you — the comments section is coming soon. promise.
Thanks.
Today’s HST wisdom is from a 1974 playboy interview:
PLAYBOY: Well, you certainly say some outrageous things in your book on the 1972 Presidential campaign; for instance, that Edmund Muskie was taking Ibogaine, an exotic form of South American speed or psychedelic, or both. That wasn’t true, was it?
HST: Not that I know of, but if you read what I wrote carefully, I didn’t say he was taking it. I said there was a rumor around his headquarters in Milwaukee that a famous Brazilian doctor had flown in with an emergency packet of Ibogaine for him. Who would believe that shit?
PLAYBOY: A lot of people did believe it.
HST: Obviously, but I didn’t realize that until about halfway through the campaign — and it horrified me. Even some of the reporters who’d been covering Muskie for three or four months took it seriously. That’s because they don’t know anything about drugs. Jesus, nobody running for President would dare touch a thing like Ibogaine. Maybe I would, but no normal politician. It would turn his brains to jelly. He’d have to be locked up.
PLAYBOY: You also said that John Chancellor took heavy hits of black acid.
HST: Hell, that was such an obvious heavy-handed joke that I still can’t understand how anybody in his right mind could have taken it seriously. I’d infiltrated a Nixon youth rally at the Republican Convention and I thought I’d have a little fun with them by telling all the grisly details of the time that John Chancellor tried to kill me by putting acid in my drink. I also wrote that if I’d had more time, I would have told these poor yo-yos the story about Walter Cronkite and his white-slavery racket with Vietnamese orphan girls — importing them through a ranch in Quebec and then selling them into brothels up and down the East Coast…which is true, of course; Collier’s magazine has a big story on it this month, with plenty of photos to prove it…. What? You don’t believe that? Why not? All those other waterheads did. Christ, writing about politics would paralyze my brain if I couldn’t have a slash of weird humor now and then. And, actually, I’m pretty careful about that sort of thing. If I weren’t, I would have been sued long ago. It’s one of the hazards of Gonzo Journalism.
— from Playboy Magazine, Nov 1974 issue
Until next time, your sick friend,
Anita Thompson
p.s.
Here is a link to NPR story that someone sent me about a new band who loves Hunter.(New Heathens) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7219850
I have no idea if they’re any good, but will check them out.
