No english muffin:

Historically, when you bowed to a king or official, you would kiss their ring as a sign of subordination, worship, and allegiance. Miss Jackson kisses the rings of the people she sleeps with, making them believe that she actually cares about them, but in reality, she’s only seeking pleasure for herself. As a result, she isn’t actually submitting to anyone, but rather, her partners are at her mercy.

“Kissing the ring” was also mentioned on Panic’s previous album, Vices and Virtues, in the song “Stall Me”.

Thompson was not actually forcibly restrained while writing this sports article for Scanlan’s Monthly in June 1970. Rather, this is an early example of gonzo journalism, a style of writing pioneered by Thompson which, unlike the majority of journalists who strive to have at least some objectivity in their writing, brings the author into the story, almost as a character, through anecdotal (and often opinionated) first-person narrative.

Thompson developed gonzo journalism after becoming frustrated with traditional journalism and intended for it to be a style of writing that would speak truth-to-power. As he wrote in a 1959 letter:

I have given up on American journalism. The decline of the American press has long been obvious, and my time is too valuable to waste in an effort to supply the “man in the street” with his daily quota of clichés, gossip, and erotic tripe. There is another concept of journalism, which you may or may not be familiar with. It’s engraved on a bronze plaque on the southeast corner of the Times Tower in New York City.

The plaque at the New York Times he refers to carries Joseph Pultizer’s 1883 mission statement:

An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.