President Barack Obama’s recent prompting of Congress to roll back restrictions and spur pot reform set off a local and national media frenzy over legalization. Always looking to cash in, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr dove to the bottom of the barrel with a twisted and intellectually bankrupt hit piece that only further marginalizes his rag.
On weed, Carr is the embodiment of his favorite insult, “moonbat.” Even his fading audience must realize it. Here’s the guy who protests loudly on his show about liberal towns that ban bottled water and trans fats, but then calls for a ban on weed … because, he claims, it makes you stupid and lazy. That’s not true, but if it were, perhaps a ban on the Herald is also in order.
In his recent trash pile, “Now, we’re all dopes,” Carr sums up his opposition to legalization with caveman absurdity. “If you decide to quit working and devote your entire stoned life to rolling the perfect joint and deconstructing the collected oeuvre of Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies,” writes Carr, “the taxpayers are now on the hook for supporting you.”
It’s unclear what subsidies he’s yapping about, though Carr’s hatred of classic rock and EBT users has apparently run him emotionally amok. Considering that he complains incessantly on his WRKO show about liberals who get in between him and his porterhouse diet by telling people what to eat, it’s obvious there is some contradiction at play when it comes to weed.
Myopic fool he is, Carr doesn’t consider for a second who actually gets paid under the status quo. Under current policies, the organized forces that oppose marijuana legalization milk more government teats than patients any day. Neither does Carr give a damn about state district attorneys, who’ve used campaign contributions to lobby on behalf of a system that allows them to clock cheap wins for quick and easy marijuana caseloads.
Prosecutors and the law in general have always had the largest economic stake in marijuana–even though they’re against it! District attorneys like Jon Blodgett in Essex County and Michael O’Keefe in the Cape and Islands have consistently spit reefer madness because pot equals fast money. Even easier than prosecuting EBT fraud, Howie.
This isn’t a traditional spat between liberals and conservatives. In their push against weed, the fraudulently outraged ranks of Carr have been joined by the likes of Patrick Kennedy, the lamest member of his clan and an outspoken opponent of decriminalized, medical, and legalized pot all the same. Does Carr care that Kennedy and others are just sucking up for funding? How does he feel about taxpayer-funded drug testing programs?
Or take loud mouth Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, who was recently quoted in the Herald lauding insane DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart. Her lowest point in 33 years of service was the day Leonhart learned they’d flown a hemp flag over the Capitol on July 4, said Hodgson, who once famously declined to know if heroin was more addictive than weed. Why would somebody like him cheer on a DEA flunkie? For money, training, and jobs, of course. It’s all about the funding.
If there’s any hope sprung in the wake of Carr’s latest bout of reefer ignorance, it came in the form of a letter to Herald editors by one George Mclean of Medford titled “Hemp’s Long History.” As it turns out, a hemp flag flew over the nation’s Capitol building last July 4. Poor Leonhart. Even better–the original American flags were most likely made of hemp. As reported by the Associated Press, the book Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years even argues that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew the stuff. To boot, in 1619, the English ordered colonists to grow hemp, and the legend goes on. “So, please,” wrote Mclean, “let’s continue to learn more about our own history.”
Let’s have a laugh for Howie, since it’s going to be tough for the old prude when Massachusetts legalizes weed in 2016, and when living wage jobs are created as a result. In the long term, the movement currently afoot will give way to less so-called drug crime, and less perps to ravage, too, meaning Howie will have less to whine about. Maybe he’s not so stupid after all.