New York Times Needs To Get Over The 5Th Grade Pot Jokes

[AKenewell]

By: Michael Whitney Sunday November 14, 2010 11:22 am

 

Today the New York Times published a respectable article looking at the future of the marijuana movement, and what’s next for 2012. The Times used a meeting in Denver of marijuana advocates last week as the basis for its story. Overall, I have no complaints about the article. It’s the photo and accompanying caption that are just embarrassing for the times.

 

The photo for this story on the future of marijuana legalization is two dudes smoking a bowl in a car, with the caption, “Marijuana advocates gathered in Denver recently for an event that was partly a review of the California campaign for legalization.” Screen capture:

 

No. It’s a photo of two random guys getting high, not of marijuana advocates planning legalization.

 

More than most issues, marijuana tends to bring out the giggles among copywriters in print and online media coverage. E.g.: “Will California go to pot?” or “Politics may blunt medical marijuana support.” I tried to keep track at first, but it was just too much to handle.

It’s this kind of embarrassing, fifth-grade level jokes that are pervasive throughout media coverage of marijuana; that it reaches as high as the Times isn’t surprising as much as it’s a sign there’s a long way to go before legalization is treated on equal footing with other political issues. But with each vote for legalization, it’s another step forward.

 

In the mean time, send some email to the good folks at the New York Times to let them know what you think about their photo selection.

 

http://justsaynow.firedoglake.com/2010/11/14/new-york-times-needs-to-get-over-the-5th-grade-pot-jokes/

[V420]

[MightyMightyMezz]

Someone in my town wrote a critique of an immature comic strip in the Michigan Daily and they ran it.

 

 

 

 

Jason Mahakian's latest comic is the height of irony and exemplifies the smug but ignorant mentality of many in the University community (The greater good, 04/06/2009)

 

In it, a "bright" young woman addresses an archetypal stoner. "We're raising money for cancer! What are you guys doing?" "Ummm...smokin' weed, man," the Hash Bash-attending burnout sheepishly answers. A question to the reader is posed: "One day, one campus. Two great causes?" The implication is that legalizing cannabis is frivolous in comparison to fund-raising for cancer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

It has been known to science since at least the early ’70s that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is an extraordinarily powerful anti-tumor agent. Recent research has confirmed this by finding that THC injected directly into rat brains shrinks brain tumors. Anecdotal evidence suggests that ingesting cannabis oil can reverse even advanced cancer, as seen in the documentary “Run From the Cure: The Rick Simpson Story.”

 

Clearly, cannabis is among the most promising cancer therapies in the world. Unless the American Cancer Society is working to legalize medical cannabis and educating people about the power of THC to reduce tumors, they are probably preventing patients from getting a highly effective, non-toxic therapy.

 

Does the young lady in the comic become an unwitting dupe of those who would suppress natural cancer treatments? Does our stoner friend unknowingly represent the vanguard of the search for a cure? Wipe that smirk off your face and stop rolling your eyes long enough to research the science of cannabis as medicine and find out for yourself.

 

 

[freemannabis]

By: Michael Whitney Sunday November 14, 2010 11:22 am

 

Today the New York Times published a respectable article looking at the future of the marijuana movement, and what’s next for 2012. The Times used a meeting in Denver of marijuana advocates last week as the basis for its story. Overall, I have no complaints about the article. It’s the photo and accompanying caption that are just embarrassing for the times.

 

The photo for this story on the future of marijuana legalization is two dudes smoking a bowl in a car, with the caption, “Marijuana advocates gathered in Denver recently for an event that was partly a review of the California campaign for legalization.” Screen capture:

 

No. It’s a photo of two random guys getting high, not of marijuana advocates planning legalization.

 

More than most issues, marijuana tends to bring out the giggles among copywriters in print and online media coverage. E.g.: “Will California go to pot?” or “Politics may blunt medical marijuana support.” I tried to keep track at first, but it was just too much to handle.

 

It’s this kind of embarrassing, fifth-grade level jokes that are pervasive throughout media coverage of marijuana; that it reaches as high as the Times isn’t surprising as much as it’s a sign there’s a long way to go before legalization is treated on equal footing with other political issues. But with each vote for legalization, it’s another step forward.

 

In the mean time, send some email to the good folks at the New York Times to let them know what you think about their photo selection.

 

http://justsaynow.firedoglake.com/2010/11/14/new-york-times-needs-to-get-over-the-5th-grade-pot-jokes/

 

We feel "your" pain.

 

: /

 

And, frustration.

 

: \

 

Well, of course, we can't "Just Say NO to the GIGGLES" ...

 

And, I have to admit, like everyone does at times get tempted, I sometimes feel nearly uncontrollably compelled to say "cutesy" sounding things just as well.

 

Sometimes we even may be inticed to "fight back" with our own "slangy" slogans like: "There REALLY IS SAFETY in 'NUMBERS'"; Corney as it may sound.

 

Or, we can say: "There IS HOPE ... in GOOD 'DOPE'!"

 

But, NOT all laughter is always the best way to ensure that we all get our medicine.

 

To be sure, not that I wish to put any more faith and energy [than we are forced to] in a society where more "civil" and commercialized value of "FOLLOWship" is mindlessly condoned and placed upon countless unnatural, artificial, man-made laws over our ultra-universal life's much more natural, spiritual "laws" that unforcibly, ideally, lead us each and all by way of "common sense" of family, community and self realized and shared ehtical values of good old fashioned "common sense," but, if there can be [as there so violently is and too long has been] oppressively painful laws deliberately, intentionally, hatefully designed to victimize plants and plant consumers, there certainly should be a "universal law" against the use of such spitefully derogatory, bias-spawned, bigot-spewed "HATE-WORDS" - such as "pot," "doper," "stoner," and other war-instigating word-weapons of "mass destruction" that are violently aimed at fellow members of "our civilization".

 

Sad to say as see, as long as there are evil-intentioned, war-mongering, society-dividing, "YELLOW JOURNALISTS" and scandalous GOSSIP RAGS for YELLOW-TAINTED HATE-MAKERS to crawl up on just to "rain" all over the compassionate world's parade, such as you have perfectly pointed out for those of us who surely do care enough to want to make the world a better place, there will always be a struggle and fight to win our real FREEDOM from freedom-haters such as the publisher of the "off-white" picture in the otherwise relatively noteworthy article you have quoted.

 

But, hopefully, as long as we each keep on vigilantly watching all together, and we unfailingly always continue calling out the "YELLOW-SNOW-MAKERS" who spitefully show the compassionate-minded ones of us in the world who are all commonly, unitedly always striving for a peace and freedom-loving society what they each and all, personally, think about our essential, integral, healing moral codes we wish to try our best to live by, such as the timeless epistle to "love your neighbor as yourself," and universal appeal to "do at least so much so for others as we would be happy with being provided for ourselves," some day - faithfully, finally, very soon - the war against FREEDOM from tyrannical wannabe rulers and oppressors of free-will and neighborly love will, once and for all - be over.

 

FREE The CURE!

[Sativasfied]

According to the law in my state, I can legally medicate while a passenger in a private plane, boat or car.