HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK

Harvey Weinstein Goes Ballistic On A Bush Aide; Freepers Unload On Rush
Limbaugh; Orrin Hatch Talks About Drugs.

Anger management

There were threads aplenty at Lucianne.com this morning in response to an
item in the New York Post titled "Harvey Weinstein Flips Out," about the
Miramax chief's dressing down of Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon.

"An insider reports that Weinstein launched into a 'pro-Clinton tirade' and
then started addressing his remarks directly to Bush media adviser Mark
McKinnon, who was in the audience. 'You only won the election by copying
Clintonian tactics,' Weinstein barked. 'And, by the way, you didn't win,
and I don't know how you live with yourself.'"

"Watch for a spate of paranoid-thrillers, starring Kevin Costner, about how
evil Republicans and their co-conspirators on the U.S. Supreme Court stole
the election from the hapless but noble Al Gore," writes one poster. "Watch
every one of these movies bomb."

Online "Traffic"

The Washington Post reports that the Oscar-nominated movie "Traffic" is
changing the way Americans think about the war on drugs. In a Senate
hearing Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators, including Orrin Hatch,
R-Utah, explored alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders.

"In a case of policy imitating art, or at least echoing it, a Senate
hearing room yesterday resounded with pleas for a 'balanced' and 'holistic'
approach to fighting drugs in which treatment and education programs are
elevated to the same importance as law enforcement agencies charged with
targeting drug producers and importers," the Post reports.

On the Web, the drug war is one of those odd issues where traditional party
labels do not hold, where libertarianism seems to transcend standard
partisan definitions. "Politicians use it to get re-elected. It is going to
take a two-term President to try to stop it. It's going to take Republicans
to stop it," writes one poster at Lucianne.com. "It's like [Nixon] going to
China. Republican politicians are so invested in it that they think they
really are 'fighting for the children.' (Or they think that they have
convinced their voters that that's what they are doing.) ... This
escalation that has been going on for 20 years is not the answer."

In fact, the entire Lucianne.com thread is made up of conservatives in
favor of ending the drug war. Over at CNN.com, a long-standing discussion
on the drug war seems to find a similar consensus among conservatives,
liberals and everyone in between. This post is indicative of the thread:

The current War On People ... err ... Drugs ... has been a complete waste
of time that's cost over $600 Billion. Drug use is at an all time high, and
it's time that the failing policy is changed. The only thing it has
accomplished, is creating a welfare system for police.

I believe all drugs should be legalized and sold only to adults. Kids have
easier access to drugs than they do alcohol, as you can get drugs in almost
every school in the nation. (You can't buy alcohol at school.) Legalizing
drugs would take them out of the drug dealers hands and put them into a
controlled distribution system. This kind of system would do something that
drug dealers don't do: ID their customers. Taking drugs away from drug
dealers would also bring the black market to its knees. No profit, no
market. Drug related crimes would also drop significantly.

But in other drug-related threads on Table Talk, political chatter is
strictly verboten. As one poster put it, "Man, don't drag those harsh
politics into this groovy mellow discussion."