That's not exactly accurate, because his book was obviously modeled on the 'gonzo' journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, and that sort of writer from

That's not exactly accurate, because his book was obviously modeled on the 'gonzo' journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, and that sort of writer from the 70s. Those writers mixed fiction and fictional devices into their "nonfiction", consciously pushing every edge they could, with the intention of shocking the squares and thrilling the hip. To anyone familiar with that genre, it's clear that such passages are satirical excess, not meant to be taken literally, or at least mostly not, but with enough ambiguity left over to be dangerous. What's interesting in this episode is how the culture has shifted. The exact same style that once delighted the counterculture, which at the time was what progressives all identified with, is now a transgression that gets you banned from progressive circles, which have since become elite circles culturally, with growing political power as well. All of this is a tectonic cultural shift, and it's fascinating! There's a very interesting intermediate case at the midpoint between Hunter S. Thompson and this guy: that is the similarly gonzo The eXile which was produced by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi during their time in Russia in the 90s. The worst passages from that publication—which were far more misogynistic than anything this guy wrote—were dredged up a few years ago, with the intention of denouncing the authors as part of MeToo. In the end, nothing much came of it, partly because one of the women being written about came forward to say that those passages were satirical and that she had always been treated well by the authors. But I think the more important difference between that case and this is that the culture has shifted significantly in the intervening 3 or 4 years. If this incident were happening now, I bet the outcome would be different. The very same gunpowder that made counterculture heroes of Thompson and his ilk, and which the eXile guys got away with by a hair, now blows up in your face, and at much smaller doses too.