WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2011
POLITICAL SMART ALEC
Baldwin sees Weiner’s implosion as opportunity for him in 2013
BY RICHARD JOHNSON
Alec Baldwin is mulling a run for mayor of New York City now that kinky Congressman Anthony Weiner appears to have sexted himself out of the 2013 race.
The “30 Rock” star, who has long talked about running for political office, believes Weinergate has shaken up the field of candidates enough that he might have a chance to win, a friend of the actor told The Daily.
“Alec said, ‘Hey, maybe this changes the race. The dynamics have shifted,’ ” said Baldwin’s pal.
“The Democrats need a high-profile candidate, and Alec can fill that bill.”
Baldwin, a die-hard Democrat originally from Massapequa, a suburb on Long Island, N.Y., has said 2012 will be his last year on “30 Rock,” which would free him up for a 2013 mayoral run.
He’d be the biggest name by far to throw his hat in the ring to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg at “the second hardest job” in the nation, Weiner’s dream gig before his sordid fall from grace.
Bloomberg, who had New York City’s term-limit law rewritten to win his third term, isn’t expected to run again in 2013. The likely candidates include City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Councilman Bill de Blasio, and former New York comptroller Bill Thompson, who narrowly lost to Bloomberg in 2009.
Meanwhile, Baldwin probably won’t be able to run for Weiner’s congressional seat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, even if he wanted to. As a result of the last census, New York State is expected to lose two seats.
“They’ll take one Republican district upstate, and one Democratic district in the city,” said one political operative. “Weiner can say goodbye to his seat.”
Baldwin, 53, famous for his liberal politics, has been talking about the possibility of running for office since the ’90s.
“Is this something that I want to do? Yes,” Baldwin said in a 1997 New York magazine cover story on his political ambitions. But he said it didn’t seem like the right time.
“The men and women that run the world are in their 50s. It takes time to build that kind of thing. I’m 39.”
Fast-forward 11 years. In a 2008 interview on “60 Minutes,” Baldwin mused about being in his 50s and said it was possible that politics would be his second act.
“There’s no age limit on running for office, to a degree,” he said. It’s “something I might do, one day.”
Last year, the New York Daily News reported that the Working Families Party had considered Baldwin as a replacement candidate for its gubernatorial ticket, after a federal probe cast doubt on whether Andrew Cuomo would accept their ballot line. Baldwin’s spokesman told the newspaper he wasn’t interested.
Baldwin said in an interview with CNN’s Eliot Spitzer in January that he was “very interested” in running for office. He said he had been approached in the past about political offices outside New York, but that he would prefer to live in the Big Apple.
“I do believe that people want to believe that someone who deeply cares about the middle class … would like to seek public office,” Baldwin said.
– With Ashley Kindergan
The good wife
Woman scorned takes a new tack and leaves Weiner to fend for himself
BY KAYLEEN SCHAEFER
Americans may have seen more of Anthony Weiner than they ever wanted this week, but his wife has remained remarkably unexposed — and many women are cheering her unwillingness to stand by her man.
“If you’re a smart, strong woman in your own right, why let a misbehaving spouse drag you into his mess and give the impression that you’re sanctioning his behavior by appearing at his side?” said Jennifer Weiner, the best-selling author who wrote about a spurned politician’s wife in “Fly Away Home” and isn’t related to the congressman — but does have sympathy for anyone saddled with the name.
Anthony Weiner’s glamorous wife of 11 months, Huma Abedin, was conspicuously absent during the cringe-worthy news conference in which he tearfully admitted sending sexually explicit messages and pervy pictures to at least six women. She hasn’t issued any statements supporting him, or been seen with him since the sexting scandal broke last week.
“The old rule was that when a male politician got caught in a sex scandal, it helped enormously if the wife would ‘stand by her man,’” said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“The thinking went, ‘If the wife has forgiven him, the voters should, too.’ The new rule is that a male politician should have more concern for his wife’s feelings than to make her appear on the stage as he confesses, adding to her humiliation.”
But unlike the stone-faced wives of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, and, yes, her boss Hillary Clinton before her, Abedin refused to stand beside her husband during yet another embarrassing public skewering of a sexually misbehaving pol. “The Good Wife” she is not.
Her action, or lack thereof, cements the shift in protocol for how a politician’s spouse is supposed to behave after her husband has, in this case at least, tweeted crotch shots to strangers. Abedin, who is notoriously discreet, took her cue from Jenny Sanford, wife of philandering South Carolina ex-Gov. Mark Sanford, and Elizabeth Edwards, who both sat out their husbands’ public mea culpas.
Weiner did bring up his wife during his news conference, saying the two have no have no intention of splitting up over this, but the American public will have to take his word for it. “I love her very much, and she loves me,” he said Monday.
Meanwhile, Abedin has, seemingly, remained focus on her duties with Secretary Clinton.
“Huma Abedin earned a lot of respect by keeping her head down and staying at work,” said the author Jennifer Weiner.
Her public profile would indicate nothing less. Born in Kalamazoo, Mich., to parents who were both respected scholars, Abedin is widely considered to be both smart and stunning. She is fluent in Arabic, is said to have dated the actor John Cusack and cyclist Lance Armstrong before marrying Weiner, and has been featured in Vogue and Time’s “40 Under 40” list.
“She is timeless,” Hillary Clinton told Vogue in 2007. “Her combination of poise, kindness and intelligence are matchless.”
Eric Dezenhall, who runs a crisis management public relations firm in Washington, D.C., said Abedin’s decision is an example of the evolution of the standard “sorry I strayed” news conference tableau.
“Women who failed to stand by wayward husbands in the past were considered disloyal,” he said. “This was especially true because of the feeling that they signed up for a deal of sorts and that part of the deal was to put on a happy face. Today’s generation of women rightly reject the notion that humiliation is part of the deal.”
Jane Pratt, the longtime voice of twentysomething women and the founder of a new website called xojane.com, agrees. “I always thought that it was horrific torture for the wives they were expected to do that,” she said.
Dina McGreevey, now Dina Matos, the wife of the former New Jersey governor and famous “gay American” Jim McGreevey, however, defended her decision to be there when he told the nation he’d been having an affair with a male staffer. “I had nothing to hide,” she said on “Oprah” in 2004. “I had done nothing wrong.”
Neither choice is ideal. Whether a politician’s wife shows her face at her husband’s confessional or not, she’s unlikely emerge from what have become very public scandals unscathed.
“No matter what you do, there will be people speculating that you’re complicit, that you knew, or that you weren’t satisfying your husband and that’s why he strayed,” the author Weiner said. “Honestly, there’s almost no way a wife can come out of this kind of situation a winner.”
Gossip Briefs - May 29, 2011
Obama loses edge
Month after bin Laden strike, approval dips and he’s even with Romney
The killing of Osama bin Laden gave President Obama’s job approval rating a brief lift — and brief was all it was.
The president’s approval rating sank to 47 percent of all voters surveyed, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll. On May 2, one day after Navy SEALs shot bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout, that figure was 56 percent.
Obama still leads selected Republican rivals, but he is now in a dead heat with Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 race for the White House.
That Look, That Weiner-Spitzer-Clinton Look
By ANDY NEWMAN and ELISSA GOOTMAN
Clockwise from top left, Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, former Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, former Representative Eric J. Massa of New York, President Bill Clinton and former Senator John Ensign of Nevada.
The names may change, but the face remains essentially the same.
Politician after politician, in scandal after scandal, faces the cameras with his lips pursed and pulled tight, narrowing them. The chin boss — the fleshy bump above the chin bone — is pushed upward, pulling the lips into an upside-down smile. Add a downward-cast gaze, perhaps a shake of the head, and: Instant Disgraced Pol.
On Monday, Representative Anthony D. Weiner became the latest in a long and unfortunately distinguished line of officials whose faces appeared all over the news wearing an expression that instantly telegraphs powerful-guy-confesses-impropriety.
Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York is perhaps the standard-bearer of this parade as he admitted to patronizing high-priced prostitutes.
But President Bill Clinton, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, when he announced that he was gay and had carried on an affair with a man, wore it too during their public falls from grace.
Likewise, there were Eric Massa, a former New York congressman who resigned after admitting to an inappropriate exchange with a state aide, and former Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who resigned during an ethics investigation related to his affair with the wife of a former top aide.
To interpret the meaning of that now-familiar face, City Room called upon Dan Hill, the president of Sensory Logic, a market-research firm in Minneapolis that uses facial expressions to quantify emotional response. He is also the author of “Emotionomics.” Here, in an e-mail and in a telephone interview, was his explanation:
Lips pursed and pulled tight is a sign of anger. Anger as an emotion typically means you feel like you’re not in control of circumstances. It arises from lack of progress, confusion, feelings that one’s being dealt with unfairly, i.e. resentment. These are powerful men used to being in charge. So it likely signifies feeling vulnerable (not in control).
The chin raiser, where the chin boss pushes upward, causing the lower lip to push upward, could also be called an upside-down smile. It’s a muscle movement implicated in expressions of anger, disgust and sadness.
Disgust is an emotion that relates back, in evolutionary terms, to “bad taste” or “bad smell.” The bad-taste version is as if to protect the mouth from taking in something that is poisonous. Clearly, these scandals are (sometimes fatally) poisonous to the politicians’ careers. It’s as if the whiff of scandal tastes bad to them.
Eyes and head down both correspond to sadness, i.e., disappointment in oneself. Regret. Like disgust, it’s a sign of withdrawal, as if to remove oneself from what has caused shame or embarrassment.
The basic package you’ve got here is anger, disgust and sadness.
Credit: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
FLOAT YOUR BOAT
Pop culture cruises take off
BY MICHAELANGELO MATOS
Pop culture has been adjusting to unsteady waters in more ways than one. A decade ago, Andy Stein was managing Sister Hazel, a hard-rock band from Florida with a loyal promo crew. The group decided to charter a boat to throw the street team a party, with the band playing a show on open waters — an event in which Stein immediately saw more potential. “It was so much fun,” Levine said, “I’ve spent the last 10 years figuring out how to take like-minded people on vacation.”
Today, Levine runs Sixthman, an Atlanta company that charters more than a dozen pop-culture cruises: complete multiday vacation packages centered on rock bands and cable channels. In addition to packages with acts such as Kiss, Barenaked Ladies, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock, Sixthman also handles VH1’s Best Cruise Ever and, leaving port for the first time this coming December, the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) Classic Cruise, hosted by channel mainstays Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz.
Levine built the business by booking other artists on boats, often as part of large packages. The big push came in 2005, when Canadian cult stars Barenaked Ladies (whose big alt-rock hit was 1998’s “One Week”) called him. “They said, ‘We like what you’re doing with Sister Hazel. Could you do that for us?’ I said, ‘I’ve been waiting for your phone call.’” Soon Levine was handling cruises for a number of other big rock acts: 311, Zac Brown Band and rock’s master merchandisers, Kiss.
But while Sixthman dominates the pop-culture cruise business, it is by no means alone. In February, the second annual Bruise Cruise, a floating garage-rock festival featuring the Dirtbombs, Vivian Girls, King Khan and the Shrines, and Thee Oh Sees, as well as cult stand-up comic Neil Hamburger, sets sail. And fitness guru Richard Simmons’ Cruise to Lose! (yes, there’s an exclamation mark) embarks on its 30th annual expedition in October. This year’s theme: “Hooray for Hollywood.”
“I was raised in New Orleans,” Simmons said. “We had four major, beautiful theaters on Canal Street. Movies were a part of my life. Unfortunately, too many people eat while they’re watching a movie, and there lies the problem.”
Still, Simmons knows his audience. His cruise couches its morning-to-night self-esteem seminars, workout sessions and healthy-cooking classes in pop kitsch. “We start our cruise from L.A.,” said Simmons, enthusiastically as always. “We have a party, and everyone has to dress up as their favorite Hollywood star. It’s like ‘Bonanza’ meets ‘The Partridge Family.’ We end up like a family. We hear many things that these people don’t share with their families. Everyone feels that unconditional love and that support.”
Simmons’ cruise costs a substantial amount: tickets begin at $1,245; penthouse suites go for $4,675. Other cruises charge less: the TCM Classic Cruise runs between $795 and $1,995 (plus $199 in taxes and fees). “For the amount of money that any kind of entertainment costs today, I suspect there will be more older people on the cruise than younger people,” said TCM host Robert Osborne. Nevertheless, Osborne is “constantly surprised” how young his channel’s audience skews. “I do think we’re an unusual entity on television right now,” he says. “People like the positive spirit of these old films.”
Those younger fans may be starting to make their presence felt in the ocean-vacation business. Whereas Sixthman’s and Simmons’ cruises take place on 2,000-passenger ocean liners, which ups their price, the more bohemian crowd targeted by the Bruise Cruise settles happily for a smaller ship: The first one, this past February, booked only 400, and it will carry 525 next year. Tickets are under $800.
Despite its hipster veneer, the Bruise Cruise’s origins are in mainstream rock. “My [dad] worked with Vince Neil,” said Bruise Cruise co-director Jonas Stein, who went on Neil’s Mötley Crüise a few years ago. “I had a blast,” Stein said. “I thought of how much more fun I would be having if my own type of rock ’n’ rollers were on the ship.”
Stein teamed up with booker Michelle Cable, who found the inaugural trip daunting: “Here we are, transporting eight indie rock bands and over 400 of their fans into foreign waters via a ship for three days. That involved a lot of energy [and] organization, and had us jumping through hoops along the entire way: work permits, U.S. and Bahamas customs, getting a demographic of people who aren’t the normal ‘cruiser’ to purchase a ticket months in advance. [It’s] the craziest and most ambitious endeavor I’ve taken on, but also the most rewarding.”
Two of the Dirtbombs’ members, bassist Ko Melina and drummer Ben Blackwell, went on the first Bruise Cruise, reporting excitedly back to the band’s leader, Mick Collins: “It’s so much fun! You have to go.” When Stein and Cable approached the band, Collins said yes instantly.
“On the one hand, it’s odd,” Collins said of a vacation cruise targeted at an audience not known for having the means to spend extravagantly. “But on the other hand, it’s [odder] that it hasn’t happened before now. I have no aversion to being on the water. There’s always Dramamine.”
Gossip Briefs - May 27, 2011
Guitar heroes
How indie rock darlings the National ended up in one of the year’s biggest video games
BY FOSTER KAMER
Sometime in April, it was announced that Brooklyn, N.Y.-based indie rock headliners the National would release a new song — written for one of the most anticipated video games of the year, Portal 2. Buzz surged: The National doesn’t license their music out to just anybody, let alone write songs for them. Even stranger was the revelation that the song itself would figure in the story of the game. How did one of indie rock’s critical darlings end up writing for — and being written into — a video game?
“We were told they wanted a National song,” explained lead singer Matt Berninger of the project’s genesis. “We’d lately been in a mode … of writing songs that weren’t really songs for a record. We didn’t have any clue how popular and beloved the Portal series was.” No doubt they’ve figured it out since then.
Portal 2 looks like an average run-and-gun first-person shooter, but couldn’t be further from one. Acting as the silent female heroine, Chell, a player is trapped in a place called Aperture Laboratories. After waking from cryogenic sleep, the player is subjected to a series of “tests” — cold, concrete rooms one has to find increasingly creative ways out of. The only tool at a player’s disposal is the namesake “portal gun,” which shoots a hole into one surface and through another, allowing a player to shuttle between spaces. The only other character in the game is the computer running Aperture Laboratories, GLaDOS, a sadistic robot with a murderous streak who taunts players as they struggle through the game.
Released in 2007, Portal was a relatively small side-project for Valve, creators of best-selling alien shoot-’em-up Half Life. At the time, Portal was more of an art-house experiment for the company than anything else; players could finish the game in a few hours, if that. It turned out to be a massive success, racking up gaming awards, design awards, references in dissertations, mentions in university lectures and its own spot in an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on video games.
When Portal 2 was announced to the world of video gaming, fans went wild. Chell and GLaDOS would return, and two more actors would be lending their voices to the game — British actor and “The Office” co-creator Stephen Merchant, as well as actor J.K. Simmons (“Juno,” “Spider Man”). Cult singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton would write a song for GLaDOS to sing when a player completes the game, as he did for the first one. And this is where the National came in.
The project wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the persistence of Julia Betley of Bug Music, the band’s publishing company. Chet Faliszek, one of the game’s writers, had plans for a “fake” ending in the middle of the game, which needed a song to go with it. Coulton was already working on a song for the “real” ending, and to convince players of the “fake” ending, Faliszek needed a different song. He explained over email: “I had been a big fan of the National for years, and when their name came up, our search was over. I played some music for anyone in the meeting (who hadn’t heard of them), and everyone agreed with the choice.”
With the sole exception of drummer Bryan Devendorf (who plays “a little bit,” said Berninger), the National weren’t really interested as hobbyists. “None of us are big gamers. There are always game systems on our buses, but they don’t get used too much. Then we found out that Stephen Merchant was involved, and thought ‘This could be fun.’” The band’s decision to write the song for Portal 2 was given a huge assist from an occasional video game player close to the band. “It was my brother Tom who was like: ‘You don’t understand.’” Tom helped convince Matt and the band to look into it further.
During a tour date in Seattle, the band dropped into Valve’s offices to talk about the game. Berninger said they were given “the creative brief, not just on how you play the game but what the characters are, the nature, the type of atmosphere that the player would be in. We wrote a song specifically to suit that vibe.”
By the time the National was involved, Faliszek explained, the fake ending had been scrapped. It was decided that the National’s song could fit a backstory played out in the game’s hidden rooms: the former “dens” of a scientist who had been hiding in the laboratories. (His story is told through a comic book Valve released together with Portal 2 to connect it to its predecessor.)
“The lyrics aren’t super-specific to the game, but they’re meant to capture the space that Chell or GLaDOS would be in,” Berninger explained. “The game is hilarious, but it’s such a immersive, weird zone. It’s sad and desolate, too. It’s a creepy, lonely space,” he laughed.
The National’s song “Exile Vilify” can be heard in the game only when players pick up radios left behind in the dens. The nihilistic, teasing lyrics — “You’ve got suckers’ luck/Have you given up?/Does it feel like a trial?” — are scrawled on the rooms’ walls.
Berninger’s more than pleased with the result of the whole experience. “In some ways,” he admits, “we had more fun writing that than we did our own songs, without the pressure of working for our own record. We needed a break from the creative bottom-ground. This was a perfect way to write without moving forward.”
Maybe not for an album, sure. But as intersections of commercial art, video games and critically acclaimed rock go, this one seems to be a portal. No need to go back.
The National- Exile Vilify
New song from Portal 2 soundtrack and one of my favorite bands! Don't own any rights to this, just I'm sure others been trying to look for this on youtube just as I was. Enjoy :)
I got my download from http://stereogum.com/688961/the-national-exile-vilify/mp3s/
just play the song then right click the player and open in a new tab. It should download the file.
Sheet Music by request:
LYRICS:
Exile. It takes your mind...again.
Exile. It takes your mind...again.
You got sucker's luck...
Have you given up?
Does it feel like a trial?
Does it trouble your mind the way, you trouble mine.
Exile. It takes your mind...again.
Exile. It takes your mind...again.
Oh, you meant so much...
Have you given up?
Does it feel like a trial?
Does it trouble your mind the way, you trouble mine.
Does it feel like a trial?
Now, you're thinkin' too fast you're like, marbles on glass.
Vilify. Don't even try.
Vilify. Don't even try.
You got sucker's luck...
Have you given up?
Does it feel like a trial?
Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine.
Does it feel like a trial?
Did you fall far for the same emptinesses again?
Vilify. Don't even try.
Vilify. Don't even try.
Vilify. Don't even try.
Vilify. Don't even try.
Vilify.
DADDY'S LITTLE GAGA
Pop star’s pop makes no attempt to restrain wild child at fashion bash
Con-grad-ulations!
After 20-year dip, at last there’s a rise in HS graduation rates
BY DAVID KNOWLES
Finally, some good news about American students.
For the first time in two decades, U.S. high school graduation rates are on the rise, a new study released by Education Week finds. Reversing an alarming trend, the nation’s graduation rate has risen 6 percentage points over the past decade, and now stands at just under 72 percent.
“Just as Americans have been following the stock market and employment reports for signs of an economic turnaround, education-watchers have been on the lookout for improving graduation rates for the better part of a decade,” Christopher Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit organization that publishes Education Week, said. “It looks like we are finally seeing strong signs of a broad-based educational recovery, which we hope will gain further momentum.”
Using Department of Education research that runs through 2008, the most recent year available, the study found that three-quarters of U.S. states saw increases in their graduation rates. In the most-improved category, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee all showed double-digit rises in the percentage of high school diplomas being awarded.
The states with the highest graduation rates are New Jersey, North Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. The worst are Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina.
Though the study’s data were compiled before the recession took root, it found that the graduation rate rose by 3 percentage points from 2007 to 2008.
Even with the marked improvement, however, nearly 3 in 10 students will not earn a high school diploma at a time when higher education credentials are increasingly seen as essential to finding a good paying career.
Other red flags in the report include the continued finding that American males continue to lag behind females in overall graduation rates. While 75 percent of female students now earn a diploma, just 68 percent of male students do.
While the study found that “each major racial and ethnic group also posted gains of at least 2 percentage points, with African-American students improving most rapidly,” the diploma disparity between Asian Americans, who have the highest percentage of high school graduates, and Native Americans, who have the lowest — continues to widen.
Weiner The Laughingstock
Stand-up comedian Jim Norton gives his take on the randy antics of politicians like Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Next Wave With Gary Vaynerchuk - The Tech Celebrity Boom
Gary V. breaks down what we can learn from Rep. Anthony Weiner's social media faux pas and explains why stars like Lady Gaga are following Ashton Kutcher into angel investing.
A closer view of the space shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station, as photographed by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli from the Russian Soyuz module.
(Photo: Nespoli / NASA via the Telegraph)
Weiner’s Wife Is Pregnant
By MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
Representative Anthony D. Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, in January.
Their marriage has become the subject of intense speculation and scrutiny amid an embarrassing online sex scandal.
Now, Representative Anthony D. Weiner and Huma Abedin are about to make news of a different kind: they are expecting their first child.
Ms. Abedin, 35, is in the early stages of pregnancy, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.
The pregnancy, which the couple has disclosed to close friends and family, adds a new dimension to questions about the future of their marriage.
Mr. Weiner, 46, has admitted to engaging in salacious online conversations with at least six women over the last few years, including an incident last month in which he sent a photograph of himself in underwear to a college student in Washington state. He apologized to his wife and declared that they have no intention of splitting up.
“We will weather this,” Mr. Weiner said on Monday, during his emotional news conference. “I love her very much, and she loves me.”
But Ms. Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has remained silent about the topic as she keeps up a hectic schedule at the State Department.
Ms. Abedin returned to work this week and departed on Wednesday for a trip to Northern Africa with Ms. Clinton.
A State Department spokesman declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.
Credit: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
Legalize it
War on drugs a failure – just like all laws against consensual acts
BY MICHAEL MAIELLO
The Drug Enforcement Administration asked for $2.4 billion to run its fiscal 2011 operations. Maybe it’s time to “just say no” to that and add the money to the list of cuts that Republicans are demanding in exchange for raising the country’s debt ceiling. As revealed last week by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes such luminaries as former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, the war on drugs should absolutely end right now.
This isn’t a bunch of college kids sitting in a muddy field on the campus of Reed College talking about bringing down the man. This is a study by people universally regarded as serious. If we’ve learned anything since the financial crisis, it’s that if Paul Volcker’s name is attached to something it is immediately credible. The former Fed chairman, most widely known for breaking inflation by taking the proverbial punch bowl away from America’s economic revelers, now says it’s okay to smoke a joint.
Actually what he (and former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo and former president of Colombia Cèsar Gaviria) and the rest of the commissioners are saying is that turning the world into a battlefield hasn’t actually worked to stop people from taking forbidden mind-altering substances. Since 1998, use of cannabis is up 8.5 percent, use of cocaine is up 27 percent and use of opiates is up 34.5 percent.
The commission detailed the myriad ways in which global drug prohibition has violated human rights (drug trafficking is a capital offense in some places), costs taxpayers tons of money (in enforcement, court and prison bills), and has had a negative impact on public health (HIV and hepatitis run rampant among intravenous drug users who can’t legally buy clean gear).
But there’s something deeper at work here that touches on the best insight conservative thinkers have brought to the theory of government: We should only have laws that are truly necessary for society’s collective well-being, and we should resist the temptation to stretch our imaginings of how one individual’s choices affect everybody else. Sure, drug addictions can wreck lives and families. But so can televised golf and dead-end jobs, and we don’t ban those.
It in no way matters to me if my colleague at work unwinds this evening by drinking a beer, smoking pot, going for a jog or watching food-oriented television shows. If my colleague wants to shoot a gun out the window to unwind, then we need some laws. Want a drink? Fine. Have a drink. Want to drink and drive? No. This is easy stuff, and yet we spend billions of dollars and ruin the lives of our fellow citizens doing just the opposite of the easy, right thing to do.
Some people like to go online and play poker for money. The Department of Justice says this is a crime. You can day-trade stocks if you want, which is possibly a greater financial risk, but you can’t spend your money playing cards. You can also, by the way, spend your money on idiotic games about fake fish tanks and farms by the game-maker Zynga, but Texas hold ’em somehow offends our national sensibilities. The government recently shut down several poker sites and is prosecuting the proprietors for money laundering. Zynga, meanwhile, is planning a public offering of its stock.
Gambling, we’re told, has to be tightly controlled because its players are exposed to financial risk and because it’s potentially addictive. Zynga sells people little drawings of sheep for money and depends on those people getting addicted to repetitive games that appeal to their basest instincts for progress and reward. The plain fact is that you or I or the government has no vested interest in whether or not somebody wants to play poker or Farmville. When we inject ourselves into that choice and say one is okay and the other isn’t, all sorts of absurd arguments and contradictions emerge.
Oh, and let’s not leave hookers out of this. I proudly voted for Eliot Spitzer to be New York’s governor. And my choice for governor should not have been negated because the guy used a high-end escort service to buy top-shelf sex from a prostitute who was a completely willing and unapologetic participant in the transaction.
Human trafficking and forced sex work and the like should absolutely be illegal but what Spitzer did with Ashley Dupré just doesn’t matter to me.
If we had fewer laws, fewer jails, fewer prosecutors and prisoners, and smaller law-enforcement agencies that concentrated solely on crimes of violence, theft and confidence, we would save billions of dollars at all levels of government, we’d be a freer society, and we’d set the best example for the rest of the world. The purpose of lawmaking should be to enhance individual freedom, not to encourage a busybody bureaucracy.
Yo-yo Dieting
Study: It's better to keep trying to lose weight than to remain obese.
Credit: The Daily (www.thedaily.com)
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