Athletes Rejected, Governors Corrected, Gangsters, Thugs and Smugglers are Thoroughly Respected

David Weigel | March 25, 2008

Ever since Roger Stone destroyed Eliot Spitzer, New York Gov. David Paterson has been trying to sidestep the problems of his predecessor by disclosing everything—everything—he's ever done wrong. But he screwed up the delivery. He told the Daily News that he and his wife had slept around. Voila, full disclosure. The problem was that Paterson opened the door for a primed press corps to dig into his hiring practices and hotel records for other signs of scandal. What other state executive would be asked about this?

DC: "So now you're the governor of the state, have you ever used any illegal drugs, Governor Paterson?"

DP: "Actually, Dominic, I was in the audience and was asked the same question on camera after that interview and I answered in the affirmative."

DC: "You have?"

DP: "Yes."

DC: "Marijuana?"

DP: "Yes."

DC: "Cocaine?"

DP: "Yes"

DC: "You have used cocaine, governor?"

DP: "I'd say I was about 22 or 23. I tried it a couple of times."

DC: "When was the last time? Is that the only time?"

DP: "Yea, it was around that time. A couple of times... and marijuana probably when I was about 20. I don't think I touched marijuana since the 70's."

Paterson asks for a little credit for his disclosure: "More Americans have tried a lot more during that period of time and gone on to lead responsible lives and hopefully have lived their lives to their fullest." He's right. But now he's the governor of New York, home of the Rockefeller drug laws. If those laws had been applied to son-of-a-state-senator David Paterson, and he'd been caught with 4 ounces of cocaine or marijuana, he would have spent the 70s and most of the 1980s serving at least 15 years in jail. For the second time in a month, New Yorkers should listen to Roger Stone.

The Governor must get the Senate and Assembly approval for repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws which are racist, ineffective, and expensive. Governor Paterson can return discretion to Judges who understand the need for treatment and rehabilitation not incarceration for minor drug crimes.

My headline is obviously a reference to "White Lines," but it's important that America hears the song Grandmaster Flash et al sampled for that track—"Cavern," by Liquid Liquid.

Comments

|3.25.08 @ 9:50AM|#

My headline is obviously a reference to "White Lines,"

Maybe so, but I thought of this:
I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

Yeah, that sounds about right for a NY politician.

Episiarch|3.25.08 @ 9:53AM|#

As much as I think Paterson's "disclose everything!" strategy is stupid and a total overreaction to Spitzer, if other politicians adopt this "tactic" and come clean about drug use, their maintenance of existing drug laws becomes even more massively hypocritical. This gives excellent ammunition to those of us clamoring for an end to the WOD.

So thanks, Gov; your goofy anti-scandal tactics could actually do some good for someone other than yourself and your career.

miche|3.25.08 @ 10:08AM|#

A friend and I were celebrating his birthday the other day and somewhere past the half way point in the bottle of vodka we started playing YouTube vids. White Lines was at about the 3am point. ;o)

miche|3.25.08 @ 10:10AM|#

I feel it necessary to clarify that we had no white lines to keep us awake.

|3.25.08 @ 10:14AM|#

d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-don't d-d-d-do it b-b-baby

miche|3.25.08 @ 10:16AM|#

Whiskey would tell people not to do it. It has the market nearly cornered and doesn't want competition.

|3.25.08 @ 10:19AM|#

I am wondering now... will Canada declare Paterson an undesirable, and prevent him from entering that country? Didn't the US do something similar, recently

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/24/canadian-professor-d.html

CB

|3.25.08 @ 10:19AM|#

I have to agree Episarch.Drug use is the only 'crime' a person can admit to in the past,yet is considered on par with other felonies. Can you see a pol. admitting B&E,or armed robbery or a host of other crimes? Of course not.Yet they still treat those who do drugs the same as common criminals.I would like to know the % of lawmakers who have broken drug laws.I'll bet it's at least 50%.If you add in those who have driven after drinking and done no harm you might take in most of the rest.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 10:20AM|#

Weigel, for fucks sake, at least find a relevant video for once =

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2KUXDACoU

two days in a row, best sketches ever

|3.25.08 @ 10:22AM|#

The depth of my sympathy for the Spitzers is not sufficient to wet the feet of a medium-sized gnat, but...

There was a brief instant when I thought the travails of Governor Goody Two-Shoes might actually incite an examination of the laws against moral indiscretions. Glenn Greenwald, sounding for all the world like a die-hard libertarian, had a good post questioning the need for government intervention in consensual sex for money, drug use, and a lot of other activities which generally fall into the "victimless crimes" file.

But, aside from that, nothing; the lefty (mainstream) media swallowed the whole moral turpitude angle, hook, line, and sinker. They lit their torches, grabbed their pitchforks, and set about throwing their ropes over the nearest tree limb like an angry mob of OldTestament-thumping Methodists and Baptists.

Abdul|3.25.08 @ 10:25AM|#

Shilly D be kickin' it old school this week.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 10:28AM|#

"it was for charity!!"

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 10:37AM|#

p.s.

Weigel, give up on trying to school "America" on hiphop. You're a white kid. Most people know the liquid liquid sample. 3-4 references in 2 days is bad form. If it was obscure Rakim or Big L lyrics it would be one thing but the run of headlines related to things like roots and timbaland is getting old

Episiarch|3.25.08 @ 10:39AM|#

Shilly D has stuck, it seems. Excellent... (said Mr. Burns style)

|3.25.08 @ 10:42AM|#

GILMORE, I forgot all about that Mr. Show sketch. Oh, so good.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 10:47AM|#

cheers

DW - "have you ever woken up and had a beer and surfed the internet before getting straight to work?"

JG - "yes.... "

|3.25.08 @ 10:54AM|#

Weigel, you ignorant slut!

If those laws had been applied to son-of-a-state-senator David Paterson, and he'd been caught with 4 ounces of cocaine or marijuana, he would have spent the 70s and most of the 1980s serving at least 15 years in jail.

Look, I'm all for ratcheting back our overly punitive, counterproductive drug laws. But do you have any idea how much four ounces is? Any at all? Four ounces is prolly the amount of weed I've smoked in my whole life--and it's been a minute, know'm'sayin'?

(And don't even get me started on the toot...)

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 11:00AM|#

4 ounces of weed is the amount many people have smoked in the last 4-5 months

and are trying to detoxify for their wall street interview

some people, at least

|3.25.08 @ 11:02AM|#

Watching that video, I started to think I was 6 and watching Vegetable Soup on channel 13.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 11:03AM|#

although I agree, 4z of blow is verging on heavy weight. Nobody fucks with that kinda gear except movers

Episiarch|3.25.08 @ 11:03AM|#

4 oz of weed is a quarter pound. I've gone through 4 oz in a week with several friends. Yes, we had tons of weed and smoked all day--hell, it's what I was paying full tuition to Johns Hopkins for, right?

|3.25.08 @ 11:05AM|#

Oh David Paterson, may you be just as big a schmuck as every other New York governor.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 11:05AM|#

Ahh... college

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 11:08AM|#

Episiarch | March 25, 2008, 11:03am | #

Epi... I got into hopkins and didnt go because of the scary drug dealers 10 blocks away. funny that.

I preferred my dealers safe, dumb, and hippy.

A buddy of mine who went there kept a month's supply of NY bagels in his freezer. I visited him and spent a week there figuring out what the scene was like. It was a lot of studying, and a lot of Baltimore. I decided neither was up my alley.

|3.25.08 @ 11:10AM|#

4 ounces of weed is the amount many people have smoked in the last 4-5 months

yeah...4 oz is NOT a lot of weed. one person, all by his (or her) lonesome can easily go through an ounce on 3 weeks. -- and that's assuming they do it only after work/night/weekends.

4 oz of Cocaine though, that's quite a bit of cocaine...quite expensive too.

Episiarch|3.25.08 @ 11:34AM|#

GILMORE, my friend was a dealer, and he was safe and totally non-violent. And he was very generous with his weed. But yes, a few blocks away from Hopkins it gets...bad. I lived on the other side, near all the mansions.

Hopkins is a meat grinder. It's about making everything so hard that anyone who gets good grades must be the hardest-working potential employee you could ever want.

Be very, very glad you didn't go.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 11:42AM|#

Epi

yes, I chose a school where you could breeze through, get laid, party all the time, and still get hired and paid well on credentials alone and then slack off for years

i chose....wisely

Gov. Rockso (D-NY)|3.25.08 @ 11:50AM|#

I DO COCAINE!

SmokyJoe|3.25.08 @ 11:51AM|#

Are we really going to argue about whether 4 oz is a lot of weed or not?

Cause it seems to me that it depends on the weed. I... uh... know someone who had a patch of self grown weed that went unattended for a while, and by the time it got harvested, the quality sucked. I think I smoked (er... I mean he smoked) a qp in a fucking week-end. Never did get very stoned, but I did end up with a massive head-ache.

Anyway, this law seems like it is saying that drinking a 12 oz. beer is the same as drinking 12 oz of everclear. Maybe when enough of the people writing laws have actually used drugs, and are unafraid to admit it, then maybe they can actually write laws about drugs that make sense. But I'm not going to hold my breath for that.

|3.25.08 @ 12:00PM|#

Cause it seems to me that it depends on the weed.

This is true. In my above post I was implying that the weed was good quality. Not the best, but not schwag either

|3.25.08 @ 12:37PM|#

...it's important that America hears the song Grandmaster Flash et al sampled for that track...

Actually, Grandmaster Flash had nothing to do with "White Lines." It was created by Melle Mel and The Furious Five. According to Wikipedia:

"When originally released it was credited to Grandmaster + Melle Mel. This was done to mislead the public into believing that Grandmaster Flash participated on the record, when in fact he played no part and had already left the record label the previous year."

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 12:50PM|#

Damn, Mr Whipple is deep.

As I type this I have a wall of about 3000 records behind me in which somewhere is a half crate of 80s melle mel stuff I bought from a crackhead with a jerry curl for like $5. best money ever spent.

Cokehead|3.25.08 @ 1:17PM|#

4 oz is NOT a lot of weed. one person, all by his (or her) lonesome can easily go through an ounce on 3 weeks. -- and that's assuming they do it only after work/night/weekends.

4 oz of Cocaine though, that's quite a bit of cocaine...quite expensive too.

4 oz of weed is more than I could smoke in a hundred thousand years. It might as well be forty tons. Either amount is equally beyond my non-pothead comprehension.

But 4 oz of coke is only a strange few days.

Perspective. Let me show you it.

GILMORE|3.25.08 @ 1:25PM|#

Cokehead | March 25, 2008, 1:17pm | #

you call it perspective, but I call that shit "issues"

anon|3.25.08 @ 4:17PM|#

Four ounces of yay could yeld you 5-10 thousand Federal Reserve Notes depending on where you moved it, and in what units. If the NY GovMan did that in two sittings at even the spry age of 22 we'd be dealing with the coolest governor ever.

Of cheeb? That same volume would get what, six hundred bucks assuming inflation at its worst?

anon|3.25.08 @ 4:24PM|#

Did I say 'volume' incorrectly? I intended for 'mass'.

Geotpf|3.25.08 @ 7:03PM|#

He's following Obama's lead in this case. Seemed to work for Obama, so he probably thought, why not?

It's also a decent tactic-if it's old news, it ain't a scandal. However, I think everybody agrees that he's overdoing it a bit.

Mad Max|3.25.08 @ 8:37PM|#

"marijuana probably when I was about 20. I don't think I touched marijuana since the 70's."

I was going to make a joke along the lines of "at least people will believe him if he says he didn't remember" - you see, a joke about marijuana and its effect on memory. But this thread is full of stories by self-proclaimed weed smokers, and they're full of detail. So who knows?

GILMORE|3.26.08 @ 9:44AM|#

i never said I smoked the stuff