I love the title of this post. It flies in the face of most of the cultural norms I grew up with. For that matter, it flies in the face of the norms of most weed smokers I’ve known throughout my life. I know a lot of weedheads, burnouts, and dopeboys… but I’m not sure I’ve met someone I would call a “responsible weed smoker.” But that phrase is at the heart of a proposal floated today by Representative Barney Frank who apparently enjoys a quick puff, puff, pass as much as the next guy.
Frank’s proposed legislation would end federal penalties for people carrying less than 100 grams of marijuana. Since no none drug users (or none Canadians) know what 100 grams is, that’s a little less than a quarter-pound. Currently being caught with slightly less than a quarter-pound of weed would net you a felony possession with intent to distribute charge. Under Frank’s plan it would be treated like having an unopened bottle of wine in your car. A nod and maybe a quick recommendation to the officer on the variety that you favor. “Why yes officer, that is Mauwie Wauwie. It’s alright, but you really haven’t lived until you’ve tried Purple Haze.”
Representative Frank says that a little weed smoke is none of the government’s business. And as an openly gay lawmaker, he knows something of the government putting its nose into folks business. His supporters point out that the plan would essentially treat marijuana use like alcohol use. As long as you don’t overdue it, or try to drive, then you’ll remain on the right side of the law.
I don’t particularly have an opinion about his proposal. I don’t object to folks who smoke weed, but I also don’t object to folks who do object to it. The sentencing phase of the nation’s drug laws are absurd and greatly out of wack, but this legislation wouldn’t really impact that a great deal, no matter what Rep. Frank says.
However, I do have some pointed criticism for my favorite part of the program. It would legalize possession of what is a pretty good amount of weed. What it wouldn’t do is change any of the laws against growing, importing, exporting, or selling weed. So my question is… if we can’t grow it, import it, or sell it… then where exactly are all the people who will be carrying around quarter-pounds supposed to get them from?
Frank’s plan would permit the “nonprofit transfer” of up to an ounce, but unless Rep. Frank is much more intimately familiar with the drug trade than I am (and that would be unlikely), I think he is permitting something that has never once happened in the history of marijuana. “Here man, have some of my weed. No, no, keep your money. I’m a nonprofit dealer.” Not to mention, even the weed Frank envisions being nonprofitably transferred would have to have been either grown or imported which still remains illegal.
I think what Frank’s measure would do is decrease the distance between the real ruthless criminals who currently import marijuana by the AK-47 protected plane-load and the sorority girl who enjoys the occasional late-night joint. Right now, the marijuana in that sorority girls joint has to pass through a series of supply levels each less menacing than the last. By the time it gets to the Tri Delta house, the weed that started in the hands of a ruthless cartel boss with his own private army is delivered by Betty Blonde’s lab partner whose roommate knows a guy who sells dime bags out of his mom’s suburban town home.
Having known a few of the guys who traffic marijuana by the pounds, I can tell you one thing. Betty Blonde doesn’t want to meet them. By leaving the potential penalties for suppliers untouched, Rep. Frank’s proposal does nothing to reduce the unsavory and potentially deadly nature of the traffickers. By eliminating the penalties for possessing such a large amount of marijuana, it makes it that much more likely that customers will make their contacts a little higher in the supply chain to save substantial sums of money. After all, a quarter-pound all at once is much cheaper than buying its equivalent in a series of dime bag purchases. The economics of the situation mean more customers meeting the guys they really don’t ever need to meet.
I guess what I’m saying is that Barney Frank’s proposal needs a rethink, but not for any of the reasons you’ll hear in the evening news.
So Barack Obama gave a rousing speech to hundreds of thousands of adoring Germans today. There was a lot of speculation that John McCain would try to take the focus off Obama’s amazing photo op by announcing a narrowing of his Vice Presidential options (thus forcing the media to spend plenty of time hashing out the remaining candidates), but the diabolical McCain campaign folks had a much better idea. While Obama went to Germany and stood in the historic footsteps of Kennedy and Reagan, McCain went to Schmidt’s Fudge Haus (get it? Haus?) in Columbus, Ohio. So Barack Obama got an entire 30 minute address carried live on every news network and McCain got… well, he got shown talking to reporters at the Fudge Haus where some sort of ringing bells rang loudly enough the entire time to drown him out. Point McCain I think?
Seriously, who’s managing this campaign? I don’t know if Obama is a dream candidate, but John McCain is quickly proving himself to be a dream opponent. I mean, come on!!! Who was responsible for this photo op? Your candidate standing in front of a sign for the f’ing Fudge Haus?!?!? The guys who managed President Bush’s campaigns would be committing seppuku from the shame of it. That’s ritual suicide in case you miss the reference and think I’m talking about Sudoku. Take a moment to read this NY Times article from 2003 that illustrates just how meticulously Bush’s image is managed. Read that, then ask yourself whether McCain’s Fudge Haus moment rises to the level.
McCain’s only reaction to Obama’s ridiculously presidential-looking appearance in Berlin was to say something about how he would love to go to Germany, but he would rather do it as president than as a mere candidate. But at the end of the day, isn’t the real reason he didn’t make an overseas speech to a screaming crowd of hundreds of thousands because he would be lucky to draw hundreds, much less thousands. I’m not saying the presidential election should be strictly a popularity contest, but at some point doesn’t the discrepancy in their receptions… everywhere… mean something?
The McCain campaign and the GOP in general likes to talk about the media’s obsession with Barack Obama. To a degree that is true because of the historic possibility that he will become the first black president. But to an even greater degree, the media gives Obama more coverage because he does more news-worthy things. He makes moving speeches that grab news viewers’ attention. McCain makes speeches as if he’s trying to cripple the ratings for any television network foolish enough to carry it live. Obama draws huge adoring crowds. McCain draws only the reporters who themselves proved unlucky enough not to draw the Obama assignment. And Obama stands at a historic location in Berlin. John McCain stands in front of the Fudge Haus sign.
The cover clearly shows the Muslim candidate and his America-hating terrorist wife doing what is now known as a “terrorist fist bump.” And I’m not even talking about the American flag burning in the fireplace. It shows all that. It is also clearly poking fun at each and every element of itself. Every image is carefully culled from one or more of the ridiculous rumors that have swirled around Obama for his entire campaign.
Why this cover should upset the Obama campaign is beyond me. The image comes on the front of a magazine that has one of the most liberal readerships of any in the nation. Is there anyone that thinks The New Yorker’s sympathies lie with the McCain campaign? Really? If The New Yorker magazine had a vote it would be cast for Obama and everyone in the country knows it.
The problem here is a campaign that has shifted from inspirational to calculating, from historic to pedestrian, from in-on-the-joke to out-of-the-loop. That’s why you haven’t spotted a black supporter standing behind Obama since… well, since ever. That’s why, in the midst of a riff about Obama’s trotting out a faux presidential seal, Jon Stewart had to re-assure his audience that it was alright to laugh at Obama also. The candidate who stepped onto the national stage as the most invigorating voice in modern electoral history is quickly losing the ability to laugh at himself.
In his general election incarnation, Obama is working to prove his seriousness, his gravitas, his resolve. Instead he is proving to be wooden, dull, and uninspiring. What do you do with an inspirational leader who has lost the ability to move a crowd? The mistake here is that no one ever expected him to be the heavy-lifting guy. He was supposed to be the ideas guy, the masterful salesman that was going to move us in the direction we should go and convince us that it was the right thing to do.
But that guy has left the building. Instead, general election Obama is seemingly trying to out-boring his formidably boring GOP counterpart. He has bogged down in the details of campaigning, controlling the pictures, staying on message. The Obama that doesn’t get the joke of The New Yorker cover is not the guy we fell in love with. I’m getting a feeling that guy isn’t coming back. And that’s too bad, because that’s the guy I wanted to vote for.
Jesse Jackson is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that. But come on! So what if he said he “wants to cut [Obama's] nuts off”? He is a Civil Rights era black leader who has listened to the first viable black presidential candidate make a series of speeches to black audiences that could very easily be seen as telling off black folks for the benefit of white folks watching at home on their televisions.
After all, the only group of people Obama isn’t winning handily is white males. Is it such a stretch to imagine that an old conspiracy-minded black man like Jackson might see some of what he’s doing now as pandering to white men by selling out black people? Again, I’m not saying that’s what Obama’s doing, but I’m not saying it’s not either.
So yeah, saying what Jesse Jackson said while fully mic’ed up in the Fox News studios is not an intelligent decision. But can you imagine that what he said in the wrong place has been said many times in other settings. Around city barber shops, in the stands at sports events, on black college campuses? Jackson is a long way away from speaking for the collective “black people”, but I think this particular candid remark is a lot more representative than most of the polished commentary he provides for the national media.
Just to wrap this all up. I’m not saying Jesse Jackson is right for what he said. But it’s his opinion. I think he clearly feels like Barack Obama is pandering to white voters at the expense of black people. I think that’s an honest opinion that leads him not to think highly of Obama on a personal level. I can’t say I’ve never said something roughly equivalent to what Jackson said about a person I disliked. Fortunately I wasn’t mic’ed up in a television studio when I said it.
Barack Obama has every right to talk to black audiences about problems he perceives in black America. He’s right about most everything he says when he talks to these audiences. But he has to know that his message that black people should do better is likely to be received at least as well by old white men (the primary demographic of the national news media) as it will be by the black people sitting in the crowds.
So I’ll leave you with a quote from Chris Rock that I think sums up this Jesse Jackson flap perfectly. “I’m not saying what he did was right, but I understand.”
** since posting this originally, I read a really good piece at The Root that may have changed my opinion on this thing slightly. Either way I think it’s worth your time to read.
A top aide to John McCain made a boo-boo when talking to a Fortune magazine reporter. But the mistake isn’t what he said. The mistake was thinking that he could in fact express an honest (and absolutely true) theory about the result a terror attack would have on the upcoming presidential election.
Charlie Black’s basic crime, for which he is being rebuked by his own candidate as well as the opportunistic folks in the Obama camp, is saying that a big terror attack between now and November would help McCain’s chances.
Scandalous? Not so much. But just as in southern society, in politics some truths you just don’t speak. Barack Obama learned that lesson when he discussed why God and guns were so precious to many voters. Now Mr. Black is taking his own personal tutorial.
Nevermind that both men make strong points. In Mr. Black’s case, he has the 9/11 attacks to point to as proof of his theory. Prior to 9/11, George W. Bush was the lamest of lame duck presidents. And how often can you say that about someone in their first term? After 9/11, Bush was the champion of freedom and he marched on to a second term that no one would have bet a large sum of money on his achieving back in 2000.
But nevermind the specific example that supports what Black said. Let’s look at the disingenuous response from John McCain when asked about it. McCain said:
“I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true. I’ve worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear.”
But see, here’s the point, Black didn’t even remotely imply that McCain was hoping for a terror attack to boost his campaign. That would be absurd and Black’s sanity would need to be questioned. What he said was that if terrorists succeeded in striking a U.S. target then the very act would help McCain’s chances in the election. That much is undoubtedly true.
National security concerns in recent history have favored Republicans. They are the strong national defense party and Democrats are… let’s just say not. Whether true or not, that is the perception. Not to mention, in this case we have an ex-military man versus an Ivy League lawyer who is starting to be labelled an arrogant dilettante.
What I find more and more disconcerting is the demonization of people speaking the truth. Black didn’t say anything that should be controversial. Black didn’t say anything that should hurt John McCain’s campaign. He expressed a couple of political truths. He should be applauded for answering a question honestly as opposed to spinning back to message. His truth gives us something to think about. His truth gives us a question to ask ourselves. If we as a nation would vote for John McCain after a terrorist attack, which I agree with Mr. Black that we would… then why not now?
Charlie Black’s mistake was not in saying what he said. Charlie Black’s mistake was believing that a thinking man can speak to other thinking people without resorting to political smoke and mirrors. Or maybe it was just to believe that we were thinking.
George Bush wants to drill for oil. And while I know we’re all shocked, shocked I tell you, that the President would suggest drilling for oil in our National Reserves and in our oceans, let’s put that aside for a moment. Bush says we should drill because it will help in our effort to reach energy independence. And while I wouldn’t expect a C student to grasp this on his own, I would assume that some of his smart guys might have filled him in on the fact that oil is a fungible commodity.
Let me tell you what that means real quick. Truth be told I made my fair share of C’s, but I’ve got a ton of smart people that work on my television shows and they’ve put me up on game, pulled my coat, hipped me. (Sorry I just finished responding to Nat’s ebonics post and got in a groove).
Fungible in this case means that oil produced in the U.S. is not reserved for the U.S. market. There is no such thing as a U.S. oil market. There is only one worldwide oil market. So when the President tells us that his drilling regimen would increase U.S. oil production by 7-10%, it doesn’t mean that the U.S. supply of oil would increase 7-10%. Nor does it mean that the price of oil-derived products such as gasoline, heating oil, etc. will drop by 7-10%.
So basically what I’m saying is that you’re being sold a bill of goods. The gas and oil consuming public does not benefit at all if we drill every hole George W. Bush can imagine. There are Americans who will benefit, but they mostly live in poverty-stricken places like 5959 Las Colinas Boulevard in Irving, Texas. Trust me, the link is worth it to get the joke.
It’s nice to assume that Barack Obama will be successful in his quest to be the first black president, the first minority president, the first non-old white guy president. That represents progress of a sort in a country where 3 in 10 people still admit to racial bias. And while quite frankly I’m not as enamored of the Illinois senator as I once was (apparently familiarity does in fact breed contempt), his election will be a happy day for me when/if it happens.
To engage completely in our hypothetical, I want to think for a second about how the first black president will be judged.
Does he pull our soldiers out of Iraq? Does the country dissolve into ethnic cleansing as a result?
Are our special forces able to drag Osama bin Laden out of his hiding place? Does he get a jury trial?
Does he pull the economy out of its morass? Does he do it by subsidizing oil? Drilling ANWR? Propping up the housing market? Allowing it to sink to its depressingly inevitable bottom?
I don’t know what a President Obama is going to do about any of these things. I do know that his economic team is remarkably free-trade oriented for a politician who spent the primaries pandering to Rust Belt voters with anti-NAFTA rhetoric. I do know that he was among the most self-righteous proponents of public campaign finance until he realized how inconvenient that was going to be for a campaign that has raised more private money than any other in history. In the first case, I’m glad he’s a typical slimy politico. In the later, not so much.
So I sit here curious how history will judge a “Chicago politician” (and we all know what I mean by that label) who gets elected as an inspirational icon of hope. Will he be more machine or messiah? I’m curious. I do know one thing. A President Obama who fails to live up to the significant hype he’s created in the process of getting the job would be tragic. It’s taken 500 years to put a black man in position to lead this country for the first time. If the first black president is a dud, it may be that long again before we see another.
I’ve been having an argument for the past decade or so. I had it again this weekend after Barack Obama was called elitist. I sat down to write about it, but I also had The Daily Show on and Jon Stewart made my point beautifully. So, since he’s funnier than I am, I yield my podium to the honorable comedian from New York. (p.s. Cue it in 7:15 or so to get to the part I’m talking about. The rest is just background)
I believe in symbols. I believe that one of the most effective ways a human being can spend his/her life is not to die. If you stand up strong enough for long enough for the things you really care about, your whole life becomes a story, and your name, a reference to an ideal. You become a symbol for those who come after you, and the mere fact that they can cite your sacrifice gives meaning to whatever it was you were standing up for. That symbolism will live as long as people remember you.
The thing about symbols, though, is that they are abbreviations of concepts. A person is not a concept, and abbreviation of any aspect of their life is akin to amputation. Necessarily, when a person becomes a symbol, they stop being a person. That’s why we avoid discussing the character flaws of our icons. We don’t need to discuss MLK’s infidelity or FDR’s polio. The dirty human details, if they do not add to the legacy, are often snipped away.
Still, a glimpse at the person behind the symbol can sometimes reveal a truth about the concept we are attempting to crystallize. If the person’s sacrifice proves the importance of the virtue in question, what if find out that our knowledge of the sacrifice is defective?
I had just heard about the teargassing of Wangari Maathai, when I bumped into someone who knows her online. I had just begun to embark on a rant about how tough she is and how proud I am that she can stand up to the Kenyan government bullying her, trying to silence her message over and over. When I started I did not know just how well my friend knew Maathai, so I was thrilled to be interrupted and offered some perspective:
Wangari will be told “Don’t set up a stage in the middle of a highway.” then she’ll start arguing about the rights she’s due… and then she’ll get beaten… and then she’ll find another obscene place to set up the same stage, like on top of a police station… and then she’ll get maced
and then she’ll relocate to doing it in an allowed location. By this time she’s given the government enough ammunition to justly bomb her, but they settle for tear gas. And in the news, it sounds beautiful. In reality, not very….productive.
Come to think of it, I could not really argue with this. She has always been known for her defiance, so it’s not obviously out of character. As for the wisdom of her strategy, I could not possibly comment, since everything I know about her has been edited and published after the fact, usually by some unavoidably biased party. It’s not so much that I would believe anything my friend told me. It was more that I knew that these words were spoken from personal experience, from a place of respect but not hero-worship.
I had to strongly consider at that point whether or not this was the sort of evidence that should keep Wangari Maathai from being a symbol for me. If her tenacious, unyielding pursuit of change was simply the flip side to blind stubbornness, perhaps her legacy is less martyrdom and more masochism. I don’t know.
It’s not that this conversation was enough to ruin her for me. Even if everything I heard was true, the good far outweighs the flaws. A harsh criticism of her tactics (and maybe even her motives) would not be enough to negate what she has been able to accomplish. Probably, in the end, she will still live on as a symbol for so many people. By the simple invocation of her name, we will be reminded that planting trees can stop war. Why shouldn’t that be enough?
I love the title of this post. It flies in the face of most of the cultural norms I grew up with. For that matter, it flies in the face of the norms of most weed smokers I’ve known throughout my life. I know a lot of weedheads, burnouts, and dopeboys… but I’m not sure I’ve met someone I would call a “responsible weed smoker.” But that phrase is at the heart of a proposal floated today by Representative Barney Frank who apparently enjoys a quick puff, puff, pass as much as the next guy.
