‘Bordertown: Laredo,’ a 10-episode series, debuting at 10 p.m. EST Oct. 13 on A&E, does exactly that. But the show isn’t as explosive, or topical, as one might expect. It really is another variation on ‘Cops,’ one with a politically correct cast and a dearth of badly needed context.

The reality series follows five Mexican-Americans working for the Laredo P.D. Narcotics Unit. They know they’re outgunned and outmanned, and even on days when they capture a tractor trailer full of dope there’s always another convoy a few miles behind it.

The show’s premiere night features back-to-back episodes, but neither delivers the kind of gut-wrenching content guaranteed to instill viewer loyalty.

We’re told that Laredo, the largest inland port on the U.S.-Mexican border, is a ground zero for the country’s War on Drugs. The camera lingers on a massive warehouse filled with confiscated drugs and weaponry. But the show’s first bust involves a stoner growing pot in plain sight. It’s pretty tame stuff, but the arrest gives officers enough information to track down a larger target.

That’s often how the bigger busts happen – a minor tip or arrest leads to a major score.

‘Bordertown: Laredo’ gives some insight into how the drug cartels operate. And those tense home invasions are levied by scenes in which the officers manually haul bag after bag of marijuana off a massive trailer. But given the explosive subject matter, and the current headlines over the blossoming “Fast and Furious” scandal, the latest reality series plays it shockingly safe.

What could have elevated ‘Bordertown: Lardedo’ above its cop show trappings is context. Just what kind of impact are these drug runners having on the fine folk of Laredo, Texas? Rather than showing us regular Joes and Janes grappling with the drug running fallout, we spend nearly all our time with the well-intentioned – but rather drab – officers.

They all appear brave and dedicated to their mission – putting a dent in the wave of narcotics flooding into the U.S. It’s refreshing to see the officers refusing to play to the cameras, but stoicism doesn’t make for arresting television. We do see a few court-certified break-ins, but nothing happens beyond a few scared souls giving up the goods or spinning some ludicrous explanation for their handiwork.

‘Bordertown:Laredo’ hits small screens at a time when the nation’s attention is turning toward the border. But the series doesn’t take advantage of the incendiary material or an audience eager for answers.

Jeremy Jackson auditioned for the lead role in the “Conan the Barbarian” remake, which opened Friday. But the part went instead to hulking “Game of Thrones” actor Jason Momoa.

“They told me I was neither big enough nor buff enough,” Mr. Jackson said.

He wasn’t about to let that happen again.

Jeremy Jackson

“I was thinking of becoming an action star,” said the 30-year-old actor best known for playing David Hasselhoff’s teenage son on the television show “Baywatch.” “I saw maximizing my hormonal levels as something that would facilitate my business.”

Mr. Jackson’s capital investment in his physical equipment came to include the abuse of testosterone, human growth hormone, insulin (he is not diabetic) — even a drug normally reserved for pre-slaughter cattle. His bulk-building melange of illegal steroids was enough to add 40 pounds to his 5-foot-10-inch, 170-pound frame — and ultimately landed him on the series “Celebrity Rehab.”

Chris Evans as Captain America gained a reported 20 pounds of muscle for his superhero role. (Paramount Pictures via Associated Press)Performance-enhancing drugs: They’re not just for jocks anymore.

When it comes to hormonal maximization in Hollywood, Mr. Jackson has plenty of company.

Suzanne Somers and Nick Nolte publicly extol the virtues of growth hormone. Charlie Sheen claims he took steroids while filming “Major League.” Former “Saved by the Bell” star Dustin Diamond alleged that co-star Mark-Paul Gosselaar juiced. “Rocky” and “Rambo” star Sylvester Stallone, still pumped-up at 60-something, was arrested on charges of testosterone and growth hormone possession during a customs inspection in Australia. A 2008 steroid-trafficking investigation in Albany, N.Y., linked shipments of juice to musicians 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean, Timbaland and Mary J. Blige, as well as — no, really — actor-cum-director Tyler Perry.

Full piece can be read here.

AP:

A West Virginia judge has ordered Andy Dick to stand trial on [first degree sexual assualt] charges stemming from a nightclub incident last year.

Judge Paul Farrell set trial for Jan. 17 and ordered Dick to submit to a urine test. Farrell told him if he returns to court under the influence of drugs he will be jailed.

Dick told the judge he’s sober.

The entertainer is accused of grabbing a bouncer’s crotch and groping and kissing a male patron at a Huntington bar. He was in town for a performance.

More here. And here.

A representative for Whitney Houston said Monday that the singer had voluntarily entered rehab and is undergoing treatment. Houston is in an out-patient program for drug and alcohol treatment.

More entertainment-related videos at BBTV.

The author himself was properly repulsed by the hippie movement (and indeed, by what he saw as the entire slovenly depths of American culture in general), and late in life began referring to their nightmare world of antiwar riots and hedonism as “this Fallen Kingdom of Arda, where the servants of Morgoth are worshipped.” But it was not only our side of the pond that gave him grief: he watched aghast as his work became so superficially popular and grossly misunderstood among the hip and the mod in Great Britain that the Beatles expressed a desire to star in a film version of The Lord of the Rings, complete with Stanley Kubrick directing!

It was Gandalf himself who warned Saruman that, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” But that little nugget of common sense, and virtually everything else that made the book special, was passed over by those who were trying to snort, smoke, and screw their way out from under the thumb of The Man and Western Civ. Tolkien considered the free-love drug mob and its associated subgroups “cults of faineance and filth” that mindlessly smashed everything Old and Noble and Sacred while simultaneously embracing everything New, Hip, and Easygoing, all in a foolish, futile attempt to deconstruct and experiment their way to an earthly Utopia. Unlike so many from that crazed era, the man who decades earlier had laboriously penned Frodo’s arduous journey to Mount Doom knew better than to grant hippie pipe-dreams intellectual or spiritual credence.

“The essence of a fallen world,” he once wrote, “is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called ‘self-realization’ (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering.” Catholics will well-recognize this belief, and (in my experience) are laudably well-versed in the truth of its sentiments. “What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in,” Tolkien groaned in 1969, while the childish, cataclysmic madness was at its height. “. . . Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. . . there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydra’s heads.”

The chattering class, as it always does, ham-handedly tried to make sense of it all. In Life magazine for February 24, 1967, Charles Elliot did a good job of embarrassing himself while capturing the elite condescension of that time:

Surely [The Lord of the Rings] is not the stuff of which campus heroes are made, even though it does provide Tolkien aficionados with something to discuss over their pipe-weed, mushrooms and brown ale. What apparently gets the kids square in their post-adolescent sensibilities is not the scholarship top-dressing but the undemanding, comfortable, child-sized story underneath. No symbolism, no sex, no double meanings, no questions about which are the Good Guys and which the Bad, just a good yarn on the level of Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout.

The Lord of the Rings is thoroughly innocent. It is even innocent of ideas, which doubtless helps recommend it to those aggressive searchers for sincerity, the opt-out crowd. . . I am prepared to be generous so long as the whole thing doesn’t get out of hand.

Prepared to be generous. Gee, thank God for that! That’s the kind of pompous cultural gate-keeping that far too many professional critics engage in, and it always makes them look like fools in the long run. I note that, forty-five years later, Tolkien is as popular (and as critically studied) as ever, even while Charles Elliott is forgotten and the magazine he wrote for is defunct.

As the 1960s degenerated into the 1970s Tolkien’s popularity shot into the stratosphere, his book standing as a veritable beacon of light in the darkness of the Age. The counterculture, via Tolkien interviews and exposés featured in magazines and on TV, began to learn a bit more about the man behind the tripped-out novels that had them all abuzz. This was no cool, far-out elderly statesman like Timothy Leary or Pete Seeger, but a devout Catholic war veteran whose every public utterance seemed to shore up the old ways rather than mock them or tear them down. It wasn’t long before the pot-smoking, ’shroom-popping crowd abandoned Tolkien almost as quickly as they had embraced him.

The backlash was presaged as early as 1969, when two miscreant humorists (who soon after would found National Lampoon magazine) released Bored of the Rings, a popular parody penned in what would become the classic Lampoon style. Fun as it was for a few idle laughs, it also foreshadowed Tolkien’s future among the “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” halfwits. They were “Bored of the Rings” because the tale was now mainstreamed, and thus stripped of its counterculture cachet. Previously used by hippies as a literary lava lamp to inspire wild mental imagery suitable for dropping acid, making jejune political points at insane rallies, or freaking out one’s elders, it now possessed all of the utility of a used condom. Within a few years most ripped the Middle-earth posters off their walls, tossed out their Leonard Nimoy “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” records, and moved on to the next fleeting hot thing.

*************************

At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namárië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

“Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,” he said, “and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!” And taking Frodo’s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.

*************************

“I seldom find any modern books that hold my attention,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote again and again over the course of his long life. “. . . I am looking for something I can’t find.” Given the state of literature both before and after The Lord of the Rings, it’s not hard to imagine why. Purpose and Truth is such a rare thing to feel in art of any kind — books, film, painting, dance, song. It’s certainly utterly absent from the tales of modern authors who spend thousands of pages knocking our emotional and spiritual joints out of kilter in an effort to be hard-hitting, funny and edgy.

In so many stories from the “bored with the Good” crowd, readers are continually invited, even cleverly lured, into trusting their higher aspirations and nobler instincts, only to have those precious, delicate things cast back into their faces with a cackle. At base, it’s an attempt to deliberately scramble and pervert your inner compass — your moral and spiritual pole star — beyond all recognition, rearranging the stained glass windows of your mind until all that’s left are meaningless, mad swaths of bright color. To some of us, this is no light matter to be laughed at or ignored.

The work of modern authors like Martin, Abercrombie, Stover, et al. would have surprised Tolkien not a bit — he clearly anticipated the various attempts of today’s fallen fantasists to (d)evolve past The Lord of the Rings by making their stories “self-aware,” “quasi-historical,” “morally complex,” and (most laughably of all) “real.” Such authors, he felt, cultivate and cherish “sneer and cynicism” because it allows them to preen with the false belief that they are “freer from hypocrisy” than past generations, “since it does not ‘do’ to profess holiness or utter high sentiments.” Scaling hills of garbage and then gazing down on humanity as if from artistic or moral high ground didn’t impress Tolkien. “Inverted hypocrisy,” he called it, and deemed it a belief as false as “the widely current inverted snobbery: men profess to be worse than they are.”

In a letter to his son Christopher dated May 6, 1944, Tolkien said that much of his early writing on Middle-earth was conducted “in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle-light in bell tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.” He clearly was no stranger to the dank gutters of Life, and despite what lazy critics say his fiction adequately reflects this. Hobbits, Men, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, and even Angelic Gods all are portrayed as fallible and fully capable of being tempted into great wickedness. “Some critics,” Tolkien sighed, “seem determined to represent me as a simple-minded adolescent, inspired with, say, a ‘With-the-flag-to-Pretoria’ spirit, and willfully distort what is said in my tale. I have not that spirit, and it does not appear in the story.”

Yet if, as Tolkien famously stated, “a safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds,” then equally untrue are fairylands devoid of sincere expressions and manifestations of “holiness” and “high sentiments.” Something that (even at this late date) is little known to average Tolkien fans is that soon after the publication of The Lord of the Rings he made overtures towards writing a sequel of sorts. The extant pages bear the title “The New Shadow,” and take place “about 100 years after the Downfall [of Mordor],” long after the death of King Aragorn.

Any hopes for a repeat of achieving a sanity and sanctity comparable to his earlier works were soon dashed by a sobering reality. “It proved both sinister and depressing,” he admitted, explaining that

Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: the quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a “thriller” about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would be just that. Not worth doing.

Upon reading this, I’m sure our fallen fantasists would offer up a whoop of approval, and lament that the old white-bread professor hadn’t gone through with this tentative exploration of his fictional universe’s treacherous underbelly, exposing all of the heroism and holiness of his earlier books as a hypocritical sham. They might even feel a certain justification about their own work, seeing in it a continuation of where Tolkien’s nascent ideas about “The New Shadow” left off, bravely (and perhaps with a smirk, nod and wink) descending into sewers where even the Master feared to tread.

As for myself, I believe that Tolkien stopped work on “The New Shadow” because he knew that a fairyland attuned solely to the “sinister and depressing” would ring false, and that the things he cherished in works of high romance would feel too distant, too pale, in this new Age of Men. He knew in his heart that a fairyland bereft of heroism, nobility, and grace was just as “untrue to all worlds” as the reverse. And yet — like many artists past their prime — he was now too old and weary to seek out the rays of eucatastrophic sunlight which, in tales of Truth and Purpose, always manage to shine through the mass of dark billowing clouds threatening to engulf the world in everlasting gloom.

No, it took another brilliant writer to look deep into that grim, savage epoch of decadence and encroaching evil, and set against it noble men who leapt into battle with “the chants of old heroes singing in their ears.” In so doing, he thunderously proved that — in a true artist’s hands — hard-boiled is very different from nihilistic and morally reprehensible. The writer’s name is Robert E. Howard, and by virtue of his haunting artistry, poetic splendor, and heroic sweep, he serves as Tolkien’s indispensable literary shield-brother in the fight against the vacuous capitulation to wickedness that infests so much of modern fantasy.

To be continued (in two weeks, after a much-needed vacation). . . . .

—–

From The Macho Response:

[Sheen's] nothing-can-take-me-down attitude, in the face of this wimpy, middle class, wet rag nanny state finger-wagging opinion is winning. This is a man, owning his actions and insisting everyone else come clean and take responsibility for theirs as well. (Our favorite line? Interviewer: “One of the women said she was afraid she might O.D.”. Sheen [incredulous]: “What’s that got to do with me?”) …

We’ve become a cautious, conformist, inoffensive, non-risk taking, arrogant, lying bunch of NewAge p[**]sies who think if any woman, like this interviewer, says she or others don’t approve, then some form of public contrition and apology is called for. Well, screw that. Neither she, or the public, are Charlie Sheen’s mother and even if his parents disapprove, he’s a grown-assed man who refuses to be a part of whatever milquetoast existence the rest of you think is good for gaining social approval from a worthless feminized culture-killing clique. He didn’t ask for it, doesn’t need it, and isn’t angling for it. He’s a man. He’s rich. And he’s free.

There’s something to be said for that point of view, but when you remember Charlie Sheen has children, that he’s a father, his outrageous, gonzo, go-to-hell behavior is impossible to enjoy, even vicariously. No one should witness their own parent celebrating this kind of behavior. Of course, people should live the lives they want, but once you have kids they come first and in this clip The Rebel Rock & Roll Charlie Sheen who sneers at conformity is kind of fun to watch … until the interviewer reminds us he has children.

Sheen can do what he wants to himself, but who knows what the lasting effect of this last week has been on those kids.

Via Lisa de Moraes at WaPo, who oddly buried Palin’s quotes at the bottom of a long article under a headline that made no mention that she had responded. Well, that’s why God invented Matt Drudge; to teach us that the MSM usually buries the real story at the bottom of their left-wing messaging. Here’s Governor Palin:

“So a left-wing Hollywood producer thinks there is no ‘distinction’ between harvesting healthy, wild organic protein to feed my family and engaging in dog fighting?” Palin wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “I didn’t know anyone ate dogs, tanned the hides, and made boots out of them.”

TLC also responded to Sorkin’s misogynist smears about Palin’s hair and makeup::

We contacted TLC (Tiny Little Cupcakes?) to ask if anyone at the network had something to say about Sorkin’s blog post.

“There was no hair and makeup” trailer when shooting the Sarah shoots a caribou episode, a rep for TLC (Too Little Class?) told the TV Column. In fact, the rep said, neither the network nor show producer Mark Burnett hired hair and makeup for Palin during the making of this series. There is one scene in which Palin is seen getting hair and makeup done for a photo shoot while on a book tour, but those services were provided by the book-tour organizer, said the rep, who declined to comment on any other aspect of Sorkin’s blog post.

As I said before, Sorkin’s nothing more than a cultural bigot. He mocks, ridicules, and demeans cultures he doesn’t understand. No different than a bigoted redneck at the Apollo in Harlem. He’s also obviously threatened by Palin’s rugged individualism, toughness, and utter indifference when it comes to wanting Sorkin’s approval or the approval of anyone like him. In other words, she makes him feel inadequate and so words on a HuffPo are his own personal Viagara.

“If your hate lasts more then four hours, please seek psychotherapy…” 

The most manly thing he’s ever done is right along the lines of trashing Sarah Palin at HuffPo. Ooh, so ballsy and avant-garde.

P.S. What’s with Wapo’s ”tiny little cupcakes,” “too little class” jokes regarding TLC?

Someone’s Too Lame to be Cute.

The first thing I noticed about Aaron Sorkin’s hilariously bitter and angry HuffPo article aimed at Sarah Palin (but you knew that when I said “bitter” and “angry” ) is that in his profile photo Sorkin’s not wearing those asshole glasses he’s so famous for. How could he see the birdie? Another first is that for once Sorkin didn’t pull his usual schtick of reaching back to his ancestors to prop up his own personal bona fides, as though Grandpa Joe’s military service somehow makes this reformed (so he says) drug-addict some sort of super-patriot. However, we must admit that the removal of the glasses combined with the end of those rhetorical feasts on the corpses of his betters were both excellent choices — and we here at Big Hollywood applaud him. And so on to the business at hand…

What is it about Sarah Palin that so gets under Sorkin’s skin? Or is the cultural bigot so desperate for this year’s Best Screenplay award that his first mercenary impulse is to further ingratiate himself with the Hollywood elite by cruelly and publicly lashing out at this mother of five — and in turn all hunters and most of the Middle Americans who know and love them. 

Here’s how Mr. West Wing begins, by quoting a Sarah Palin tweet:

“Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation.”

You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go fuck ourselves now.

A wiser man would’ve stopped there, but Sorkin is not a wise man nor is he a good man nor is he a thinking man. Instead, he goes on to admit he enjoys leather shoes and the taste of meat and the starflowers that pop off in his head as the cocaine hits the pleasure senses of his brain (that last part’s my own interpretation of the subtext), but…

What he hates is that Sarah Palin (and most every other hunter in the world) dares to enjoy the hunt.

I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though…

Money quote alert…!

 ….I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

Translation…

Hunters who enjoy hunting are immoral (Note to Aaron: that would be all of them).

Asshole-glasses-wearing screenwriters made giddy by the thought of human beings being shot-gunned in the face because he disapproves of what gives them pleasure are … moral.

Which begs the question: What’s worse for society? People throughout the world who enjoy the sport of hunting animals and have since the beginning of time. Or people who enjoy, say, years-long Hollywood binges on the same illegal drugs that fund the same murderers who spread their poison on to our children’s playgrounds and schools? Has Sorkin ever lashed out so viciously at illegal drug abusers? I’m gonna go out on a Google-less limb and say no.

Let me repeat the irony because it’s richer than the bullying bigot of a hypocrite serving it up: A degenerate drug addict is lecturing others on their habits and what they find pleasure from. Of course Sorkin thinks he’s cutting that criticism off at the pass with this pitiful disclaimer:

Let me be the first to say that I abused cocaine and was arrested for it in April 2001. I want to be the first to say it so that when Palin’s Army of Arrogant Assholes, bereft of any reasonable rebuttal, write it all over the internet tomorrow they will at best be the second.

The left’s favorite ploy: It’s okay for me to be a raging hypocrite because I admit to being one.

Furthermore, Sorkin acts as though no one watched last Sunday’s program and lies with the kind of shameless audacity only a reformed illegal drug addict could. Comparing what we all saw Sunday evening on TLC — comparing Sarah, her loving father and their friend Becker to Michael Vick is nothing short of a lie. Hunting an animal is not torture. Enjoying the hunt of an animal is not torture. Watching the sanctimonious “West Wing,” however…

Aaron Sorkin is nothing more than a bigot, no different than some smug loser who mocks what he sees while watching  another culture enjoy something foreign or different to them.

Sorkin may have fooled himself into thinking he’s earning Academy cred by lashing out at Sarah Palin, but in the furtherance of serving her country yet again, Palin takes the hate to expose the Hollywood bigots — and this time it’s one who’s own selfish, narcissistic pleasures have funded nothing less than evil.

If Sorkin opened his elitist mind he might learn something from Palin, and not just about fashion eyewear.

—–

The tsunami hit in the wake of my recent column on Sting, Soros and their pro-drug partnership, which both cast doubt on the sacred truths of the very vocal drug legalization fans and defied George Soros.  Accordingly, I had to be stopped.  What happened next tells us much about the tactics, techniques and procedures we will come up against fighting for our culture – and how we can fight back.

The counter-attack came first came in the form of over 400 angry comments from drug legalizers (oh, sorry – “decrimminalizers”) and bong-fueled Twitter tweets from hemp-focused lay-abouts.  Next came columns by Huffington Post nonentities and other dope-o-centric fellow travelers.  Topping it off came at least one semi-veiled threat. 

The main effort, and a clever one – is part of a continuing efforst to use the drug issue as a wedge within the conservative movement.  You can see that in the comments, many of the commenters excoriating me describe themselves as “true conservatives” or “libertarians.”  Far from being the kind of mellow, Lebowski-like stoners one might expect, most of them were quite angrily convinced that my skepticism about Sting’s support for turning our society into a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals was simply proof positive of my dedication to tyranny, fascism and general meanness. 

As the creepy Soros/Sting video implies, apparently the only possible reason anyone could ever think that selling angel dust over the counter at every corner liquor store is a bad idea is some sort of amorphous delight in human misery.

The Left sees that there is a serious debate within the Right on the best way to address the drug question.  It is the conservatives and libertarians in publications like National Review and Reason (as I mentioned in the article but the commenters overlooked) who make the most interesting and trenchant critiques of current drug policy – most liberal drug policy critiques just whine about racism or go on and on about how groovy hemp is because Patrick Henry grew it in his back yard. 

For that reason, fomenting discord within the Right about drug policy is a profitable enterprise to people who would much rather see us beating ourselves up over whether government has a right to keep smack addicts from shooting up on the subways instead of uniting on real issues like stopping the Administration from nationalizing pretty much everything while spending every dime we don’t have.

Tony Papa

Actually, I sympathize to some extent with the conservative critiques of drug policy but, because I dared to point out the dubious assumptions often underlying those arguments – like that criminals will just stop being criminals if drugs are legalized – I became the enemy.  Since it really wasn’t a piece on how I felt about drug legalization but about how celebrities lecture us peasants then retreat back into their castles while we deal with the consequences, I broke my standard rule of letting my columns speak for themselves and added a long multi-part, comment of my own.  Pointing out the legalizers’ total failure to address legitimate concerns about drugs’ effects on society only got them madder.

Their second axis of attack was through critiques on other web sites – most of them focusing on how horribly out-of-step with progressive social values people like us are.  Many of these come from such junkie-friendly precincts of the internet as “drugwarrant.com” and “stopthedrugwar.org.”  However, one came from a blogger I have a great deal of respect for, libertarian Radley Balko, who does great work exposing government abuses.  Unfortunately, his reference to the column falls in the legalization echo chamber trap:

Yes, there are still people who think like this though their ranks are dwindling, even in conservative circles. 

I should point out that if anti-legalization is the hip new position among the cool kids, none of the politicians seem to think so since no major candidate will run on the syringes-in-every-supermarket agenda of the most ardent legalizers.

Naturally, the Huffington Post, as part of its we-know-where-our-bread-is-buttered program, weighed in with a piece blasting my critique of the Drug Policy Alliance written by – surprise – some guy from the Drug Policy Alliance.  I guess Sting’s daily tantric hoe-down was too important to interrupt for him to have one of his minions write a column for him.  In any case, the thrust of it seemed to be that I didn’t criticize Rush Limbaugh, which I guess is supposed to be is significant . . . somehow. 

And since none of that worked – I was unrepentantly responding both in the comments and on Twitter - then why not try some intimidation, since that seems to be the hot new tactic for frustrated leftists?

It came in the form of comments by Tony Papa, the ex-jailbird and designated drug war victim idolized by – and apparently employed by – the Drug Policy Alliance.  He is unhappy with me, possibly because I expressed little sympathy for the fact that he went to jail because he, well, committed a crime.  Writing as “tonypapa123,” he commented:

Kurt Schlichter you are a two bit shister (sic) laywer (sic) wannabe writer who confuses your mouth for your A-hole – attacking myself and others with rude remarks that have no substance other than making you look like the f—— A-hole that you are. I would like to meet you one day so I can really tell you how I feel about the piece you wrote in person scumbag – put that in ur (sic) comedy routine

Putting aside the creative spelling and disturbing anal fixation (he also called me an “asshole” twice in a two-line comment he added to the HuffPo piece), this seemed to me pretty clearly to be a veiled threat (You can make up your own mind).  Unable to let what I saw as a clumsy attempt at intimidation stand, I again broke my “no comment” rule to reply:

I may be a “two bit shyster lawyer wannabe writer” but I’m not a convicted felon.  So, convict, save your threats – you don’t wanna get in trouble with your parole officer.

At that point, it probably occurred to Mr. Papa that perhaps being a convicted felon transmitting via interstate electronic means what could be perceived as a threat in writing and in public was the same kind of criminal mastermind move that got him locked up for a dozen years over a $500 blow deal.  So the tap-dancing began:

shyster – its (sic) not a threat – I am just pointing out your good qualities as a human being – Read my book – “15 to Life” which is becoming a feature film – maybe I will give you the part as the shyster piece of crap lawyer that defended me and sold me out

His editor must have had his work cut out for him.  In any case, I enjoyed the segue from how he wanted to tell me “how I feel about the piece you wrote in person scumbag” to whining that his stint in stir for the crime he committed was all his lawyer’s fault.  I replied:

I’m glad you clarified it wasn’t a threat.  The Feds don’t like threats made across state lines.  I think you ought to read my 4-part comments and thoughts on the issue of legalization in the comments – my column focused on something else.   And I don’t do criminal law – I don’t like criminals.  But if I did, and if I defended you, and you did nothing wrong, I bet I would have won.  But if you participated in a conspiracy to distribute narcotics, well, you knew the price of admission to that show going in.  And if you did what the jury (or judge) thought you did, or what you pleaded guilty to, no one was going to be able to help you.

So, what does this episode teach us about our struggle?  The first thing is that the other side is clever enough to use wedge issues to try and divide natural allies.  Sure, it might seem like traditional conservatives have little in common with bong-hitting hemp fanciers and hardcore libertarians who think that coke ought to be on the Safeway shelf next to Coke because Ayn Rand would have thought so.  While we may have some dramatic disagreements on this point – though, if they would be a little less dogmatic and more rational in their approach to dealing with the very real costs of drug abuse they might get a more favorable hearing – they still have much more in common with us than with the nanny-state neo-socialists of the authoritarian Left. 

If the legalizers think the people trying to tell us how much salt and trans-fat we can scarf up will just sit back and let them Cheech and Chong themselves in peace, they are already high.

The second point is that there is a media network on the Left that attempts to leverage a sense of inevitability about their agenda into momentum for it. They do it about everything – here, it’s about legalizing drugs.  That false sense of inevitability about irresponsible mutations to our society needs to be punctured at every turn – a specialty of Big Hollywood and its brethren Big Journalism and Big Government.

The lesson:  Never – ever – allow them to seize the initiative.  Never – ever – allow yourself to believe you are beaten, no matter how uncool, unhip and unfashionable they try to make your traditional beliefs appear.  Finally, when they get desperate and make threats – and they will – you call them on it.  You can comment.  You can Twitter.  You can blog.  Regardless, engage in the battle, because, in the end, we only lose when we give up the fight.

Apparently not content to subsidize the whining of the nonentities at Media Matters, Soros is taking a break from his adventures in currency manipulation and general scuzziness to enlist entertainment celebrities like Sting in his newest quest.  The Drug Policy Alliance is the result, a group whose members, as its founder puts it, “come from across the drug use spectrum.”  Yes, the junkies, stoners, hopheads, dope fiends, pill-poppers, and Lindsay Lohan are unanimous:  Drug laws are bad, and it’s probably BusHitler’s fault.

The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.  This assumption of competence is a common delusion among celebrities, and here it has more potential for damage than most mindless celebribabble.

Now, Sting is not alone – no one in that clip says anything worthwhile.  One woman, who is bald for no apparent reason, states that “The War on Drugs is a war on people of color,” as if Americans decided they would outlaw crack because they fear that black people might enjoy themselves.  Montel Williams shows up to explain that drug laws prevent him from making choices about his own body, but the awful tie and ridiculous earring he chose to wear make a powerful argument against allowing him to make any kind of choices at all.

Tony Papa also appears.  He went to jail for 12 years for being part of a drug deal – oh, I mean committing “a nonviolent drug offense” – and became an artist on the taxpayer’s dime.  While most of us will likely ask “Why only 12?,” naturally Papa is worshipped by trendy leftist celebrities.  Some Hollywood half-wit even scooped up the rights to his inspiring story.  So, to repeat, Tony Papa joined a drug conspiracy, got arrested, went to jail, leveraged that into becoming a hip artist and the subject of a movie, and yet he is somehow the real victim.

Of course, there’s also the perennial “America imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world!” meme.  In fact, the only drug incarceration problem in America is that too few drug dealers are incarcerated.  Sting suffers from the same delusion that afflicts many of his celebrity pals.  He seems to think that if the kind of people who deal drugs didn’t have drugs to deal, they would naturally flock to the world of hard work and responsibility.  Oh, if only drugs weren’t illegal, the drug dealing scumbags who infest our ghettos, barrios and college sociology departments would morph into clean-shaved, untatted workerbees eagerly embracing the world of 9-5 employment.  Yeah, it was outlawing meth and crack that turned the scumbags into scumbags. 

At one point, the clip promises “new solutions” to the drug problem.  Then Sting pops back up, smug and self-satisfied, to announce that drug laws violate his individual sovereignty.  Uh, typically, when you say you are going to provide new solutions you might consider, you know, providing some new solutions instead of some new cliché.

I certainly enjoy Sting and his pals’ new-found appreciation of my personal autonomy and “sovereignty over my body.”  I assume they’ll be standing by me when I reject the government’s interference in my health care decisions.  Unlikely.  If you think consistency is one of their strong points, perhaps you’ve been smoking the same stuff as them.

Now, Sting was always annoying but here he is reaching new heights of crappiness and pomposity in direct proportion to his declining relevance.  It’s always a pleasure to hear some Brit mega-millionaire who glides around his English manor practicing tantric sex sound off on American domestic policy. 

Please Sting, save us!  Unleash the full intellectual firepower you’ve amassed writing forgettable smooth jazz/rock fusion tunes for people who buy their music at Starbucks.  Just because you’ve been waited on hand and foot for three decades by a coterie of professional sycophants telling you you’re wiser than Buddha and smarter than Einstein doesn’t mean it’s true. 

There may be a case for looking at our drug laws, but these nimrods don’t make it.  The most compelling points are made by the conservatives at National Review and the libertarians at Reason.  Sure, pot smokers steal your snacks, listen to Phish and sound-off with long, disjointed monologues about the miracle of hemp, but I have a hard time getting too bent out of shape by them.  Many celebrities are among them, but Sting and Soros aren’t just talking about causal stoners.  They think we ought to go open season on meth, crack and whatever else these degenerate half-wits today are ingesting.  No thanks – I’d prefer not to live with the mess you’re rich enough to ignore.

The fact is that His Stingness knows nothing – or cares nothing – about the unspeakable devastation drugs cause, particularly within the inner cities.  Instead of standing behind the one truly effective response to urban drug terror – throwing the bastards in a cell and dropping the key down the Guatemalan sinkhole – His Majesty Sting decrees that drug dealing scumbags should run free, then retreats back behind his gates and armed guards to further hone his delayed orgasm skills.

Well, Sting, let’s discuss your really keen points about why poison ought to be legal.  But let’s expand the scope of our discussion to include some other celebrities who might be able to provide us with some valuable insights.  Let’s invite Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Brad Renfro, DJ AM, and Brittany Murphy to weigh in with their points of view.  Oh wait, they’re all dead.  So are just a few others.

Like a Sean Penn who can’t help but fly into some hellhole, figuratively fellate the local anti-American strongman then jet back to Santa Monica in time for dinner at Pizzeria Mozza, Sting wanders out of his fairy-tale life for a few minutes to tell the benighted peons in the real world how they need to live their lives before retiring back inside his palace behind three layers of security.  The violence, the abuse, the wasted potential brought on by drugs mean nothing to him; what is important is his own act of scolding his lessers for failing to conform to his personal vision.

That’s Sting’s high – lording over others as if he was something more than a glorified cruise ship bassist who got lucky and didn’t have to spend his career cranking out covers of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” for Corona-swilling passengers during runs between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta on the S.S. Living Hell.  And like so many in the entertainment world, he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of possession of stupid ideas – with intent to distribute.