WON'T YOU COME HOME, BILL BENNETT?

There once was a Drug Czar named Bennett

Whose every remark was a tenet

His pomposity

Plus his hypocrisy

Outweighed the United States Senate

So William Bennett is a big-time compulsive gambler who holes up at casinos
for three-day binges... perfect! And his social poker game includes Judges
Scalia, Bork, and the Chief Junkie, Rehnquist (who's addicted to Fentanyl
but defines himself as a normie because he checks into a rehab spa every
summer)! Some world-class bluffers... Newsweek and the Washington Monthly
broke the Bennett story, and in case you missed it, in the last decade the
former Drug Czar (under George H.W. Bush) and Secretary of Education (under
Reagan) has blown at least $8 million at the tables and slot machines.
Profits from "The Book of Virtues" and its many best-selling spin-offs,
plus $50,000 speaking fees, enabled him to pay.

The Republican Damage Control Team is trying to put a lid on the story,
employing some of the same arguments that Bennett's Drug War victims used
in vain to fend off persecution. "Why is it anybody's business?" asks the
effete Billy Kristol. "He did no one any harm," says Tony Blakely (himself
a compulsive overeater). "He has taken personal responsibility," declares
Anne Coulter (brushing back a strand of hair thinned by excessive
bleaching). "It's between him and his family," says another blonde who's
had some bad work done on her lips. Playing up the family angle, the RDCT
rolled out poor Mrs. Bennett to announce that she would not let Bill do any
more gambling -a nice "human" touch. (Bet he goes out on the Internet.)

Other arguments that have been splashed on the flames by these Friends of
Bill: gambling isn't a sin to Catholics, gambling is legal, he didn't go
into debt. It's all a misdirection play. What's reprehensible about Bill
Bennett is not his gambling but his monumental hypocrisy. When someone who
really understands the force of compulsion tells the world that compulsion
can easily overcome by will, it's a conscious lie. To imprison people
behind that lie is completely immoral.

Joshua Green of the Washington Monthly elicited from Bennett an evasive but
revealing quote: "When reminded of studies that link heavy gambling to
divorce, bankruptcy, domestic abuse, and other family problems he has
widely decried, Bennett compared the situation to alcohol. 'I view it as
drinking,' Bennett says. 'If you can't handle it, don't do it.'"

A source at a casino told Green that Bennett tries to slink around unseen.
"He'll usually call a host and let us know when he's coming. We can limo
him in. He prefers the high-limit room, where he's less likely to be seen
and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots. He usually plays very late at
night or early in the morning -usually between midnight and 6 a.m."

The rightwing pundits are saying that anybody who'd pursue the Bennett
story lacks compassion. C'Notes says call in The Enquirer and the Globe,
the investigators with serious budgets, and let's find out if the casinos
sent girls up to Big Bill's room (assuming girls are his preference) along
with all the food and liquor.

Bennett's vicious stint as Drug Czar is described in "Smoke & Mirrors," an
excellent history of the war on drugs from the '60s through the mid-'90s by
Dan Baum. Bennett brought with him a squad of rightwing-ideologues who'd
served under him at the Dept. of Education, including his chief of staff,
John Walters, our present drug czar. Bennett's crew, according to Baum,
"achieved the most radical recasting of the country's 'drug problem' yet.
Drugs would no longer be discussed as a health problem. If the drug issue
was going to serve the Bennettistas' decade-long crusade to police the
nation's character, drug abuse needed to be placed in the same category as
offensive art, multicultural teaching, and ethical relativism: a matter of
morality.

"'The simple fact is that drug use is wrong,' Bennett decreed. 'And the
moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument.'" Bennett,
supposedly an educator, purveyed intellectually dishonest circular
reasoning: drug use is immoral because drugs are illegal, and drugs are
illegal because they're immoral. He urged prosecutors' to go after casual
users whose lives were manageable because their example might send a
confusing signal to their friends, neighbors, and children. He promoted
public hospitals' drug-testing of pregnant women, which resulted in many a
poor mom losing their kids! (Only poor women have to rely on public hospitals.)

Bennett's biggest accomplishment as drug czar was to increase the budget
52%. After 18 months he declared victory and resigned unexpectedly. He
served briefly as chairman of the Republican National Committee, but quit
the $125,000/year gig when it turned out that he couldn't pocket the
speaking proceeds. "I didn't take a vow of poverty," Bennett said at the
time. It seemed venal and gross, but now we understand.

Rosie heard Bennett pontificating on TV recently to the effect that parents
should never tell their kids that they had smoked marijuana and found it to
be harmless. "He said that hypocrisy is better than honesty because it
shows you have moral standards. I don't know about his Catholic schools,
but in my Catholic schools we received a moral education, we read
philosophers and discussed them and were taught that you don't lie and that
hypocrisy is completely immoral. Jesus said, 'You hypocrite, take the beam
out of your own eye before you talk about the splinter in someone else's.'"

To the bum said the man of great virtue

I can't house or feed but I'll church you:

Gambling's like booze

If you've millions to lose

Then losing millions can't hurt you.

Houghton Mifflin's Wall St. Ethics

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food nation, has just brought out a book
called Reefer Madness -but that's not the item, as Herb Caen used to say.
C'Notes went to the website of the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, to request
a review copy, only to be greeted by this pathetic assertion of American
(Wall St.) ownership:

"Recent events have drawn many Americans' attention to the ownership status
of the consumer brands they know and trust. Some Americans have chosen to
boycott products from certain countries, or sold by certain foreign-owned
companies. Houghton Mifflin is wholly owned by American companies. Founded
170 years ago in Boston, Massachusetts, the Company was privately held
until 1967, when it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was bought
by Vivendi Universal in 2001; in 2002 it was acquired by three American
investment firms: Bain Capital, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and The Blackstone
Group. Houghton Mifflin employs more that 5,000 Americans. [sic the flawed
syntax, punctuation, and spelling]

"Publishers of boycott lists - MetroSpy.com, NewsMax and the Federalist
- - have issued correction statements regarding the ownership status of
several companies, including Houghton Mifflin. Media reports and grassroots
e-mail campaigns to boycott certain companies are based on misinformation.
Spreading or relying on misinformation does a disservice to great American
companies and their thousands of employees."

Houghton-Mifflin's disclaimer not only implies that boycotts based on
Accurate information are hunky-dory, it links conveniently to the lists of
French-owned companies to be boycotted (now that H-M has been cleared)!
Some surprises, by the way: Motown (Vivendi), Motel Six, (Hospitality),
Wild Turkey (Penrod Ricard), and Smart & Final (Groupe Casino).

How The Good Tailor Sewed up the NBA Championship for Oakland and Ended the
War on Drugs (a Faerie Tale in the form of a letter)

Dear George Zimmer,

I doubt you remember but we've met a few times, most recently in the SF
federal building lobby on the day Ed Rosenthal's pre-trial hearing began.
"I'm his tailor," you explained.

Knowing that you're a big Oakland booster, a big sports fan, and a major
critic of the marijuana prohibition, allow me to suggest a way to advance
all three interests at once. Buy the Warriors. As owner you can not only
bring an NBA title to Oakland, you can strike the biggest blow against the
Drug War since we, the voters, with your indispensable help, passed Prop
215 in '96. Here's the scenario...

One. You buy the Warriors. Let's not quibble over how many mill it's going
to cost. The Men's Wearhouse is a Fortune 500 company, is it not? And it's
an investment -the price of sports franchises keeps going up. And it's
publicity. And it's probably a tax write-off. But that's not the
point... The point is what you can accomplish culturally and politically
and health-wise for suffering mankind.

Two: Your players are advised that it's legal in California to smoke
marijuana if you have a doctor's recommendation, and the team doctor
recommends mj as an alternative to alcohol, SSRI anti-depressants, and
certain painkillers... As you know, seventy percent of the players in the
NBA use marijuana, and more would if they could do so legally and not
jeopardize their jobs. In every case the use is medical, because after the
pounding a professional basketball player's muscles and frame take every
day, mj is the perfect analgesic/relaxant.

Three: As they become free agents, players like Allen Iverson and Lamar
Odom and Eddie Griffin and Rasheed Wallace and Chris Webber -instead of
accepting humiliation and living in low-key fear-would WANT to run with
your team. Maybe it would even be a reason for Gilbert Arenas staying, who
knows? Instead of drafting for "character" your franchise would attract the
Spartacus types -the politically bravest gladiators.

Four: You urge the owners association to drop the demand for drug testing
when the collective-bargaining agreement is renewed with the players
association. Every sports section in the country will explain your
reasoning. The radio talk shows will reverberate with discussion of the
drug war. The A-level TV shows (Leno, etc.) will jostle each other trying
to book you. Knowing he's got your backing, the Warriors player rep can
take a stand against marijuana testing.

Five: The players association, after some serious soul searching, decides
to take a stand against testing for marijuana, not just on behalf of the
players themselves but also for millions of black and brown and white
Americans who use marijuana responsibly.... This is the iffiest part of the
scenario, and we can expect the players' agents to function as political
prison guards. (They'd sooner negotiate for more money than better working
conditions.) But even if you can't start a league-wide uprising, you can
transform the Warriors into a team of legal, up-front cannabis users. All
it would take is one owner allowing/encouraging his employees to emancipate
themselves from the gross indignity of urine-testing, and in so doing, to
help emancipate the rest of us.

Six: If you buy the team soon, you could apologize to Danny Fortson and
seek to retain his services. The season before last, the man recovered from
an injury to become the league's leading rebounder-per-minute, even better
than Ben Wallace. Warriors management rewarded Fortson with a seat on the
bench and gave his job to Troy Murphy. Even if Murphy'd had a great summer
and was somebody's hope for the future, you can't dis a man like that...
They dissed Fortson like they dissed Marc Jackson before him, and Tony
Delk, and so many others, going back to Tyrone Hill and beyond...

Seven: The obvious choice for coach is migraine sufferer Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, a medicinal-cannabis user who has spent years trying to
fight his way off the NBA blacklist and get a head coaching job. Another
would be the most durable player of his era, Robert Parrish, discarded
early in his career by the Warriors and humiliated towards the end by a
marijuana-possession charge.

Eight: The O-rena could use a name-change. This is to propose "Oakland's
Indoor Garden." Or, "The Man's Greenhouse." And Warrirors is hardly
appropriate for a team opposed to the drug war. Instead, how about "the
Bay Area Fearies?" It has a nice ring to it, an internal rhyme. And won't
it be great to see "Faeries 108, Rockets 97" crawl across the bottom of the
TV screen?... There is a whole new market that can be tapped of people
here and in other cities who will come to games or watch on TV just to root
for -or against-the Bay Area Faeries.

p.s. Do you remember "the doobie section" - a ramp at one end of the
Coliseum where Warrior fans by the hundreds used to smoke marijuana at
half-time? It flourished in the '70s, the glory years of Rick Barry and
Phil Smith (rest in peace)... The current anti-smoking laws would prevent
you from bringing back the doobie section, alas. But you can bring an NBA
championship to Oakland and challenge the basic premise of the drug war on
the level at which it needs to be challenged. I guarantee it.