Best hatchet jobs?

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What's the most scathing attack on a public figure ever to reach print? I'm talking Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa, Albert Goldman on Elvis, Ian Penman on Zappa...

The greatest of them all, for me, has to be Hunter S. Thompson's Nixon obituary for Rolling Stone. Quoted from memory: "He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

― Justyn Dillingham, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I just read the hunter and it was so angry ! It managed to slaughter Agnew and Kissenger as well as Nixon

― anthony, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, and I just remembered, Chris Roberts wrote a hilarious demolition of an Oasis concert for UNCUT last year that resulted in a lot of hate mail the following issue.

― Justyn Dillingham, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A demolition of Oasis last year? Kum by ar me fish kum by ar. Carrumba!

― Nick, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

my votes go to robert hughes damning (and rightly so) essays on jean- michel basquiat and julian schnable, collected in his wonderful nothing if not critical. also, his demolition of jeff koons in both the book and t.v. versions of american visions.

― jess, Friday, 23 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hughes is a great contrian and although i disagree w. him re: Koons , his work on Basquit was great.

― anthony, Friday, 23 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bah: Hughes is a bloated self-satisfied colonial with an utterly misguided sense of his own importance.

― Mark Morris, Friday, 23 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mentioned this over on ILM, I think, but Everett True's utterly, totally *hilarious* demolition of the Smashing Pumpkins in a live review from 1993 was, is and ever shall remain the best piece of sheer concentrated vitriol I have ever read. Just amazing, and the best part about it was that it was so freaking *funny*. Billy didn't get over it for months, kept mentioning it in interviews and on stage and all...

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ten years pass...

just reviving this because it occurs to me that i haven't read one for a long time. anyone read a good one of late?

― piscesx, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 23:56 (fourteen years ago)

ten years pass...

Interesting thread i thought..

Streaming means that you can listen to something before you buy it, so the reviewer’s defence of a hatchet job - that they’re saving you the bother of wasting your money - no longer applies. Plus: almost all musicians are broke. Why pile humiliation onto penury? https://t.co/1ZqG2p8oUx
— Pete Paphides (@petepaphides) June 14, 2022

― piscesx, Tuesday, 14 June 2022 10:50 (three years ago)

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