Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

Now although lurid headlines like that the First Lady was a 'drug dealer' are provocative it's good to keep a sound head on these things.

First off, as I understand it (because the book hasn't come out yet and the reports of this come mostly from people who've read review copies) Kitty Kelly is saying that Laura Bush occasionally sold ten dollars worth of weed.

This is an amount of the stuff which marijuana decriminalization groups routinely say is not real drug dealing and which should have pretty small penalties attached to it.

So....why trash someone for something that people say should be legal anyways?

It's no doubt pretty revealing that an ideological Republican did this and is now in a position where they'd denounce people who did it and would send them to prison but beyond that there's the issue of, well, if you're campaigning or supporting this same behavior being legal then you really don't have a case in making Laura Bush into an immoral person for doing it, now do you?

The allegations of cocaine use by the President are more troubling to me.

And, of course, women always get the worst rap for doing things which if done by men would be considered much differently.

So we may be entering into double standard land on gender as well in this.

Not to defend them, but it reminds me of a rebroadcast of this comedy group from the sixties skit...whose name I can't remember at the moment, wherein when the girl wants to go out with a guy the father gives her the third degree but when the son in the family wants to go out with (a girl), the father's like "All right son!" with the implication that sex would be perfectly ok and admired.

I think a bigger issue is the recognition of the sixties, the seventies, and the fact that a lot of people used drugs, drugs were sold, people have that in their past, and that quite frankly it's not a big deal. It's only a big deal when public figures, who come from the same pool as the rest of us, are found to do it.

But cocaine?

Seriously.

That's way worse than being part of the generation that smoked a lot of weed.

I hope that they go to the mat on that one.

Even Robert Anton Wilson, who wrote a book called "Sex & Drugs", has since revised his position on the drug to say "If you want to know the effects of cocaine, take all your furniture and possessions and burn 'em 'cause that's about all it'll do for you". I'm paraphrasing a little bit from memory.