bitch, thou art dog

the pistons fired coach flip saunders last week, proving yet again that racism against filipino-americans in the nba is still going strong. the pistons considered replacing him with flip wilson, but then learned that the great comedian is no longer with us. sadly, he is with them now. for you see, we are the beetles, and they are frank sinatra. no wonder they have better pitch. in any case, the pistons have now offered the job to captain flip spaulding, who has had a ball in the military but is ready to pursue a career that does not entail slaughtering innocents.

i knew it would happen before the school year was over. toward the end of the day, an assembly was held where a couple of guest lecturers spoke on the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse. i can not begin to tell you how tired i am of these lectures. but i'll try.

first of all, it's all good and evil bullshit. sober...good. drugs...bad. the sober, clean life is presented as perfect, a leave it to beaver nirvana. the ex addicts always give trite reasons for why they started using, such as "i wanted to be cool." they always put the blame squarely on themselves, and even go so far as to mock their earlier viewpoints, saying things like "i blamed everybody but myself." they try to scare the audience by telling us how they lost out on the chance to go to college, how they missed their high school graduations, and had their licenses revoked. from this we are to gather that college, high school graduations, and driving are great goods, when at best, they are complicated, mixed bags. never talked about is why most people turn to drugs, reasons such as stress, which often results from the imperfect worlds of school and home, the same institutions usually glorified in these lectures. for you see, the speaker is the "sinner" who has come home. the speaker is confessing, and like a born again, can never acknowledge nuance and ambiguity. the whole thing is intellectually dishonest, a scare tactic, a generic packaging of simplification. the speaker condemns himself for using drugs, and condemns the drugs themselves as completely evil. never discussed is a society which creates drug use, and an economy which thrives on alcohol and drug use. furthermore, the upside to drug use is never acknowledged. why is it that almost every great creative artist and thinker has either been a drinker or a drug user? you would never know from these sham speakers. think of the greatest musicians of the 20th century in any genre. the chances are damn good that the artist was a drug user/drinker. there must be something in these substances that helps to release the creative process, which acts to relax people and to open up new vistas of imagination and thought. this very school teaches the music of, among others, charlie parker and billie holiday, both of whom were heroin addicts. i am not condoning heroin use, but thems the facts.

both speakers, by the way, were well off white youth. which begs the question...if they did so many drugs, why aren't they in jail? the jails are filled with poor black and latino drug users who will never get the chance to make money detailing the mistakes of their youth. both speakers today stressed that they were "good kids, who came from good families and good communities." what does this mean? well, of course we know what it means. it means they weren't poor and they weren't black. "you know, those are the kinds of people who are supposed to do drugs!" when, in fact, the typical drug user is like the speakers we had today. and no matter how hard he tries, he usually doesn't end up in jail, because the system knows that deep down, he is a "good kid." that, and his father is best friends with the chief of police. and don't forget that pale skin. it don't hurt none.

but, in the lectures, was there any mention made of racism in the criminal justice system? did the speakers touch on our inconsistent drug laws, which always work against non-white users? did they touch on the planting of narcotics by the police, or on the kickbacks taken by the police from drug dealers? no, for this would not do, and we know what does.

bullshit.

the one resource our great nation never seems to run out of.