Rehnquist was a junkie.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2125906/?nav=tap3
What it boils down to;
His main gripe was that no one bothered to mention anything about his drug problem in his obituaries. I don't know if that would have been the correct medium to foster a conversation on drug policy and it's inherent class bias, but it does bear exploring in other veneu's.
For the rich and famous, drug abuse is a medical problem. For everyone else it's a criminal problem. The double standard is so blatant and ingrained into our society it's become a cliche'. First thing after OJ was indicted was he was rich and famous and would never be convitced because of that. And famous people do get preferintial treatment, whether by design or not, it's inherent in a capitalsit system. They're rich, they're famous, they got money, they can buy public opinion. Or in the least rent out a shit load of add space to influence it.
The article does bother to point out that there's no proposed degredation of Rehnquists work during the period he was popping hallucinogenic No-Doze, which I find lends credence to some drugs offering insights into how our minds work, but that's another thread.
Celebrities constantly adopt children as single parents. You ever talk to a regular person who was single and tried to adopt? WHy do you think so many foreign babies are being brought into the US? It's not because we're short of babies, it's because other countries are more likely to let anyone adopt, single or not, if they got the money.
Back when i was living in Boulder, Colorado, must have been around 1997/98, I really thought we had a chance to get some meaningfull drug policy discussion going. Some big name federal judge in Denver even wrote an editorial decrying the draconian economic disparities in national and state drug policy.
Nope, nadda, nothing happened. Again and again over the course of my lifetime, only four decades, there have been feelbe attemempts to force a disucssion on faled drug policy that has made the prison industry the fastest growing industry in the late 80's and early 90's. Again and again they have failed. And I think a major factor in tha failing is that we as a society continue to excuse behavior by our celebrities and leaders that we ourselves would otherwise be held harshly accountable for.
We want them to be better then us, but then don't hold them accountable when they aren't, and revel in the spectacle they create to enable us to forget our own existance for a while. It's a self perpetuating distraction.
What it boils down to;
...for the nine years between 1972 and the end of 1981, William Rehnquist consumed great quantities of the potent sedative-hypnotic Placidyl. So great was Rehnquist's Placidyl habit, dependency, or addiction—depending on how you regard long-term drug use—that by the last quarter of 1981 he began slurring his speech in public, became tongue-tied while pronouncing long words, and sometimes had trouble finishing his thoughts.
...to illustrate the ugly double standards that excuse extreme drug use by the powerful, especially if their connection is a prescribing doctor, and condemns to draconian prison terms the guy who purchases his drugs on the street.
...am I unfair to link the reluctance of journalists to zoom in for a close-up on a dead person's warts to a general deference to authority or, in the case of Rehnquist, a class bias that predisposes them to look past his drug habit as purely a medical problem? I think not.
His main gripe was that no one bothered to mention anything about his drug problem in his obituaries. I don't know if that would have been the correct medium to foster a conversation on drug policy and it's inherent class bias, but it does bear exploring in other veneu's.
For the rich and famous, drug abuse is a medical problem. For everyone else it's a criminal problem. The double standard is so blatant and ingrained into our society it's become a cliche'. First thing after OJ was indicted was he was rich and famous and would never be convitced because of that. And famous people do get preferintial treatment, whether by design or not, it's inherent in a capitalsit system. They're rich, they're famous, they got money, they can buy public opinion. Or in the least rent out a shit load of add space to influence it.
The article does bother to point out that there's no proposed degredation of Rehnquists work during the period he was popping hallucinogenic No-Doze, which I find lends credence to some drugs offering insights into how our minds work, but that's another thread.
Celebrities constantly adopt children as single parents. You ever talk to a regular person who was single and tried to adopt? WHy do you think so many foreign babies are being brought into the US? It's not because we're short of babies, it's because other countries are more likely to let anyone adopt, single or not, if they got the money.
Back when i was living in Boulder, Colorado, must have been around 1997/98, I really thought we had a chance to get some meaningfull drug policy discussion going. Some big name federal judge in Denver even wrote an editorial decrying the draconian economic disparities in national and state drug policy.
Nope, nadda, nothing happened. Again and again over the course of my lifetime, only four decades, there have been feelbe attemempts to force a disucssion on faled drug policy that has made the prison industry the fastest growing industry in the late 80's and early 90's. Again and again they have failed. And I think a major factor in tha failing is that we as a society continue to excuse behavior by our celebrities and leaders that we ourselves would otherwise be held harshly accountable for.
We want them to be better then us, but then don't hold them accountable when they aren't, and revel in the spectacle they create to enable us to forget our own existance for a while. It's a self perpetuating distraction.
posted by opus512 at 4:04 PM
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