From David Emery,
Your Guide to Urban Legends.
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Dear Guide:

There is a famous quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson that goes something like this:

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

I have seen this quote changed to describe many businesses from TV to film to corporate America in general. Do you guys have any idea where this quote came from or toward what business it was originally aimed? You are my only hope.

Thanks.

Dear Reader:

Interesting, isn't it, how sardonically true those words ring in all the different contexts you mentioned? They also reek of Hunter Thompson, the man touted as the father of Gonzo Journalism, the man who has described sports writers (whose ranks he recently rejoined as an online columnist for ESPN) as "a rude & brainless subculture of fascist drunks," and who once said of Bill Clinton: "He may be a swine, but he's our swine."

Arguably, Thompson isn't really a journalist at all (he has denied it off and on himself), so much as a profane, lyrical, hyperactive critic of American culture. The New Journalism of the early '60s challenged the sacred cow of objectivity in reporting; Gonzo Journalism — Hunter S. Thompson, I mean — slaughtered it and tossed it on the barby.

I started my research, then, on the assumption that Thompson probably did author this harsh description of the music industry, a good match in both style and substance to other witticisms credited to him. When I Googled it, I found it everywhere — usually, but not always, attributed to Thompson. However — and here is a bracing lesson in the pitfalls of online research — out of literally hundreds of instances where the quotation is cited, only a couple name a published source, and those were the hardest to find.

Not to mention the fact that there are at least half a dozen variants, to wit:

• "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
• "The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
• "The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
• "The corporate communications world is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs."
• "Show business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long dark plastic hallway where thieves, pimps and whores run free and most good or weak men die like dogs!"

Never have I seen a pithy turn of phrase so wantonly misused. Whatever the original words may have been, people had freely adapted it to indict whomever they chose and these adaptations were repeated verbatim by others without questioning their authenticity. The tag line, "There's also a negative side," was sometimes used and sometimes not. Other writers were occasionally cited as the author.