Get Off My Lawn
by digby
We all know that any discussion of violent political rhetoric or gun control is off the table so attention is turning to mental illness. This is not sitting well with Fox News, which has to find a way to blame “the left” for the Tucson tragedy or they just aren’t earning their money.
Professional curmudgeon Liz Trotta (famous for her hilarious joking about assassinating the president) found a way to do it in her media commentary this morning: the left wing media are all on drugs and are engaged in a cover-up:
Trotta: The whole drugs story, illegal drug use, was abandoned by the media oh some 20 or 25 years ago. The 60’s really did, the 70s drug use has become accepted. So many states, including Arizona, are ratifying the legal use of marijuana. It’s one more thing that the media, particularly the media have decided to accept it as part of American life.
Take a look at this quote for a second if you will:
“As a teen Loughner turned to heavy drinking and drugs, such the legal hallucinogen Salvia,” Osler [Zach] said. “He would say he was using and he would talk about it say {it” would do to him and I was like “Dude, that’s screwed up.”
Now that was reported by ABC radio and we have heard some reports about Salvia, in the Daily Beast, which is a hallucinogen.Most of the testimony we’ve heard coming from his friends is that there was very big drug use and they still won’t write the story. Like Katie Couric over at CBS would rather do a story on mental health a series, which by the way sounded as though it was written by an 8 year old. And talk about mental health, but not drugs because the left accepts illegal drug use. And many of users are in the media.
Eric Shawn: The salvia issues is interesting, we had Mylie Cyrus smoking some herb in a bong. Newsweek wrote about it, Michael Savage has been talking about every day every week, he’s been saying salvia, salvia, salvia. Why do you think that this has largely been ignored?
Trotta: Because we’ve now come to the view that marijuana doesn’t do anything to you. And of course it does. We’ve got generations of people out on the street who were the hip people of the 60s and the 70s and they’re homeless and we either ignore because they’re another class and that’s the left, or we think that’s just an exercise of freedom.
And then you’ve got people like Joe Klein over at Time Magazine citing studies and many British studies which are solid saying that the use of marijuana only exacerbates schizophrenia. And so he says this,he quotes this and then he’s quick to run and let you know that he is for the legalization of marijuana because nobody really quote knows why he’s done this. Why doesn’t this country, particularly the media in this country grow up and realize that the schools and the young population as well as the adult population is being ravaged by the use of hallucinogens and other illegal drugs.
I mean this is a man who thought grass was blue for heavens sakes!
Eric Shawn: They may say that it wasn’t drug use that it was mental illness. The they’ll say this is like Reefer Madness, remember that documentary?
Trotta: You cannot separate the two! You cannot separate the two! And they want to! That why is they’re going “mental illness, mental illness” Juuust slowly but surely, now we’re getting to drugs. But they want marijuana to be legalized even though it’s creating havoc.
I have to tell you. I went through the 60s and 70s covering lots of drugs use, witnessing lots of drug use. And I never met a druggie who hadn’t started on marijuana.
Eric Shawn: Alright, that’s an argument that’s been around for a long time. Salvia, though, may be one of the big stories, if that’s available although it’s illegal some places..
Trotta: Go to the web site and listen to the description of users of Salvia by the way, it’s hilarious.
It’s fairly clear that Trotta doesn’t know that salvia and marijuana aren’t the same thing. Either that or she is being purposefully dishonest. (And you had to see the look on Eric Shawn’s face to truly appreciate the sheer mean old lady nastiness of Trotta’s commentary.) I particularly liked the part where she said that Katie Couric sounded like an 8 year old and accused the “liberal media” of all being users. It’s kind of nostalgic to hear this kind of talk these days. Reminds me of my youth.
There is one thing people should keep in mind about this story. It’s true that drugs, particularly pot, are thought to exacerbate schizophrenia in young people. But the schizophrenic population is vanishingly small, somewhere about one percent. And reports from Loughner’s friends indicate that he was clean:
In October 2008, Tierney was living in Phoenix, and Loughner came to visit. They went to see a Mars Volta concert with friends, and Tierney was surprised when Loughner said he had quit partying “completely.” Loughner, according to Tierney, said, “I’m going to lead a more healthy lifestyle, not smoke cigarettes or pot anymore, and I’m going to start working out.” Tierney was happy for his friend: “I said, ‘Dude, that’s awesome.’ And the next time I saw him he was 10 pounds lighter.” Tierney never saw Loughner smoke marijuana again, and he was surprised at media reports that Loughner had been rejected from the military in 2009 for failing a drug test: “He was clean, clean. I saw him after that continuously. He would not do it.”
After Loughner apparently gave up drugs and booze, “his theories got worse,” Tierney says. “After he quit, he was just off the wall.” And Loughner started to drift away from his group of friends about a year ago.
The military rejected him because he admitted smoking pot many times on his application, not because he failed a drug test.
I haven’t seen too much discussion of this on TV, although I honestly don’t think it’s because all the reporters are high. I think it’s just that it’s completely absurd to talk about marijuana being the cause of this shooting when this mentally ill fellow with all these problems was able to easily buy an automatic weapon and walk into Walmart and buy clips with 31 bullet magazines. I don’t doubt that Fox is trying,and may well succeed, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Meanwhile, keep your eye out for Trotta. She’s going to be talking about incivility next week. Should be a corker.
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