Mediaite: 'Here Are the Best Moments from Hannity's Clownshow Weed Panel'
Last Friday, April 25, I was one of 20 or so townhall-audience panelists on a special episode of Hannity titled "Stoned in America." As mentioned in this space last week,
I am a vocal part of the outnumbered legalize-it caucus. I don't know how the thing will play on television, but it was a pretty amazing exchange in the room, and I suspect that Hit & Run readers might find it of interest….
Well, Andrew Kirell of Mediaite found it of interest, and wrote a clip-heavy post titled "Here Are the Best Moments from Hannity's Clownshow Weed Panel." Here's one section and clip that involves me:
Unlike the majority of videos here, which fall under "so bad it's good" categorization, this clip is actually good. Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes started off by talking about his own recreational drug use and how he doesn't want the government telling anyone what they can and cannot put in their body.
The panel's designated "Hollywood reporter," however, claimed it's government's job to foster a "role model"-based society that shuns drug use (she also had a bizarre aside about Obama's affiliation with former coke dealer Jay Z); and a former Miss America concurred on that point.
Enter a visibly frustrated Reason editor-in-chief Matt Welch who derailed the segment (in a good way) by triumphantly scolding the panel: "But by locking them up in human cages for what they choose to put in their bodies, what kind of culture is that? Did you listen to the cop about what he did on the streets when he tried to enforce this? That is not moral, that is not conservative."
That last bit is contained in this YouTube excerpt:
More clips and commentary at Mediaite.
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Did I miss some sort of commentocalypse this morning?
Lots of Bo-ing. Boinging? Boinking?
No, people were complaining about links not working and whatnot.
Oh. Apparently the CSS got fucked up.
Reason sold a reverberating carbonizer with mutate capacity to an unlicensed cephalopoid, Nick, you piece of shit...
Nice try Matt. The deck was stacked against you though. You played it well.
Wow, what did that cop say?
It was incredible -- look up Hannity "stoned in America" on YouTube, and I think it's clip either number 2 or 3. Basically, guy worked NYPD narcotics for eight years, and one day a year they'd have "Federal Day," whereby they'd get the feds off their back and/or fulfill the quota by making all their petty shakedowns into federal busts, thereby ruining the lives of these poor saps for several years.... It was just amazing that the damning testimony of the only person there talking about what prohibition looks like in practice just did not make a dent in these people.
So a rational argument failed to convince a Hollywood reporter and a former Miss America?
Well, kudos for trying.
Amazing - I'm glad you at least tried to steer the conversation into the specifics of enforcement.
It's as if the advocates of these laws are sitting on their lofty perches preaching philosophically about We As A Society, etc., while not deigning to look down and see what their designated enforcers are doing in practice.
Oh yeah. Didn't Giuliani start the federal day thing when he was the federal prosecutor in NYC?
Honestly, I don't think people realize when you ban something what that means. In their heads I think they just see the would-be partaker tossing up his hands and saying, "Oh, well, I guess I can't do that anymore." Only the criminal would defy society's will.
Welch talking about human cages was such an abstract to the group no one commented on it.
If you could cite me to the particular provision in the Constitution (you know, that document written over 100 years ago by white slaveowners that establishes FedGov and outlines its powers) that empowers the government to "foster a role model-based society."
CONSPIRACY
I could spare the poor man, SURROUND ME INSTEAD!
It probably was intentional.
Black skin shows up better on TV when contrasted with a light background.
This is why when i have all my black friends over to play kinect on x-box i hire a bunch of white hookers to stand behind them while they play.
This is precisely what I point out when explaining why I support legalization to my conservative friends and family. Whatever harm drugs might do to a person, it is unconscionable that locking them in a cage against their will is the morally superior end.
After a lifetime of just buying into the ad nauseam "drugs are bad, mmkay" line, when I finally had a moment of clarity on this fact it hit me like a ton of (cocaine) bricks.
"Whatever harm drugs might do to a person, it is unconscionable that locking them in a cage against their will is the morally superior end."
Well said, and applicable to a wide range of things people want to prohibit, from drugs, to employing immigrants or willing labor below the 'minimum wage,' to pornography, etc.
Yep!
What made me go over to libertarianism was when a friend explained to me that minimum wage laws ultimately involve putting a man in jail for the crime of....offering another man a job.
Substandard wages! Substandard health plans! Substandard entertainment! Substandard medicine!
I think for a lot of people the transition occurs when they make the realization that, though you might think something is bad or unfair or unjust, supporting a law to stop that thing implicitly necessitates support for the enforcement and punishment of breaking that "rule", which is often a greater injustice.
Problem his, not a lot of people have even the briefest inkling of thinking two or three steps down the chain of consequences.
Does anyone else listen to Hannity's show? I catch it on the way home from classes on certain days. This week he really has been going after Sterling.
I just can't do it. That applies to any political show on radio or TV.
It is not like I am a fan of Hannity, he can be obtuse and incredibly Team oriented, but he can also be surprisingly fair and gracious host. He has lots of regular callers, often who disagree with him, on the show and he genuinely seems to like them as he disagrees with them. A good chunk of the show is not very political at all.
This week he has been on a non-stop (rather tiresome) tear about how rotten Sterling is.
He is simply an asshole. The worst part of his show is when he invites people to call in and share their opinions so Sean can yell over top of them.
I guess he does that sometimes, but he has a lot of 'regulars' that call in that he plainly disagrees with but he seems rather warm to them nonetheless.
I actually have listened to his radio show a couple of times on my way home from work, and I generally turned it off after a short time because I couldn't stand the derp.
I can't. I can listen to Limbaugh or Levin, but Hannity just grates my nerves enough to make me start cutting people off in traffic. I prefer the local guys here in DFW, there's some station that has a pretty libertarian afternoon lineup.
Rush is a damn good entertainer; the same can not be said of the Hanitizer.
I usually enjoy Limbaugh. Most of his show is him reading the news and making little comments here and there. Some of his comments are funny, some stupid, but you actually do get a fair amount of news.
The one I can not endure is Beck. His show is essentially him and two other guys sitting around snickering and tittering like frat boys or school girls.
Better than the Boston area, which has Jeff Kuhner. He annoys me even when I agree with him. And that's just from his point of view - there also his annoying was of talk-ink.
I never listen to local shows, I guess when it comes to talk radio I am a reverse federalist.
When I lived in Harrisburg I would listen to a local guy on the afternoon drive. He was basically a PA version of Michael Savage, and after awhile I got bored with the incessant shouting.
I like Garibaldi.
I thought he was dead?
The other one.
So he was in a SciFi series where he was named after the original Red Shirt?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(Italy)
I used to catch it occasionally when I lived in Atlanta.
I listened to Boortz in the Am (who I genuinely liked) and Clark Howard on the drive home, sometimes if traffic was bad or I was running late that would bleed into Hannity's show
His show wasn't the worst but it was hard to put up with the team politics and some of the socon derp.
What I wish I could catch more often is Jerry Doyle's show. I mean how can you not love a vaguely libertarian political talk show put on by Mr Garibaldi from babylon 5. Bonus points if he is out for the day as he often uses Dwight Shultz (Murdock from the A-team/Lt Barclay from Star Trek TNG) as a fill in.
They just took JD off my local station. I'm sure I can find him on XM but haven't gotten round to it.
That panel had to be terribly frustrating to sit through. I wonder how many times a day Welch has to restrain himself from facepalming while wandering around FOX.
You can see McInnes slapping himself in the head over one of the responses.
"That panel had to be terribly frustrating to sit through."
Being stoned might have helped.
Hey it's the guy from the Arby's commercial. He's an authority.
"Is your pot dried here in the store, or in a factory somewhere?"
SLICIN UP FRESHNESS
I tried to watch. Didn't make it 15 minutes. Hannity is an asshole. I quit when he started screaming at his guest that he needed to answer whether he wanted all drugs to be legal.
If he only put that much pressure on the politicians who frequent his show.
Shameless.
he started screaming at his guest that he needed to answer whether he wanted all drugs to be legal.
You mean like alcohol? Based on its pharmacological effects, if ethanol had been discovered a couple of months ago rather than 6,000 years ago, it would be a Schedule 1 narcotic.
Hannity is what happens when you let an Irishman sober up.
Then keep that whiskey river flowing!
Well then, it must be a good thing that I get stoned
Hmm, all drugs?
Well I am on the fence about anti biotics being freely available over the counter as there is a ligitimate argument that their abuse directly puts others at risk but outside of that, yeah all of them.
Unfortunately, even if we're responsible with it, other people won't be. In Thailand every bathroom and the showers at the place I stayed had hospital grade anti-biotic hand wash in them.
My doctor in Korea typed my symptoms into a computer and got "influenza" and then prescribed antibiotics.
Awful. North America has definitely become better at not over-prescribing antibiotics but I guess that hasn't spread overseas.
Control of antibiotic usage and disposal is absolutely a legitimate area for government to be involved in.
Yeah, I've taken antibiotics twice in my life. I'm going to be pissed if something ab resistant takes me out.
Wow. When Welch and a guy who has tried every drug known to man are the smartest and most sensible people in the room...[shakes head slowly. opens up top desk drawer to reveal a flask filled with JW Blue and takes a long deep drink]
What's amazing about these group "debates" is the emotion of those who are pro prohibition and will not even comp template any facts that are not on their side. These same "conservatives" decry the left as using emotion in place of fact, and all I hear is emotion as to why they should continue to ruin lives of non violent offenders. Pro prohibitionists will not let any facts get in the way of their emotions.