Saturday, September 27, 2008

A Moment for Drugs

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Let’s take a day off as we near the end of the Month of Sex to consider another popular vice, drugs.

It’s a topic that didn’t come up much in last night’s presidential debate — one of many reasons that our Sunday debate about sex will be more exciting — but drugs must cross these candidates’ minds once in a while. Consider:

Cindy McCain was for a time a sneaky Vicodin addict.

Palin smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska.

•I’m told Palin was vetted — hard as some people may find that to believe — by a supply-sider, which is good, namely National Review’s Larry Kudlow…himself a major cocaine addict (and later convert to sobriety and Catholicism) back in the Gordon Gekko days when Wall Street had personal, behavioral problems instead of economy-wrecking, systemic ones.

•And Obama, of course…well, his drug use you’ve probably heard about. And he seems to still be addicted to cigarettes, the leading preventable cause of death.

•Of course, if my favorite candidate, Bob Barr was an antiwar Democrat in the late 60s at the University of Southern California, needless to say, he’s probably used substances even Cindy McCain hasn’t touched, though I don’t know for sure.

•And his running mate, Wayne Allyn Root, lives in Vegas, so who knows what he gets up to — though the country could really use an ex-CIA man like Barr and a competent gambling odds-maker like Root right now, in my opinion, given our foreign and domestic challenges.

Biden, as far as I know, is only addicted to gaffes — and disturbingly, despite that and the old plagiarism incident, I’m almost starting to think he nonetheless seems like the most convincing candidate in the race, by conventional standards. There’s something terribly wrong about that.

Maybe in retrospect, Ron Paul should have tried more of an “I am the only candidate on this stage not currently on crack” route to convince people he’s the sane one. Then again, as a doctor, he probably has pretty easy access to a lot of stuff, which would explain some things…

3 comments:

Gerard said...

I think smoking is only the leading preventable cause of death because running into high-density traffic hasn’t been made sufficiently cool. Although, to be honest, I think both are rather stupid ways of occupying your leisure hours.

Then again, I’m one of only two non-smokers in my immediate family, so what do I know?

-good times, G.

P.S. BTW, speaking of smoking, have you read Christopher Buckley’s latest novel?

Todd Seavey said...

I haven’t, but I loved the _Thank You for Smoking_ movie and was delighted its star went on to be Harvey Dent in _Dark Knight_ (I was also pleased to spot a very professional-looking Dent for District Attorney bumper sticker affixed to a random wall in Washington, DC about a year before the movie came out, a nice, subtle bit of viral marketing).

Gerard said...

I enjoyed it as well-I’m usually a fan of Aaron Eckhart-even if they took a few liberties with his novel. I still want to see Little Green Man make it to the big screen. IMO, it’s his best novel, with the possible exception of TYFS.

As an aside, it looks like WFB’s son might be voting for Barack Obama.