Vallejo opinion columnist Malcolm Donahoo bashes “potheads”
Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 2:48 pm | By: Radical Russ
I read thousands of words of reefer madness per day. It’s usually pretty predictable stuff – marijuana smoking will cause cancer, it’s 400 times stronger than the sixties, it’ll make you go psycho, yada yada yada. I usually chalk it up to most people’s ignorance about the plant and a government droning nearly a century of misinformation and lies about cannabis into the public’s mind.
But plenty of the people who dredge up that nonsense know better and are just using the junk science to whitewash an underlying bigotry against cannabis consumers, or at least, what they conceive cannabis consumers to be.
Every now and then, though, I get a gem of reefer madness that is just pure, unadulterated cannabiphobia. Enjoy this scribbling from the Vallejo Times-Herald entitled…
Potheads send logic up in smoke
By Malcolm Donahoo
Posted: 10/16/2009 02:00:22 AM PDT
(At least it’s nice to know I’m not the only one posting opinions about marijuana at two in the morning…)
I am not about to accuse anyone I know of being a pothead, but let’s say the species is not altogether unknown to me.
After all, potheads are not that difficult to recognize. Like the Oakland Raiders, they get blitzed almost every weekend.
They’re about the only people I know who can sit through an entire showing of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” or “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” They think of Cheech and Chong as classic actors, and their music libraries lean heavily toward The Grateful Dead and Bob Marley. Their land of enchantment isn’t New Mexico, it’s Jamaica.
Before we continue, let’s note that Harold & Kumar did $18 million in domestic box office and Dude, Where’s My Car did $46 million. Cheech & Chong movies, combined, have grossed $160 million. The Grateful Dead and Bob Marley make more money dead in the time it took him to write this column than he’ll see in his paycheck.
I’m sorry, I used the term “write this column” rather inappropriately, for the next seven paragraphs are just paraphrased AP accounts of Stupid Stoner Stories, including the one I told yesterday about the guy with the bag of pot on his head. I tell those stories as warnings and to call out the few bad apples; he tells them as if they are typical of all of us.
Then his “writing” continues as he steals jokes to fill in the rest of his 502-word column. Seriously, this “writer” devotes 41% of his column (205 words) to the paraphrased AP stories and 37% of his column (188 words) to stale jokes like this:
The difference between a drunk and a stoner behind the wheel, they say, is that the drunk will drive through the stop sign. The pothead waits for it to turn green.
I think I was more offended as a writer than as a stoner. I left the following comment, and encourage you to leave your comments as well:
An ignorant reefer mad Vallejo opinion columnist walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Hey, you sure phoned in your column this week. Not enough original thoughts on the serious subject of cannabis prohibition, huh? Looks like you just paraphrased a couple of AP stories and then recycled some old hack Borscht-Belt one-liners and substituted ‘pothead’ for ‘blonde’ or ‘polack’! How can I get that kind of cushy job?”
The ignorant reefer mad Vallejo opinion columnist replies, “Screw you and give me a double shot of a legal liquid drug that kills tens of thousands annually, kills and maims even more from drunk driving, drunk domestic violence, and drunk assaults, and costs our society hundreds of millions in lost productivity and health costs, you punk critic!”
(OK, it’s a lousy joke and the dialogue is stilted. But at least it’s 100% original. Even written by a pothead…–”R”R)
Flash … Latest research indicates marijuana use may cause you to lose your sense of humor.
Lighten up.
We have a great sense of humor, Malcolm. What we don’t appreciate are columnists slurring us in a manner that would be unacceptable for any other minority group. You wouldn’t print a column full of “polack” jokes, would you, if you were writing about Polish-Americans?
This writer and others would never dream of putting racist, sexist or anti-glbt comments into print. No editor would allow it even if the writer submitted such nonsense. But now that the media is so very politically correct they need someone to pick on. Thus we have the newest wave of cannabis based discrimination.
No other lifestyle choice in America than cannabis consumption allows the media, the government and societal peers to negatively speak against their fellow citizens with no fear of causing offense or legal retribution for slander. Even those who are with us fall into a false comfort zone of downing on potheads, like Bill Maher.
I don’t think this will last too long however, especially if the reform community calls them out. Media is now experiencing its most competitive market in history. 1/3 of the nation has direct experience with marijuana. Keep talking down to the 100 million who have tried pot and the 25 million (this number always seems low…) who regularly partake and they will stop consuming your media.
Any potheads buy any Kelloggs cereal lately?
Editors and Publishers take note: Newspapers fold a whole lot faster than cereal companies.