Loquacious liberal Arianna Huffington and Bush drug (war) kingpin John Walters could learn a lot from each other’s mistakes.
In a recent ad campaign that spoofs Walters’ unintentionally hilarious ‘I smoke pot; therefore I support terrorism’ commercials, Huffington switches the blame from young potheads to uppity SUV drivers. Instead of featuring moping teenagers who confess, ‘I helped blow up buildings’ by buying drugs, her ads portray nonchalant middle-class moms who say, ‘I helped blow up a nightclub’ by providing terrorists with oil money.
Executed correctly, Huffington’s ads could have effectively lampooned the Bush administration’s wasteful war on drugs and provided consumers with valuable information about America’s costly dependence on foreign oil. However, the lady doth protest too much, and she falls into the same sensationalist sinkhole that America’s drug education program has been mired in for years.
Just as Bush’s Office of National Drug Control Policy often vilifies marijuana and exaggerates its dangers, Huffington’s ad campaign capitalizes on the clichéd stigmas that stick to SUV drivers’ windshields like pigeon dung in July. Instead of presenting any groundbreaking evidence to the generally ignorant public, her ads state little more than the (albeit embellished and syllogistic) obvious: SUVs use lots of gas. Gas comes from oil. Oil comes from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia harbors terrorists. Do I need to remind you Oprah is fat?
Ms. Huffington’s vain attempts, however, do shed some holy light on those who wage (by force and guile) eternal war with drugs. Her exposure of Walters’ absurd campaign should encourage all Americans to scrutinize their nation’s drug policies. After sorting through all the half-truths, wastes of taxpayers’ money and shady dealings with drug lords and dictators too numerous to detail here, they may discover the war has done more harm than good.
Just one example: in 2000, the United States sent $43 million to Afghanistan’s Taliban government to help finance and enforce a ban on opium production. If we generously assume the corrupt regime used even half the money for its intended purpose, they’d still have plenty left to pay for 19 people to attend a Florida flight school, dozens of fake IDs, passports and plane tickets and about 600,000 high quality box cutters.
Conveniently, however, none of this information finds its way into White House-approved programs aimed at ‘educating’ the nation.
Community-based initiatives, while well-intentioned, are just as wretched. From what I remember about the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, it taught us street slang for drugs, how drugs would affect our bodies and minds, the types of neighborhoods we’d find them in, the types of people who would sell them to us and oh yeah that they’re bad for us.
D.A.R.E. also perpetuates common myths by classifying marijuana as a ‘gateway drug’ and teaching that all drugs are essentially evil and addictive. The latter myth is especially harmful to youths, and may prove to be more of a ‘gateway’ than marijuana ever was.
For example, if a misguided 17-year-old smokes a few joints and discovers not only that marijuana isn’t addictive, but also that his occasional drug use doesn’t negatively affect his social or academic life (I can name more than a few pothead honor students) then he may move on to harder and more harmful substances. Hey, if D.A.R.E. was wrong about pot, it may be wrong about coke and heroin, too.
Like Walters’ cockamamie campaign, the D.A.R.E. program is also skewed toward prevention at all costs; it often accomplishes little more than preaching and misinforming. This approach may work with naïve 11-year-olds, but it is grossly insufficient for and patronizing to adolescents. Drug education should impart practical knowledge and encourage serious debate, but instead it simply scares kids away from the truth.
Despite its glaring faults, however, America’s laughable drug education program lurches forward like a wounded fat man in pursuit of one last stick of butter. Walters’ latest litter of retarded brainchildren includes commercials starring pot-smoking teens who crash their cars, accidentally shoot each other and get pregnant. Only in America can we watch an ad that tells us marijuana leads to reckless driving and copulation right after one that implies Miller Lite will help us get laid.
If Huffington’s and Walters’ campaigns can teach us anything, it’s that America’s drug and oil policies woefully lack common sense. Common sense dictates that if marijuana were legal, home-grown (as much of it is anyway) and government regulated, then nobody would have to worry about supporting terrorists foreign terrorists, at least by buying it. Also, Walters could spend more time and money cracking down on deadly, addictive drugs, and our economy could certainly use the extra tax revenue. But our government would never stoop to taxing and regulating harmful chemical substances, now would it?
Common sense also dictates that Huffington’s ads should present alternatives to America’s energy policy instead of simply disparaging its current one. The nation certainly isn’t short on ideas for alternative energy sources; with some funding and celebrity clout behind them, hybrid autos, solar power and even cars that run on alcohol could all be viable options.
The last notion should especially thrill George Junior; when Laura’s not around, he could relive his Yale days by hooking up a hose to the executive limo’s fuel tank. And if he invited Dick, Condi and Colin, he’d have all the ingredients for a successful college party: beer, genitalia, a younger woman and the token black guy.
Unfortunately for the few disciples of Thomas Paine left among us, Huffington’s and Walters’ campaigns only demonstrate that liberals and conservatives alike have no qualms about sacrificing legitimacy at the altar of media sensationalism. Sadly, we the people must wade through latrines flooded with bloated conjectures and absurd propaganda to find any semblance of truth.
If that’s not Hitlerism, then Hitlerism has no meaning.
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