Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2001
Source: Salon (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 Salon
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Author: Anthony York

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."
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