Well, it was interesting.
Not owning a television set, I’d actually never seen O’Reilly in action, other than from watching Outfoxed and occasional clips on CrooksandLiars. So I wasn’t fully prepared for his technique, which is basically to say so many false things in the first thirty seconds that his guest can’t possibly refute them all in the next five minutes.
O’Reilly started out by mispronouncing my name. Since he’d taken a course with me at the Kennedy School (no, he’s not nearly as ignorant as the character he plays on TV), and since his producer had pronounced it correctly for him twice, I find it hard to believe that it was just a mistake. The effect was to make me decide whether to look petty and rude by correcting him, or let it pass. I chose to ignore it. Mispronouncing someone’s name is as good a way as any of conveying the impression that he isn’t important enough to notice, so the exchange left me one down, as I presume it was supposed to. (I asked the producer if the error could be fixed before the show aired; and he said he didn’t think so but he’d try.)
Then came the slew of false statements.
1. The methamphetamine report was funded by George Soros. (Mostly false. Tthe Open Society Institute is one of several sponsors of the Sentencing Project, which has been around for years, and its total contributions over the past five years amount to only $750,000, which can’t be the major share of the Sentencing Project budget.)
2. Soros is a “far-left billionaire.” (False: Soros is a pretty standard-issue liberal, with the slight bias toward the market and civil society as against the state that grows out of his Eastern European background. Soros’s guru is Karl Popper, whose book Conjectures and Refutations is dedicated to Hayek. If “far left” indicates a sympathy for Communism, an interest in revolutionary change, a tolerance for violence, or the desire to suppress competing voices, the identification of Soros as “far left” is about as wrong as it could possibly be.)
3. Soros is spending “tens of millions of dollars” to “bring about a secular America” and “legalize narcotics.” (Mostly false. Soros is indeed an enemy of religious fanaticism, so if a “secular America” is one not ruled by the Robertson/Ratzinger Axis of Preachers, then Soros does indeed aim at it, as do I. But the “legalization” charge is wide of the mark. I think the Drug Policy Alliance, which Soros funds, is badly misguided in its belief that “ending drug prohibition” is some sort of magic bullet, but DPA doesn’t support making methamphetamine legal the way alcohol is now legal, and methamphetamine is currently a legal pharmaceutical drug. Soros’s own professed goal is to reduce the damage done by drug policy to the point where it no longer exceeds the damage done by illicit drug abuse.) Again, I think that Soros and the people he supports underestimate the difficulty of reducing the costs of prohibition without greatly increasing the costs of drug abuse, and that DPA has been very vigilant in isolating Soros from competing viewpoints. But that’s a different question.
4. The report was written to forward the cause of legalization. (False. The aim of the Sentencing Project is reducing the prison population, and its only interest in drug policy is reducing the length and number of sentences for drug law violations. The people at the Sentencing Project quite reasonably fear that if the country is told that it is in the grip of a “methamphetamine epidemic” the Congress will do the only thing it seems to know how to do about drug problems, which is to increase sentence lengths. Moreover, from the perspective of the “drug policy reformers,” as they call themselves, “Methamphetamine is being hyped” isn’t obviously a better line of attack than “Methamphetamine is being ignored while the drug czar and the enforcement agencies chase pot and club drugs.”)
5. The report was eagerly praised by “far-left websites, ” including Slate. (False. Slate is, at most, establishment liberal in its orientation. Jack Shafer, the Slate media critic who picked up the report, is fundamentally libertarian.)
As O’Reilly’s guest, being interviewed by remote control so that I couldn’t even see his face, I found myself in a tricky position. I would have liked to expose the fundamental fraudulence of O’Reilly’s claims, but didn’t want to seem rude to my former student and host. I wanted to explain why I thought the Sentencing Project report was mostly wrong, and to state my view that methamphetamine abuse had been growing — and spreading geographically — for at least the past five years. I also wanted to point out that the blame for our inability to track the growth of methamphetamine abuse lay primarily with the Bush Administration and its culture-warrior, pot-and-E-fixated ONDCP Director.
I did most of that, but I let most of O’Reilly’s fantasies pass unremarked, and I never said “the Bush Administration has been asleep at the switch,” which was one of my prepared sound-bites.
Overall, I think I managed to make most of my basic points, to not sound like a jerk, and to avoid explicitly assenting to O’Reilly’s false claims.. As far as I know (I haven’t seen the tape yet) I made no gaffes and no serious factual errors. On the other hand, I did relatively little to educate the viewers about the extent of the meth problem, the difficulty of measuring it, or the (not very attractive) menu of policy options, and next to nothing to challenge O’Reilly’sborderline-insane premises. Overall, I thought I did reasonably well, given a rather poor hand to play.
Please let me have your thoughts. (The program is to air on Fox at 8 and 11 EDT.) One consequence of my spending this fall in Washington is likely to be increased airtime, so I need to get back into practice. “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”
Update I watched it. Other than looking more like a stuffed toad than any human being should, and talking through my nose rather than from my chest, I did about as well as I thought I had. The producer had warned me that the interview had run long and would have to be cut by about 20 seconds; instead of cutting irrelevant chatter at the beginning, they took out the point where I gently rebutted some of O’Reilly’s fantasies about the plot to legalize drugs. (And yes, they left the mispronunciation in.)
I also watched the earlier segments, which were much more horrible than I’d imagined. O’Reilly ranted on and on about the two American soldiers murdered in Iraq: his basic line was that we needed to start acting more like Saddam Hussein, and he found two retired brass hats to agree with him about that, and about the disloyalty of the opposition. It made me wish I’d been more confrontational.
I say this as a supporter who agrees with much of what you say: If you're going to be a talking head, GET A TELEVISION SET! Good grief. Pick one up at Costco for $75 and watch the shows you're going to be on a few times so you'll be ready to deal with the BS they throw at you.
Conservatives go to talking head training camp (really) and liberals don't even own TVs. No wonder we get creamed.
"I think the Drug Policy Alliance, which Soros funds, is badly misguided in its belief that "ending drug prohibition" is some sort of magic bullet, but DPA doesn't support making methamphetamine legal the way alcohol is now legal, and methamphetamine is currently a legal pharmaceutical drug. Soros's own professed goal is to reduce the damage done by drug policy to the point where it no longer exceeds the damage done by illicit drug abuse.) Again, I think that Soros and the people he supports underestimate the difficulty of reducing the costs of prohibition without greatly increasing the costs of drug abuse, and that DPA has been very vigilant in isolating Soros from competing viewpoints. But that's a different question."
I'm not sure I understand where you get this from, Mark. There have been numerous instances where governments have reduced the cost of prohibition without greatly increasing the costs of drug abuse. The most recent example I've seen is Switzerland's heroin policy. They've managed to greatly reduce the number of new users by allowing needle-exchanges, safe-injection sites and providing methadone treatment. By essentially legalizing the use of heroin and treating it as a medical problem, the Swiss have managed to save money and reduce the amount of new heroin users simultaneously. Vancouver has done the same thing in the past few years, and it's already shown tremendous results, even to the point where Stephen Harper had to go back on his campaign promise to shut down the safe-injection site because Vancouver's mayor explained to him how well it's working.
As for meth, I don't think it's very clear at all that meth abuse is growing or can be described as an epidemic (and I live in the northwest where it's supposed to be especially bad). Even though polling can be inaccurate, it's still possible to detect trends, even with polling that fails to provide a true representative sample. And the polling that's been done over the past few years simply hasn't shown any remarkable increases in the number of meth users. Much of the recent meth hysteria has essentially been a result of the fact that folks who've been making meth at home have gotten better and better at increasing the purity. And since the crackdown on pseudoephedrine, Latin American drug gangs have taken up the supply slack with even more pure meth. All of this has not increased the number of users, it's just made it more likely for current users to become abusers. The solution to meth actually does lie in the realm of what countries like Switzerland have done with heroin, and what groups like the DPA advocate. If you control the supply, you can control the purity and provide safe sites for meth addicts and device better treatments, possibly using a substitute drug in a way that methadone is used to get people off of heroin.
The bottom line, and I'm not sure if you don't buy it or you don't understand it, is that when you emphasize the fact that heroin and meth are essentially pharmaceutical products with designated purposes, they lose their allure and the number of young people who try it goes down. That's what has happened in Zurich (and Vancouver and Sydney and Frankfurt) and it will happen here just the same.
Ah, Mark, I'm at work and won't get to watch until I get home, so I guess I'll see the 11 o'clock, I'm sure your uncle watched it, I
told him you would be on, but I must agree with the first poster, you really should get a tv so you know what these nitwits sound like. if for no other reason than to get a good laugh.
your loving cousin from the east coast.
Mark – if you are going to be in Washington this Fall, then not only would I love to get together, I'd love to have you talk to me AP government students. Would you do that for a college mate??
I refuse to watch O'Lielly, even when I people I know and respect are on. I can't stand the man. Methinks he true colors were shown (a) by the slapdown the judge did on th lawsuit against Al Franken, and (b) by the settlement of the harrassment lawsuit. Methinks Keith O is right to so often name him as "worst person in the world."
I second Charlie Robb. Get a TV amd see how this works.
Anyone get a clip of the interview you can stream?
YOU WERE NOT A BOY SCOUT…..NO ONE TAUGHT YOU ABOUT BEING PREPARED.
DID YOU GET YOUR DEGREES WITHOUT BEING PREPARED. WHAT EXACTLY DO THEY TEACH IN THOSE FANCY UNIVERSITIES.
ALSO, I SEEM TO REMEMBER THAT THE BRITS HAD A PROGRAM OF PROVIDING DRUGS, NEEDLES, AND TREATMENT THAT WAS SUCCESSFUL BEFORE WE PERSUADED THEM TO DO IT OUR WAY. NOW, NO DOUBT, THEY HAVE MORE PRISONERS THAN IS REASONABLE, JUST AS WE DO.
managed to "avoid explicitly assenting to O'Reilly's false claims"
Ah, now there's a reason to go on TV.
Mark, you say "The people at the Sentencing Project quite reasonably fear that if the country is told that it is in the grip of a "methamphetamine epidemic" the Congress will do the only thing it seems to know how to do about drug problems, which is to increase sentence lengths."
If you agree with that, then why do you disagree with people who merely wish to prevent over-hyping, particularly, as you said in your last post, you have at best a hunch regarding the size of the problem, and no evidence that it is of epidemic proportions.?
And I agree with thehim on his points. I'm still waiting for you to provide evidence that strict legalization and regulation schemes would significantly increase drug abuse. Additionally, I'm waiting for you to do a comparative analysis between the horrific costs of prohibition to society and human lives compared to the costs of your assumed increase in drug abuse. That's the true comparison that needs to happen.
Finally, the way you say "drug policy reformers" in this post has a feeling similar to Ann Coulter's use of the word "liberal." It's time to accept that drug policy reform is not only legitimate, but that reformers can't simply be wished away without addressing the facts — particularly if you wish to be called reality-based.
"Soros's own professed goal is to reduce the damage done by drug policy to the point where it no longer exceeds the damage done by illicit drug abuse."
It's not free market legalization, but he does advocate a form of legalization.
From Salon*
—-
"I'll tell you what I'd do if it were up to me," Soros says in "Soros on Soros." "I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available. Initially I would keep the prices low enough to destroy the drug trade. Once that objective was attained I would keep raising the prices, very much like the excise duty on cigarettes, but I would make an exception for registered addicts in order to discourage crime. I would use a portion of the income for prevention and treatment. And I would foster social opprobrium of drug use."
—-
*http://archive.salon.com/people/bc/2001/03/27/soros/index3.html
1. No, I won't get a TV set. I used to own a TV set. I didn't like what it did to my brain. If anyone has specific advice to give about how I could handle myself more effectively in the future, I'd be grateful for it.
2. Yes, it's possible to greatly reduce the amount of damage done by drug enforcement without much increasing the extent of drug abuse. I've spent twenty-five years trying to figure out the details. What I deny is that doing so is simple, or that "ending prohibition" or "stopping the war on drugs" is actually a coherent slogan. Any system of controls tight enough to reduce abuse will generate attempts at evasion, and dealing with those attempts at evasion is called "enforcement." (Take a look at the illicit market in untaxed cigarettes for an example.)
3. Soros explicitly doesn't want to make "the most dangerous drugs, such as crack" legally available. Meth is at least as dangerous as crack. But crack is by far the biggest illicit market. If we want to shrink the costs of the drug war, we need to address crack.
4. What Miriam Russell "seems to remember" is mostly false. The change in British policy was a result, not a cause, of rising addiction rates. Nor is it obvious that something that would work in Britain would work under the very different conditions that obtain here.
5. Pete Guither doesn't like my putting "drug policy reformer" in scare quotes. I agree that reforming drug policy is an important goal; that's why I spend most of my professional life pursuing it. I deny that the people who call themselves "drug policy reformers" have a monopoly on good ideas about changing drug policy, and I deny that they have a coherent plan for reform. Note how badly underspecified Soros's dream of regulated distribution is. Every attempt to specify an actual working system has come to grief; that's why DPA is so vague about what's supposed to come after the revolution.
6. "thehim" needs to learn that assertion is no substitute for argument, and that waves of drug use rise and fall for reasons remote from policy interventions. If he's not convinced that meth is a growing problem, I suggest that he look at the data from California. I'm happy that Zurich got good results from heroin maintenance; the conditions in New York City and Baltimore and Oakland are just a little bit different. (And no, Pete, I never said that I had just a "hunch" that meth was a big problem; I said that we lack the data to make a precise quantitative estimate of how big it is.)
7. Ken: I'd be delighted to do a guest shot for your course.
I don't think you should worry about avoiding rudeness. I think it's appropriate to say, "You took a class from me for [x] weeks and never had a problem pronouncing my name. Your producer just pronounced my name for you twice to refresh your memory. Why did you deliberately mispronounce my name just now?"
To expand on what I just wrote, he mispronounced your name because he thought his rudeness would put you on the defensive. There's nothing rude about addressing his rudeness or lies.
"Not wanting to be rude" to someone who makes his entire career out of being rude and dishonest is the obvious road to Hell, Mark. I really thought you'd be smart enough to fall into that silly trap.
Oops. Make that "smart enough NOT to fall into that silly trap".
(My God, O'Reilly has made his entire career precisely out of being rude and not letting his guests get a word in edgewise! This is Mr. "Shut Up!" we're talking about.)
Mark, you've claimed a few times that European and Canadian successes at various forms of drug "reform" can't be used as examples for the US, because social conditions are different here. (If I've mischaracterized you here, please correct me.)
I'd like to know just what social features of Europe and Canada you believe to be responsible for the success of these programs there, and how you would expect similar programs to fail in the US due to different conditions here.
Alex:
Fair question. Here's a list, in no particular order, of the main relevant differences that spring to mind.
1. Great income inequality, with an increasingly hereditary character.
2. The presence of large populations socially marginalized due to ethnicity. (Europe is catching up in that regard; Canada not so much.)
3. The existence of large urban areas with very high levels of social and economic dysfunction, including high crime. (The UK has such areas; in Europe, they tend to be sururban rather than urban, which makes a difference.)
4. A very weak social safety net, which makes it hard to live honestly as a persistently unemployed single male. (European heroin addicts earn less than American heroin addicts in licit jobs, and also steal much less.)
5. Mass-membership street gangs, with prison affiliates large enough to dominate some correctional institutions.
6. Very high rates of homicide.
7. Badly underfunded local governments.
8. Weak and underfunded community corrections systems.
9. Tight legal limits on what police can do to enforce norms of civility.
10. A fragmented criminal justice system, with no official in a position to force changes.
11. A money-driven political system that complicates the problem of effective regulation.
12. Much less bureaucratic independence, and a much smaller capacity of opinion elites to hold on to favored policies in the face of popular opposition.
13. Political stalemate on immigration, a society highly attractive to immigrants, and a long land border with a developing country, leading to a very large undocumented population.
14. Compared to the Dutch, the Swiss, and the Swedes, much lower levels of collective social capital and much greater distrust of government.
Of course, Europe and Canada don't constitute a homogeneous bloc, either. But the U.S. tends to lie at the extreme on most of the categories above. That doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't learn from experience elsewhere. (The Swiss heroin-maintenance trials show that addicts given heroin ad libitum won't in fact run their dosage up to the point where they start dying in large numbers, and that's a fact about the pharmacology of heroin unlikely to vary with national borders.) It does mean we ought to be cautious in adopting, for example, "Dutch drug policies" until we have a Dutch population to try them on.
Mark,
I don't like what TV does to my head, either. But I have one. I've locked out everything but CNN, PBS, CSPAN, sports and movie channels. And half the time it's on it's playing something on the DVD player. But if you're going to be televised with people of O'Reilly's ilk (Sean Hannity is apparently little better, Tony Snow is now peddling his rotten fish directly to the White House Press Corps, what little I've heard of Rush makes him seem as bad as O'Reilly in his own sweet way) you have to be prepared.
Former students or not, these people are not your friends nor even colleagues and you can't expect civilized discourse from them. The only way to be prepared to deal with them is to know their personal styles and methods of attack. You wouldn't go into a tennis match of any importance without knowing your opponent's strengths, weaknesses, preferred shots and habits. You can't talk to right-wing talk hosts without the same sort of preparation.
BC
"Every attempt to specify an actual working system has come to grief; that's why DPA is so vague about what's supposed to come after the revolution."
I have no idea where you get this from. You even accept that some efforts in drug law reform towards legalization have worked (the Swiss example). The King County (Seattle) Bar Association has a very thorough document released as part of its Drug Policy Project that gives a whole menu of options for effective ways for a state to reform its drug laws. How is that a system that has come to grief, or than the fact that the Federal government remains an immovable object? I'm also critical of people who believe in the full-libertarian every-man-for-himself drug legalization, and that's not what I'm promoting, and it's not what the Drug Policy Alliance and other related groups are promoting.
""thehim" needs to learn that assertion is no substitute for argument, and that waves of drug use rise and fall for reasons remote from policy interventions. If he's not convinced that meth is a growing problem, I suggest that he look at the data from California."
I know full well that levels of drug use rise and fall for various reasons unrelated to drug policy, but that's not to say that effective drug policy can not have positive effects on use patterns (or ineffective policies have negative effects). What's happened with meth over the past several years is that the laws restricting pseudoephedrine sales have made it more difficult for the average Joe to cook up meth in their living room. As a result, Mexican traffickers have picked up the slack and the amount of meth coming across the border (through states like California) has increased. In addition, as I also mentioned, the meth coming from Mexico is made purer, and therefore more addictive. It's these two factors that are making the meth problem worse in California, not that the drug is so scary and dangerous that it's causing an "epidemic".
As for your response to Alex regarding differences between areas where drug reforms have taken place (like heroin safe-sites) and the U.S., I have to respond to some of your assertions:
"The presence of large populations socially marginalized due to ethnicity. (Europe is catching up in that regard; Canada not so much.)"
Are you telling me that there aren't large populations of socially marginalized minorities in Vancouver, Frankfurt, and Sydney? Have you actually been to any of those cities? Whites are almost a minority in Vancouver now. Am I interpreting this correctly in that you believe that America is too racist to change our drug laws?
"The existence of large urban areas with very high levels of social and economic dysfunction, including high crime. (The UK has such areas; in Europe, they tend to be sururban rather than urban, which makes a difference.)"
Why does that make a difference? In France, a lot of drug trafficking goes through the banlieus, just as a lot of drug trafficking in the U.S. goes through inner cities. All of that happens because in a society where there's a minority class with less opportunity, the members of that community will be more likely to take the risk of joining the drug trade as a way to get ahead. The only real difference I can tell is that in America, inner cities have become more dangerous than European inner cities as a result. What does that have to do in any way with our ability to fix the problem?
#4 is actually a valid point, but #5 and #6 are conditions that are caused almost primarily by the way we've enforced the drug laws themselves in this country, so citing them is silly. I don't know if you've read the book Freakonomics, but in there, the authors break down the factors that have had an impact on the rate of homicides in this country. Their most controversial conclusion about Roe v. Wade is not the only factor they cite. They also conclude that the drug trade plays a big role in the amount of homicides, but you should know full well that it's not because of the relative danger of the actual drug, but because of the fact that the trade is illegal and therefore violence is used to settle any business disputes. That book also details very well how organized and business-like the drug cartels are.
Some of the other points you made are very clearly going to have an affect on any attempts to reform our drug laws, but it doesn't change some of the fundamentals of how to best deal with drugs in a society. The points you make above could very easily have been made during prohibition as an argument against ending it. We certainly had larger numbers of socially marginalized ethnic minorities (many of whom were very involved in bootlegging), much moreso than in Europe where alcohol was legal. The problem here is that the reasons that you cite for maintaining the status quo of prohibition are brought about by prohibition itself. For three decades, we've sat quietly while the drug laws have been applied in a way that has disproportionately funneled more and more minorities into jail only to have "experts" like you then turn around and say "we can't change the drug laws because we have marginalized minorities!" Great argument!
"The points you make above could very easily have been made during prohibition as an argument against ending it."
during _alcohol_ prohibition
Bill O'Reilly is a wanker*. Rather than endorse his particular brand of sandbagging guests with opinions not conforming to his own, one would think the better course would to be seek less wingnutty media on which to appear.
Just my opinion.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanker
Wow — No TV! Look, I'm sympathetic, I've mostly stopped watching TV myself, and it's true, it doesn't do good things for anyone's brain.
So don't get a TV. But that means when you get a call from a show like O'Reilly, you should say, "I'm sorry, I don't do TV because I don't watch TV."
And there's no reason you need to be on that show. 99.98% of your expertise on drug policy is entirely wasted given the superficiality of the discourse on that show. And on a less superficial show, say Charlie Rose, maybe just 99% of your expertise would be superfluous.
So find someone you can suggest to them — someone who's not at your level of expertise, but can handle the level required by O'Reilly, who can think on his or her feet, and who watches these shows, knows the games, and has gone through serious media training. And push that person as the "front" for your views.
That's what the right does. Their "experts" aren't real "experts," just people who know just enough to play this particular game.
If you watched O'Reilly even once, you would have known that he would talk about Soros. O'Reilly says all this stuff about George Soros practically every day, and much worse. (The one that I still can't believe they say with a straight face is, "he's a Jew who figured out a way to survive the holocaust.") There's no point in trying to rebut it — that's taking the bait. (although the affinity between Popper and Hayek ought to be a killer point.) You just need to say, "this has nothing to do with George Soros, it's a report and facts," and then move on.
I love your blog, I've learned a lot from you, but please, please, please don't go on a show like O'Reilly and expect that they are seriously interviewing you for your expertise. /Mark
An earlier post of mine was held for moderation, probably because it had 3 URLs in it. I still don't see it, so here it goes without the cites.
Kleiman:
———-
Soros explicitly doesn't want to make "the most dangerous drugs, such as crack" legally available. Meth is at least as dangerous as crack. But crack is by far the biggest illicit market. If we want to shrink the costs of the drug war, we need to address crack.
———-
Well, crack and cocaine are the same. The difference is all in the method of administration, and the consequences due to that. See erowid.org/psychoactives/writings/buckley_effects.shtml
The same applies to meth. Smoking or injecting a strong stimulant in one thing, oral use is another. See erowid.org/references/refs_view.php?ID=8, especially these two extracted tables at img210.imageshack.us/img210/4450/druguse2groupsmethod8vw.jpg & then img155.imageshack.us/img155/9896/druguse2groupsdependence2ay.jpg
The key is to discourage smoking/injecting and shift preferences to oral use.
Mark: the other Mark (Schmitt) is right, I think. Don't do TV if you don't watch TV; find a decent surrogate who does.
Also, I have found that it is possible for the weak-willed to have a TV without watching it except on rare occasions. Just take up blogging 😉
Oops; that last was from me.
Prof. Kleiman,
I tuned in to see your appearance, (the fact that some your students would willingly subject themselves to 15 mins of O'Rielly says a lot of good things about how much we appreciated your class) and I actually think that your obvious lack of media savvy was a benefit. O'Rielly operates on his false outsider image, and in a weird sort of way I think that your genuinely appearing as someone who is not a slick media type makes you seem more genuine. Although I can't speak for the average O'Rielly viewer I would wager to guess that they are more used to the two slick guests before you and may have paid more attention to your appearance because it was clear that you are not media-polished and therefore might have something interesting to say. Maybe your "outsider to the media" status gained you some credibility with these people, especially considering they bought the fake version from O'Rielly himself?
I don't know if that observation was particularly useful, but I enjoyed your appearance and I know some of my other classmates taped it and saw it as well. Few if any of his guests are allowed to leave with their dignity intact, their points sucessfully made, and their words untwisted…so congrats!
rahim:
———
Maybe your "outsider to the media" status gained you some credibility with these people, especially considering they bought the fake version from O'Rielly himself?
———
If they bought O'Reilly's version, what makes you think they are well-attuned to demarcating "experts"?
"Just as an aside, Bill, George Soros is the private citizen most responsible for the fall of Communism. On what planet that makes him far-left, I sure don't know."
One for the files if you're tempted to do right-wing media again.
"Yes, it's possible to greatly reduce the amount of damage done by drug enforcement without much increasing the extent of drug abuse. I've spent twenty-five years trying to figure out the details. What I deny is that doing so is simple, or that "ending prohibition" or "stopping the war on drugs" is actually a coherent slogan."
Is your criticism called for at this time? When you're going 80 MPH, 50 feet from a brick wall you put on the brakes without having a well thought out plan for avoiding the accident.
The DPA may not have all the right answers, but they're "putting on the brakes." Reforms will be tested before they are uniformly implemented.
Frankly, O'Reilly knows he can clean your clock, that's why you were invited on the show. Most academics have a "nuanced" position that can hardly be persuasive in any less time than they took to develop it (usually about 20 years), and O'Reilly knows their shoelaces are tied together when the gun sounds for the video sprint.
This was all as predictable as opening a door and having a bucket of water fall on your head, and why you didn't want to "seem rude" is totally beyond me.
My advice would have been to aggresively point out he was wrong, wrong, and wrong, and demand a factual source (you know he doesn't have any) for any statement he tried to defend. You can probably guess, nobody's inviting me on television.
Ok, about the methedrine, I gotta say- if this was legalized and dispensed by prescription, with very wide prescribing guidelines, we would be a lot closer to health monitoring and the possibility of intervention when needed that the difference would be night and day.
Yes, bad things happen, but the legislature has not seen fit to outlaw cellphone use while driving, or superbright headlights that blind you on two-lane roads, so apparently our appetite for safety is as self-limiting as the drug hunger of the average person.
What is scary is the sales pitch of the meth addict trying to sell you a stolen pistol. If that won't nudge you towards a closely monitored legalization, you can't be moved.
was it worth it?
was it to your best advantage to subject yourself to an o'reilly appearance?
i always wonder why people are willing to be bullied on television by o'reilly
i have a tv
i watched his show twice
i decided that he had nothing for me
i hope you gained something from your appearance
I don't understand this no t.v. business. Many people have problems with junk food, but they still manage to go to supermarkets and convience stores.
T.V. has sports, C-SPAN (ton of interesting stuff, esp. on weekends), actually serious dramas, news, educational channels, and so forth. One can surely survive w/o one, but I bet you just replace the emptiness with other sorts of emptiness. For instance, I find network t.v. boring these days, but am online a lot more, not always productively.
I am with "the him" — the differences are relevant, but at times even circular. Thus, you point to crimogenic activities that are furthered by illegal drugs as a reason against legalization.
As to the welfare state bit, yes, if we have legalization, it probably will come with a changing mind-set that will also have some additional social welfare protections, at least for addicts. I don't see the former just coming in alone.
As to Bill O'Reilly, well the guy is bashed repeatedly (with audio and text) on Air America, various websites, and in books plus Outfoxed. So, the fact you don't have a t.v. set really shouldn't have led you to be caught on guard. In fact, the guy has (had?) a radio show.
Mark, are you going to post the transcript of your segment? If not, know where I can find it?
P.S. Why haven't you ever gone on TV with the other recalcitrant Bill (Maher)? He's plenty interested in the inanity of some of our drug laws.