Barack Obama needs to spend some hard time with a bag whore.
She – it’s usually a she but not always – could tell him about the violence that “nonviolent” drug offenders do to people.
One bag whore in particular, if she’s still alive and lucid, could tell the president about the time she had sex with a dog in the squalid home of a meth dealer in Fontana, Calif. There in the living room, surrounded by the kind of people we don’t want to admit exist or might be related to, she did what she had to do to get her slam on.
A man who turned up at the house to buy his own bag of meth told me he only glanced at the scene.
“I’d been with her once so it got me to thinking.”
This man’s drug habits (he used everything) had fueled one felony after another. By the time I met him, he was 40 years old and awaiting trial for still another felony. His first major arrest came at age 19 when he strangled his former baby sitter. He tied her nude body face down to a station wagon and dragged her through Fontana, finally depositing her in the early morning hours in the middle of Sierra Way, a major thoroughfare. He thought if he could grind down her face, the cops wouldn’t be able to identify her, and he wouldn’t get caught.
“I was young and stuck on stupid.”
That extreme act of violence is something Obama would deplore. The bag whore’s debasement is a different matter. A drug dealer who has engaged in that kind of cruelty can get away with claiming to be a nonviolent drug offender.
So can any drug dealer who has enticed someone to try this drug or that drug for whatever depression or pain or loneliness or boredom they feel. Under Obama’s idea of a criminal justice system, spreading drug addiction is not an act of violence. It’s a way to make a living for some people.
Based on his own words during his recent visit to a federal penitentiary in Oklahoma, President Obama thinks the real crime is locking up nonviolent drug offenders. When he looked inside a cell, he said there but for the grace of God is where he could’ve ended up, because he once smoked marijuana and used cocaine.
Here’s another scenario, Mr. President: But for the grace of God you could’ve been a bag whore.
If Obama is going to dismantle the criminal justice system, he needs to learn the difference between his personal use of an illegal drug and someone who sells illegal drugs – many of them dangerous and addictive – to other people.
The president hasn’t noticed that it isn’t just religion and guns that Americans cling to – they also love their drugs.
Making drug abuse more respectable isn’t going to help America. Our problem is not that we are a prison state. America is a big-box candy store, and our nation’s generous freedoms and American dream obsessions make it easy to lust after all the goodies we think we have a right to. Nobody has more rights than Americans.
We need prison reform, but Obama’s rhetoric reveals no fresh ideas. He has gotten off to the wrong start by ceremoniously commuting prison terms for 46 drug offenders. The media turned the commutations into a celebration with barely a mention of victims, and with no attempt to confirm exactly what these former inmates did to land in prison.
NPR’s “Here and Now” featured former Portlander, Barbra Scrivner, whose 30-year sentence for conspiracy to sell crystal meth was commuted. The president sent her a letter wishing her luck.
That’s fine. It’s easy to look at the photo of her with her family and be happy for them. It’s also hard not to notice that Scrivner is an attractive white woman, a harmless-looking representative for prison reform. (Compare her appearance with the “Faces of Meth” people who bought and used the drug Scrivner made money from.)
On NPR, Scrivner alternately accepted responsibility for marrying an ex-felon who got her involved in drug distribution and blamed the system that sent her away. As often happens when media coverage is euphoric, some pertinent details were left out of Scrivner’s story (including her personal ad on Jailhouse Babes. Under true prison reform, personal ads like that wouldn’t be allowed. We don’t need to glorify the prison lifestyle).
There’s some confusion as to whether Scrivner contributed to her unusually long sentence by declining to cooperate with prosecutors and provide information about the leaders of a drug ring. In one story she said she didn’t want to cooperate; in another she said she didn’t have any information. At any rate, the judge and prosecutor in her case did not object to the commutation.
“It would be fair to say that this is an unusual case,” said Kent Robinson, then-First Assistant U.S. Attorney.
As an unusual case, it also shouldn’t be held up as an example of what Obama wants to see more of. Not only will the commutations keep coming, so will the fish-out-of-water stories about how long-time inmates are adjusting to freedom, which can involve hard work (as those of us on the outside already know).
Throughout the 1990’s when I covered crime in San Bernardino County, I didn’t see a war on drugs. I saw what drugs did to people. During the same period, America was in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. We rallied to fight AIDS. Drugs have had a longer and more ruinous reach than AIDS, but we remain indecisive about drug abuse. We prescribe treatment programs while at the same time we promote more drugs.
Ken Bellamy of Hillsboro, Ore., recently wrote a letter to the editor of The Oregonian stating that he could not understand the media’s heavy, celebratory coverage of the first day of legal marijuana (July 1) in Oregon. Instead of simply letting the law take effect, The Oregonian reveled in photographs of people lighting up in public – something the law prohibits.
“I don’t know why people are so infatuated with fogging their minds out of reality,” Bellamy wrote.
He received more than 200 replies, many of them chastising him for failing to be the life of the party. Some called him “Grandpa.” Some wished that he was forced to get high. Others looked forward to “his ilk” dying off.
They reacted like screaming babies who’d lost their pacifiers. It would have been amusing except that the state is now pushing marijuana as a moneymaker, and there’s more money to be made off of marijuana with a higher THC content.
Scrivner, the woman whose prison sentence was commuted by Obama, said she was 8 years old when she started using marijuana, provided by her mother’s boyfriend. By today’s diminishing standards, that might not even merit a police report.
If Obama insists on saying “no” to prisons while the country keeps saying “yes” to drugs, by God’s grace he won’t pay, but other Americans will.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
As someone who grew up in Oregon and grew up with The Oregonian the papers coverage of legalized pot has certainly been a bit of a shock for me. A couple of weeks ago when I saw the Garden Section cover illustrated with a little pile of seeds and a How to Grow Marijuana, with a story titled ‘Putting Pot in your Plot’ I experienced total culture shock. I was also a little surprised that the main writer for The Oregonians pot scene, Noelle Cromble prior to this wrote on parenting issues as one of The Omamas. I’m expecting to see pot seedlings along with the tomatoes next spring at Portland Nursery and perhaps an article by Noelle on parenting while stoned.
Tom, I have friends and family members who occasionally use marijuana, and even they are alarmed by how suddenly pot is being promoted everywhere. The marijuana zealots treat it like a religion, and the media give them a platform.
You can get bet Noelle Crombie doesn’t want her kids using drugs. When the NY Times editorial board jumped on the marijuana bandwagon, Jonathan M. Wender, a teacher in Seattle, Wash., wrote them letter about a class he teaches on drugs and society. He pointed out that all of his students supported reforming federal marijuana laws.
“Yet they are equally unanimous in saying they don’t want their own children to use marijuana. My students’ conflicted reactions offer a microcosm of the tension at the heart of marijuana reform: How can we move beyond unbridled prohibition in ways that will tolerate, but not celebrate, moderate use of marijuana by adults?”
Wender predicts that “the same marginalized communities that have felt the brunt of the drug war will be at the greatest risk of becoming fodder for businesses and governments eager to cash in on marijuana. Recent figures from Colorado show early, troubling evidence of the Pareto (or 80-20) principle in legal marijuana markets: as with alcohol, tobacco and lotteries, most of the revenue is coming from a small percentage of heavy users.”
I think the media and politicians are turning into the worst kind of drug dealers. They either think they have nothing to lose — if there are problems with drug abuse, it will be the poor and working class who will pay. Or they’re reverting back to the conformist tendency to go along with the crowd for fear of appearing to be a loser.
“Bag Whore”, was a new one, must be a California or West Coast term. Here in flyover country the term is “Puddle Slut” same concept and just as disturbing and sad.
Well, RH, I’ve never heard the term “puddle slut.” I checked on the urban dictionary website, and it is believed to have originated in Utah and is related to “bag whore.”
You’re right. They’re both disturbing terms. I rarely heard cops use the term “bag whore,” only guys on the street or in jail. That there are multiple terms for that activity says something about how much drugs have become an accepted part of life in America.
I was catching up on some of my reading, and I found this editorial from earlier this month on The Skanner website. (The Skanner is a Portland weekly that focuses on the black community.) The editorial is urging equity in the soon-to-be-booming marijuana industry:
http://www.theskanner.com/opinion/skanner-editorials/22939-editorial-new-opportunity-in-the-marijuana-industry
Now the marijuana faithful will say their drug is so much safer and better than meth. That’s true, but I don’t see anything positive about encouraging still more drugs. I saw a review a few months ago for a strain of marijuana called “Green Crack.” I don’t consider that progress.
It is a difficult piece to comment upon.
I too was taken by surprise when both journalists and legislators celebrated this change. Hooray stoned is medicine for reality?
Guess it’s about revenue and “social justice”?
I smoked rope for 15 years and cigarettes for 25. Both very hard on the respiratory. Maybe drive up Obamacare costs? Certainly increase COPD in society.
Relieve jail crowding? Maybe. Contrary to popular belief, marijuana is a gateway drug, least-wise it was for me and the dope fiends with whom I hung.
Cut in to the Mexican Cartels power and grow operations in Northwest forestlands?
Maybe, maybe. That would be great. Do I reckon that’ll really happen – an abatement of armed Mexicans in Oregon and Washington protecting organized crime grow operations? Not so much.
The Skanner, Yeah, the Skanner.
It’s a world turned upside down. Girl Scouts advocating scrapes and Boy Scouts embracing, well what…Sam Adamsism?
Not to get real worked up about it, but I cannot help but observe that the decline and or watering down of church and family pretty much drives an abscence of moral judgement or compass. No framework exists for assessing human conduct. It is like navigating from point to point with N,S,W, and E invalidated. You just make up stuff and march off in that direction.
Think things were better as well when women exercised their often quiet but powerful force for male and societal restraint.
Read recently that all or nearly all Illionois property tax goes to state pensions. If that is so and if that sort of thing spreads a revolution must occur.
Not what I planned on for my old age but maybe a necessary corrective.
This guy seems to see clearly: Joel Kotkin.
I dunno, what can’t go on wont. And, my rambling speculation wont fix nothing.
Say, a fellow named Don Winslow has written two thinly fictionaized books on the War on Drugs: Power of the Dog and The Cartel. Guy can maintain narrative momentum, too.
I haven’t read Winslow’s books, but I’ve read about him and listened to interviews with him. He also ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post asking Congress to end the War on Drugs. In his ideal world, drugs will all be legal, and nobody will use them. That’s not going to happen. There’s too much money to be made off of drugs, and now you have states like Oregon getting in on the action.
Winslow does know the Mexican cartel. I’m not sure what he’s predicting for the cartel if it gets out of the marijuana business, now that American states are taking it over.
I think you’re right that things were better when women exercised their “quiet but powerful force” for male and societal restraint. I don’t regret the feminist movement, because it allowed women like me to have more choices. When I was growing up, I didn’t see a lot of happy homemakers in my immediate family. I wanted a life like my older brother’s, centered around an interesting job and independence.
What went wrong is that so many women became imitation men, and they didn’t imitate the best qualities of men. We also went from one extreme — condemnation of women who had babies out of wedlock — to the other extreme where women now have multiple babies out of wedlock with multiple boyfriends, and nobody is supposed to be judgmental about it. Drugs play a role here, too. Hard to remember birth control when you’re high.
Every generation wants to be different from the one preceding it so maybe that’s cause for hope. I have an 18-year-old nephew who has a stronger moral compass than many older adults I know.
My mother, a beautiful and powerfully intelligent woman, lived an odd life. Force of circumstance and poor choices compelled her to rise through the business world until she broke through the glass ceiling (then she died).
However, what she really wanted to be was a sort of upper class home-maker. If she’d have embraced her nature it would’ve been a kinder life. ‘course, I wouldn’t be here.
Winslow’s two books on the cartels are essentially historical fiction. I’ve read his personal POV on several matters and disagree, sometimes vehemently. But, he does give a shape to what had been for me a crazed ping pong game of atoms randomly striking one another and rendering havoc.
Yeah, the governmental support of out-of-wedlock births drives male drug abuse, violence, immaturity, and creation of out-of-wedlock births.
I went to school with the woman found murdered in this story:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/06/remains_found_at_ne_portland_h.html
She was drop dead beautiful when we were kids. I noticed early on, however, that she used her striking appearance and trim figure to get things. As time went on those things were mostly drugs. Remember around 69/70 she was ODing on acid and asked me for help. I offered to take her to my doctor, but think what she really wanted was more dope and fun.
We all started off on reefer and too many lived a grubby version of life that ended in squalor.
Your old high school friend, Renee, still displayed traces of beauty in her mug shot. What a wasted life. I read some of the other stories from the link you provided. One of her sons uses the screen name “Thugnificient TresEques.” He’s apparently hoping to clean up with a $1 million lawsuit against the man charged in his mother’s murder. But that man has a young daughter himself, and she helped alert the police to Renee’s killing.
I wonder if “Thugnificient” has considered that if he seizes that man’s estate, it will impact the young daughter who, by virtue of the fact that she turned in her dad, showed stronger moral character than some of the adults in Renee’s sordid life.
“A grubby version of life that ended in squalor.” When you offered to take her to your doctor, she was still young and beautiful and didn’t have a clue she was going to end up in some guy’s shed.
I do love your blog. I too was surprised at the ‘celebration’ of the new pot law by the Oregonian. But they have devolved into Portland’s paper, not Oregon’s.
One wonders about a society, or part thereof, that seems to get fulfillment from drug use.
It is odd too for somebody my age to see how pot has gone from the demon reefer to a way of life.
But one might argue that government by demonizing marijuana helped to create its popularity.
I missed out. Somehow I was able to go to college and become a practicing attorney without ever using recreational drugs.
Thank you, Larry.
It’s hard to believe that The O was once a state-wide newspaper. Their obsession with pot diminishes them — particularly their determination to find an upside to dope. Aside from marijuana, The O gives in-depth treatment to all kinds of fluff. Who knew there was so much to riding a bike naked?
The world-wide view you offer on your links at oldtownperspective
makes our local news seem even more provincial. Other countries deal with real hardship. We create a lot of our own misery.
I’d been having a texting conversation with an old friend of mine who grew up here in Portland but moved away in 1982 and rarely visits. Her father had once worked as a writer for The Oregon Journal in the 1950’s. She quoted her father as once saying that Marijuana would never be legal in Oregon because The Oregonian wouldn’t allow it. I sent her a picture of the Home and Gardens cover story and a link to the O’s live streaming of their own indoor grow operation in the papers office. This isn’t our parents or our grandparents Oregonian.
The Oregonian used to lead, now it follows.
Washington and Colorado have acted with more maturity about marijuana than Oregon. Even California looks more adult than Oregon. Some of the big donors to Measure 91 (such as George Soros) have indicated they will not be so generous in California’s pending campaign now that they realize legalization is not the civil rights issue they thought. It’s about money, not civil rights.