{"id":178,"date":"2001-01-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-01-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opendna.com\/?p=178"},"modified":"2001-01-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2001-01-01T12:00:00","slug":"why-the-jack-rabbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/2001\/01\/01\/why-the-jack-rabbit\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Jackrabbit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I wrote Enter The Jack-Rabbit<\/a> several people have asked me what significance, if any, the title had. I always mumbled something about politics, sleep deprivation and Hunter S. Thompson which, I gather from the responses, was never very clear. So, for the first time, the passage that inspired the text:<\/p>\n

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then. No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheep thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, ten streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels.<\/p>\n

Why not? Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol but too many adrenalin rushes in any give time-span has the same bad effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits. When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is only a matter of time before he gets smashed \u2013 and when a journalist turns into a political junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail \u201872<\/a> by Hunter S. Thompson, p.17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I wrote Enter The Jack-Rabbit several people have asked me what significance, if any, the title had. I always mumbled something about politics, sleep deprivation and Hunter S. Thompson which, I gather from the responses, was never very clear. So, for the first time, the passage that inspired the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[15,16,17],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-viper-pit","tag-electioneering","tag-enter-the-jackrabbit","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}