Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow

I watched Michelle Alexander's 2010 book The New Jim Crow change the debate about drug policy and racism in the US. This year, on its 10th anniversary, we have a chance for a greater transformation. 

At the time when the book was first published, much of the African-American community and its leaders were lock-step in line with the drug war. But Alexander made her case so well for the role of the War on Drugs in the mass incarceration and marginalization of people of color that today leaders like Rep. Karen Bass (chair of the Congressional Black Caucus) and Sen. Kamala Harris (California's former DA) have joined to advance police reform at the federal level (though some say it doesn't go far enough.)

As Alexander lays it out, "When the gains and goals of the Civil Rights Movement began to require real sacrifices on the part of white Americans, conservative politicians found they could mobilize white racial resentment by vowing to crack down on crime....Beginning in the 1970s, researchers found that racial attitudes—not crime rates of likelihood of victimization—are an important determinant of white support for 'getting tough on crime' and antiwelfare measures. The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism."

Ronald Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr. helped convince the US population that drugs were the most significant problem in the country through policy pronouncements, rather than facts. "The results were immediate," Alexander writes. "As law enforcement budgets exploded, so did prison and jail populations. In 1991, the Sentencing Project reported that the number of people behind bars in the US was unprecedented in world history, and that one fourth of young African American men were now under the control of the criminal justice system."

"Killer Mike": Nixon-style Villainizing of Hippies & Blacks over Marijuana at Play Today

Rapper and Atlanta-based activist Michael "Killer Mike" Render lit up Real Time with Bill Maher last night, and not just with his million-dollar smile. At one point, he brandished a joint for the cameras.

Maher, noting that both he and Mike “love our pot,” mentioned that AG Barr has employed the DEA on protesters. "I just want to say to some of these protesters: if someone offers you a joint, that might be a narc,” he said.

Mike responded, “The most ironic thing about that is, when Nixon declared the drug war, he declared it on hippies and on blacks. What they’re essentially doing is a new version of that, because hippies were just progressive white people at the time—shouts out to Ben & Jerry. They were people that were progressive enough to say right is right and wrong is wrong and white’s not always right, we’re gonna side with what’s right. And of course black people were pushing the line."

"Why do you need drug enforcement agents at a protest? Really, you should hope everyone gets stoned, gets hungry and leaves." -Killer Mike

Cannabis Used to "Stimulate Ecstasy" Found at Ancient Shrine - To The Goddess Asherah?

Two altars found at the Arad shrine on display at The Israel Museum. 

An altar at a Judahite shrine dating to the 8th century B.C. was used to burn cannabis for ecstatic effect, researchers Eran Arie, Baruch Rosen and Dvory Namdar report. The discovery was made by performing a chemical analysis of residue found on the smaller of two limestone altars found at the entrance to the "Holy of Holies"(the inner sanctum) at the Arad shrine in Southern Israel. The second, larger altar was used to burn frankincense, a widely traded incense that was highly valued at the time (as was, presumably, cannabis). Fifty similar altars have been found in the southern Levant.

The shrine as discovered in 1963.

"It seems feasible to suggest that the use of cannabis on the Arad altar had a deliberate psychoactive role," the researchers state, writing in the Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. "The frequent use of hallucinogenic materials for cultic purposes in the Ancient Near East and beyond is well known and goes back as early as prehistoric periods (e.g., Rudgley 1995; Merlin 2003; Guerra-Doce 2015*)....These psychoactive ingredients were destined to stimulate ecstasy as part of cultic ceremonies. As shown in this study, 8th century Judah may now be added to the places where these rituals took place." This is some 200 years after the fabled Temple of Solomon with its many incense burners.

The discovery lends credence to Polish anthropologist Dr. Sula Benet's 1936 doctoral thesis ''Hashish in Folk Customs and Beliefs,'' which theorized that the biblical incense kaneh bosm, meaning "aromatic cane" was cannabis, mistranslated as "calamus" in the modern bibles. "Taking into account the matriarchal element of Semitic culture, one is led to believe, that Asia Minor was the original point of expansion for both the society based on the Matriarchal circle and the mass use of hashish," Benet wrote.

Ke(d)eshet, the Egyptian goddess related to Asherah,
standing on a lion. (British Museum.)

"Previous scholars have theorized that the two altars were devoted to two deities who were worshipped at the shrine, possibly a divine couple," Arie, Rosen and Namdarwrite. In other shrines where two incense altars were found together, "the same conclusion about multiple deities worshipped has been drawn."

Shards of pottery with the name "Yahweh" have been found at the shrine; his consort was the Goddess Asherah, to whom incense was burned, described (and decried) in the Hebrew Scriptures. "Inscriptions from two locations in southern Palestine seem to indicate that she was also worshiped as the consort of Yahweh." (Britannica.com) Pictorial evidence has also been found.

Watch How Phyllis Schlafly Waged War on Women in "Mrs. America"

Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan debates Cate
Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly in Mrs. America

The FX/Hulu series Mrs. America is an eye-opening, skillfully produced and acted story of the women who advanced womens' rights in the 1970s, and the woman who took them down: Phyllis Schlafly.

I had thought Schlafly was just a wing-nut like the anti-gay Anita Bryant, with a single cause: the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. But in fact, she was a foreign policy expert whose influential book, A Choice Not an Echo is thought to have been instrumental in Barry Goldwater winning the California primary and Republican nomination for president in 1964. A shrewd political strategist, Schlafly parlayed her STOP ERA campaign into enough political power to swing the Republican party so far to the right that it embraced Ronald Reagan and his "Just Say No" wife Nancy and so much more, all the way up to Trump, whom Schlafly supported before she died in 2016.

Portrayed impeccably (as always) by Cate Blanchett, who co-produced the series, we watch Schlafly forming alliances with rabid anti-abortion, anti-gay hate groups whose drivers turn out to be KKK members; finding out that her eldest son is gay and lecturing him about controlling his impulses; crossing swords with fellow Republican Jill Ruckelshaus (Elizabeth Banks) and the ultra liberal Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman); and getting a pie thrown in her face just like Bryant did.

The Tommy Chong Bong Song, Johnny Cash, and Me

Hear the Tommy Chong Bong Song.

It was September 2003, and Tommy Chong was being sent to prison for selling bongs.

I'd written so many articles about people being caught up in our unconscionable war against a plant over the years, I just couldn't bring myself to write one more. There were so many injustices involved, including the fact that Chong was targeted because of the irreverent Cheech and Chong movies he'd made, in a country that is supposed to revere freedom of speech.


So I decided to write a song instead.

Because the "Operation Pipe Dreams" that took Chong down involved 1200 officers in raids of head shops and distributors across the country, leading to 55 arrests, the lyric began:

While the terrorists were knocking on our front door
Twelve hundred policemen didn't have much more
To do than round up 55 in their dragnet
For sellin' a giggle on the internet
We can't find Bin Laden and we're stuck in Iraq
But we've got Tommy Chong under key and lock 

Tommy Chong, Tommy Chong
Servin' nine months in prison for selling bongs
To you I sing this song 

Of Jean Seberg, and Jeanne d'Arc

I thought it was a little over the top that the opening scene of the Amazon film Seberg showed actress Jean Seberg being burned at the stake while playing Joan of Arc. But after watching the movie, starring Kristen Stewart in the title role, I realized it was perfectly appropriate.



Jean Seberg was a 17-year-old girl from a small town in Iowa when she was entered in an international talent search to find someone to play Joan of Arc. Director Otto Preminger cast Jean after reportedly testing 18,000 young women for the title role in the 1957 film St. Joan, with a screenplay by Graham Greene from the George Bernard Shaw play of the same name.

Seberg was badly burned filming the scene where Joan is put to death, but she later said the emotional scars she endured were worse. Those she got from the critics and from working with Preminger, who was notoriously abusive to his actresses. (Robert Mitchum once slapped Preminger on the set, after he demanded repeated takes of Mitchum slapping actress Jean Simmons.) Seberg went on to become a darling of the French avant garde cinema for her role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, and also starred in Hollywood pictures, like Paint Your Wagon and Airport.

Jean as Jeanne

Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was also 17 when she announced her calling to fight the English invaders in France. Among the many accusations against her were that she danced as a child in Domrémy at a "fairy tree," "hanging on the boughs garlands of different herbs and flowers, made by her own hand." She rather admitted to that, but denied ever using or seeking out mandrake—a root that contains hallucinogenic alkaloids—although she said she had heard of it. 

The two saints who spoke to her were St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret the Virgin. Some modern scholars think that the legend of Catherine was based on the life and murder of the Greek philosopher Hypatia, (with reversed roles of Christians and pagans). As Saint Marina, St. Margaret is associated with the sea, and possibly the goddess Aphrodite.

Like Jeanne before her, Jean stood up for causes she believed in, namely the Black Panther Party, which was funding schools and meal programs, as well as engaging in more militant rhetoric and activity. Dialog from Seberg about the violent mistreatment of blacks by police echo in protests of today over those ongoing abuses.

Something to Watch if You're "Bored to Death"

From the opening credits of "Bored to Death"

I was feeling a little, well, bored to death while sheltering at home, so it seemed like the kiss of Kismet when I noticed that Amazon Prime is running the 2009-2011 HBO Series Bored to Death through 5/21.

I knew I would like it right away when, in the cartoon-drawn opening credits, Ted Danson's character George hands a joint to Jason Schwartzman playing Jonathan, an insecure writer who tries his hand at being an "unlicensed" private detective after reading too many Raymond Chandler novels.

The show almost has social distancing
down (with Olivia Thirlby).

In the pilot episode Jonathan loses his girlfriend (Olivia Thirlby, from The Wackness) because he won't stop drinking and smoking pot. He cuts down to white wine, but smokes in almost every episode with his friends George, a womanizing magazine publisher, and Ray, an infantile cartoonist played by the always-funny Zach Galifianakis, who's probably most famous for lighting up a joint on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Jonathan hilariously captures his prey with kindness, acting more as a psychotherapist than a detective much of the time. But as the series evolves he finds his courage, as does Ray, whose spoofy cartoon character "Super Ray" gains his powers when his huge penis touches a subway rail. (Yes, we're in New York City.) Ray and George bond over some weed-fueled revelations while they wait for Jonathan on a stake out, leading to more madcap adventures.

Jonathan (Jason Schwartzman) and Stella (Jenny Slate) on a date. 

One of the girls gets to have her ganja fun when Jonathan meets the pro-pot Stella played by comedienne Jenny Slate. "She's beautiful, she's Jewish, and she's got a great vaporizer," he says after Stella invites him over to try her new Volcano vaporizer.