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Listening to: Kanye West, Late Registration

I just watched Anderson Cooper's idiotic CNN freak show. During the post-Katrina outrage (I still don't know why our spineless press has not pushed BushCo on that failure), AC360 was a fairly decent show but goddamn, in the past few months it's become yet another televised version of The National Inquirer, missing white women and kittens with two heads, look for George Bush lying in the last hour.

As I've moved away from political writing, I rarely - OK, infrequently - deal with how fucked up this country is becoming and how chickenshit our media is in reporting that downfall. That's not the emphasis of this post but what I do say should be instructive on how half-assed and twerped-out the media has become, especially Anderson Fucking Cooper. Lame Ass.

I always wondered if the antagonist of my last post included Salvia in her little bag of tricks - it has, afterall, been described as a conduit to "there" - and although I have never tried salvia myself, as a drug & alcohol counselor, I'm aware of the effects of the drug (which, other than insight, appear to be minimal) and in fact, have heard that it had been used in several European countries therapeutically against alcoholism (much in the way LSD was used in the early 60s - with success).

Unfortunately, it appears that Anderson Cooper has been intoxicated by the Fear Drug that Michael Moore described so well in Bowling For Columbine as far as, he'll jump on whatever it takes to instill fear in Americans. Tonight, it was "a psychedelic drug as avialable as a pack of gum" (as if twenty dollars equated to twenty cents). But let's go to the tape:

Grieving mother haunted by the tragic death of her son. And it's very possible others are at risk as well. That's because some people are blaming the young man's death on a legal drug that kids can buy as easily as a pack of gum.

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Baaaaaaaad drug, time for the government to act; drugs killing kids. Was the drug resposible for his death? Did he OD? Ummmm:

At first, the Chidesters had no idea why Brett, the straight "A" student killed himself with carbon monoxide. But they remembered, he had experimented with a drug they had never heard of before, an herb called salvia divinorum, the world's most potent natural hallucinogen. A drug that is not against the law in most of the U.S.

Sounds like Judas Priest killed this kid, not some substance from Mexico, all things considered. Nonetheless:

TUCHMAN: Early this month, Brett's Law came to the Delaware senate floor. What was the vote in the state senate to make it illegal?
PETERSON: It was 21-0.

Right on. If there's anything this country needs, it's more laws against what we do with our minds. And what we do with our people of color: Because:

While blacks make up 13 percent of drug users, they account for 35
percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those
convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.
And the average prison term for black drug offenders is 69% longer
[pdf] than for whites.

Don't get me wrong, I'd hate like hell if my teenager took her/his life in my garage for whatever reason. But I have to ask, what about my teenager signing up for military duty to exact vengeance, only to find out my teenager was lied to is, somehow, more dangerous than the dubious effects of a drug from which we have no reported deaths as opposed to over 2400 deaths (and still counting).

Count on the media to jump on Salvia and forget exactly why we went to war*.

* Do YOU remember?!?