So Polite's Open Salon Blog

Meditating Over That Pot Comment

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:03:24 -0400

After the outcry over President Obama’s glib response about marijuana at his online town hall, I’ve been trying to think about why I sympathized more with him than with those who were upset by his comment.

Please don’t misunderstand: I’m all in favor of legalization, not only of pot but of other drugs as well. I am all in favor of treating addiction as a health problem and not a criminal problem. Here in California the state was just ordered to release 50,000 prisoners over the next three years because the prisons are so overcrowded. The majority of those who will be released are non-violent drug offenders. I believe it’s wrong so many of them got sent to prison in the first place.

The thing about pot is, there is still a social stigma that Obama, short of sucking massive bong hits in the middle of a State of the Union, cannot hope to reverse on its own merits. You mention legalizing marijuana and the image that leaps to mind for some people is still a bunch of hippies sitting in the mud at Woodstock, or college kids in a dorm room staring at their hands and muttering “whoa.” Look at how pot is treated in popular culture. Hip-hop stars rap the praises of toking, which scares the shit out of suburban white parents. And have you ever seen a movie in which pot was treated even semi-seriously? No, the dope smokers are always slackers and losers. Go watch the Harold & Kumar movies or Half Baked if you aren’t sure. Actually, I recommend Half Baked; it’s pretty damn funny even if you’re not high. And it’s got Jon Stewart!

My mom is pretty liberal. She’s also a cancer survivor who thinks anyone who can be helped by medicinal marijuana should have access to it. But she also recently referred to pot as a “gateway drug.” I think that argument has been mostly discredited by now, but many, many people still believe it.

And yet the questions voted on for the town hall, while mentioning the war on drugs and throwing out a statistic or two about our overcrowded prisons, focused on legalizing pot only. According to Marc Ambinder over at The Atlantic, pot questions were the most-voted-for in two of the categories Obama’s staff had grouped the queries into: fiscal stability and budget. This country has so many other problems that fall into those categories. Obama is interested in talking about solutions for those: budget priorities, education reform, health care reform, and so on. You push legalizing a drug that many people don’t even take seriously to the top of the list, you risk an unserious response.

Marijuana legalization needs to be pursued in a wider context. Why just pot, for starters? Why not coke and heroin and mushrooms and ecstasy? The sentencing laws for those are just as draconian. Let’s push it in an overall discussion about sentencing reform. Or let’s push the legalization question within a broader discussion about prison reform (Glenn Greenwald has a good piece on Salon right now about Democratic senator Jim Webb and his efforts in this area, which probably would encompass the sentencing reforms as well.) Or let’s talk about it in terms of the situation with the cartels in Mexico and the violence there spreading across our border. Hell, let’s talk about it in terms of the health care reform debate: should sick people everywhere have access to medical marijuana? Should we treat addiction as a health issue and if so, how much of the money we would spend on health care reform should be set aside to boost the number of clinics and treatment programs and counselors?

The questions for the town hall began this discussion backwards. I think the president missed a great opportunity and I was disappointed in his flip statement. But it’s up to us, the people, to explain to him why this is an important issue to so many of us. We did not get off to a good start.

The Washington Post: Now With Fact-Free Journalism!

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:03:29 -0400

One of my fellow OSers has a link up to an article on the WaPo's website that claims California is considering banning the sale of black cars. Predictably, said OSer uses this article as an excuse to make one of his shrill and uninformed rants against the supposed tyranny of liberals.

The problem? The article is damn near free of actual facts. The writer wants to criticize a proposal by the Air Resources Board of the California EPA to force car manufacturers to use more reflective paint beginning in the model year 2012. The idea is that cars will reflect instead of absorbing more heat, thereby reducing the need for drivers to blast the air conditioning the instant they start the vehicle, thus reducing the amount of fuel they use.

The report acknowledges that cars painted jet black will have trouble meeting the proposed standard. The WaPo writer (actually a blogger from techcrunch.com, where the item was originally posted) extrapolates that California will thus ban black cars. He then spends a couple of paragraphs ranting against the proposal purely on this basis.

What he neglects to mention is that this is one of literally dozens of proposals for reducing greenhouse gases the ARB has on its website. It does not say that black cars will have to be banned. It simply acknowledges that there is a problem, one I'm sure the auto manufacturers will heavily lobby over if this proposal even makes it to the state legislature.

The writer also links to a couple of other car blogs, neither of which really has anything to add to the story. Just more bloggers (and their hundreds of commenters) metaphorically slapping their heads at the ridiculous ideas all us nuts in California manage to keep coming up with.

We keep hearing about newspapers going under because their audiences have migrated onto the web. The Washington Post used to have at least some standards. This is the paper of Woodward and Bernstein, for Chrissakes. But here the WaPo is trying to remain relevant by using content from a blog, only the cotent is total bullshit that serves no purpose other than getting people riled up. Meanwhile the paper looks bad for using it, thus ensuring that even more people will say the hell with traditional media outlets like the Washington Post.

And it's partially the fault of us readers. We don't educate ourselves, we don't discriminate between well-sourced journalism and pure crap that anyone with a modem can put out there. It's said a society gets the politicians it deserves. Our society these days is getting the "journalism" it deserves.

UPDATE: The LA Times has a bit more here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/uptospeed/2009/03/black-car-ban.html

A Viewing Recommend

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:03:33 -0400

I've always been a fan of South Park, though I hardly ever watch it...my regular TV viewing is generally limited to The Daily Show, Lost, 24, and any game involving the Steelers or Lakers. But I did catch last night's episode, "Margaritaville," which can be viewed here by those of you who are not easily offended:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

This is the most trenchant, cutting social commentary on our entire economic mess that I've seen anywhere, and I think there is something in it for people of all political stripes.

Oh Lordy, Jim Cramer is Still Talking

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:03:46 -0400

As Ronald Reagan might have said, "There you go again."

On the Today Show this morning Jim Cramer was asked about his interview last week with Jon Stewart. Check him out just past the three-minute mark:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/03/19/cramer_stewart/index.html

Oh Jim. Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jim Jim. Stewart stomped you like a beach bully going after a kid's sandcastle and you could barely defend yourself. I watched the uncut interview and I felt sorry for you, with your sleeves rolled up and your shirt hanging on you like a tent and your hangdog expressions and your quivering and shifting around.

Perhaps it was unfair for you to be made the whipping boy for your entire network. But you took your beating and you went back to your show and the friendly confines of your buddies at CNBC. Then you get asked about the appearance this morning and you say Stewart's attack was "naive and misleading." Really? Why didn't you say that to him on his show instead of fumbling like a virgin confronted with his first bra strap?

First off, you missed Jon Stewart's entire point. He never said the media was "behind this." He said your network acted like cheerleaders, not financial journalists, that you should have been more critical and investigative instead of just swallowing whatever lines your CEO buddies at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs fed you. That entire beating, and you still didn't get the point.

And second, are you trying to get The Daily Show to come after you again? Has the furor died down too much for your liking? You missed the attention, negative though it might have been, so now you want some more? Well congrats. I don't know if Jon Stewart and his writers will make hay of this, but you sure grooved a fat pitch right down the middle of the plate for them.

Look, here's some advice: Stop talking. Just. Stop. Talking. Shut up. Those thin little horizontal lumps below your nose? Those are your lips. Do not open them. Next time someone asks you about Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, clamp those lips together as tight as you can, no matter how much effort it takes. Clamp 'em together until the urge to say something stupid passes. Think about other things: your family, that morning's Wall Street Journal, unicorns. Anything. Because quite frankly, and I think I speak for America on this, we're tired of you and this whole debate.

There is a lot of populist anger out there right now, and plenty of it is aimed at the media and the financiers. Since you are both a member of the media and a financier, where do you think that puts you on the scale of the public's appreciation? I'm going to say somewhere above Osama Bin Laden and below a highly contagious airborne strain of syphillis. Not that there is such a thing as a highly contagious airborne strain of syphillis, but you get my point.

Or maybe you don't. If there is one thing this morning's appearance showed me, it's that you have trouble getting a point even if it stabs you in the eye.

Oh AIG, I'm So Tired

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:03:59 -0400

As a follow-up to a post last week, I’ve been wondering what Jamie Dimon thinks of the AIG situation this week. Demonization of corporate America, Jamie? Where the hell would that possibly come from?

Here is what bothers me about this whole issue of AIG bonuses. I’m not particularly angry, maybe because every week it seems there is something to be mad about. A couple of months ago it was the heads of the Big Three flying to Washington on their private jets to beg for bailout money. Last week it was the Jon-Stewart-versus-Jim-Cramer smackdown. Now I’m just tired. Call it outrage fatigue.

What gets on my nerves is the utter cluelessness of AIG from a public relations standpoint. I’m certainly no apologist for these guys and if I were a PR flack for that company I would probably have put my head through a wall by now. How on earth could these guys go ahead with this plan and not think about the firestorm of bad press that would ensue? How do you look at the job figures for the last couple of months, all those middle and lower class folks losing their jobs, and still justify to yourself multi-million dollar bonuses, knowing that the reckless gaming of the financial markets your employees engaged in is at least partially responsible for this recession? Does no one over there read a newspaper or have access to the Internet? Or a soul?

Yeah I know, the company signed contracts guaranteeing these bonuses and “outside legal counsel” informed AIG they could be liable if the payouts did not happen. Fine. Make all these employees get together and hire lawyers to come after the money. Even if you know you will lose. Have the decency to go down swinging.

Or renegotiate the contracts. Tell your employees that bonuses right now when you have taken billions upon billions in taxpayer-financed bailouts might look a tad shabby, for them as well as for you. Tell them you still intend to make good on the bonuses, but you will do it quietly, in a few months, when the economy is hopefully in better shape and the press is not reminding everyone every day that you are a bunch of incompetent fuck-ups.

Hell, at the very least start paying back the money you got through TARP first. Once you are making regular payments there you can slip through the bonuses and no one will care. You can spin it as bonus money for people who stuck with the company through bad times and helped it get back on its feet. Our political leaders will be way less inclined to wag their fingers and suggest you commit hari-kari if they think you are paying off your debt to the taxpayers in good faith.

Having been the beneficiary of a couple of retention bonuses in the past (though for much smaller amounts) I can understand the justification for this kind of compensation. A couple of years ago I worked for a company that decided to close down it’s L.A. office. They offered me a retention bonus of 25% of my salary to stick around for nine months while the business was slowly shut down and partly transferred to the main office in Seattle. Now, one could argue that as an employee of that company I bore my share of responsibility for our inability to make the business work. But my experience and knowledge of the company was valued highly enough that I was given this bonus as an incentive to not immediately go look for a new job, while dozens of others in my office were being let go.

The difference is, that company produced and licensed cell phone ringers and graphics. We were not playing around with mortgages and retirement funds. We did not fail because of reckless business practices and nearly take down other multi-national corporations at the same time.

One of my pet peeves is people who do not seem to think the rules should apply to them. For example, I’ve been on many airplanes where people turned on cell phones mid-flight to check messages, or were still gabbing away as the plane hurtled down the runway. My feeling is always, hey, I turned off my phone, jackass, as did everyone else on the plane. I don’t know how valid the fear is that phones can mess with a plane’s instruments. Maybe it is total bullshit the airlines use as cover to prevent the air rage one might feel if trapped in a cramped seat while the oblivious idiot in the next seat babbles on and on about her yeast infection. You know how annoying it is to be stuck in an elevator for a couple of minutes with someone gabbing away on a cell? Imagine being stuck with that person for six hours, jammed into coach, as you fly from Boston to L.A.

That is where these clowns at AIG come in. By taking these bonuses, they set themselves apart from the current zeitgeist of economic anxiety. They are telling the rest of us that the rules do not apply to them, that we as Americans are not in fact in this mess together. AIG is that passenger in 17C cooing to his girlfriend over his cell while the rest of us grip our armrests and pray. They are the wealthy grabbing lifeboat seats on the Titanic while the passengers down in steerage aren’t even allowed to come up on deck.

And yet I am not all that angry. I am more…resigned. Resigned to the selfishness of human beings. Resigned to their cluelessness, their douchebaggery. I’m disappointed once again in humanity’s indifference to itself.

This is not to set myself up as some sort of paragon of virtuousness and charity. I’m far from that. And I’m sure some fine folks in our country (hell, here on OS) consider me a socialist, a commie, a clueless Marxist, an anti-capitalist, a naïve dope who will be happiest when Obama forces us all to live and work on collectives and hand everything over to the state. I’m not going to waste my energy engaging those folks. I believe in the sentiment behind the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Particularly right now, at this moment in history, we need even the high and exalted titans of finance to keep their boats in the water.