Send someone to the People's Guillotine
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By Paul Krassner Introduction Several years ago, someone asked me, "What do you think of the new drug czar?" I didn't realize that this was a reference to William Bennett. I thought my friend was talking about a new drug called Zar. "I haven't tried it yet," I confessed. "Where can I get some?" I was hoping that Zar wouldn't make me gnash my teeth like other drugs cut with amphetamine. Then I learned that Bennett was actually the antichrist in the guise of a moral reformer. Take his position on marijuana...please. We know that tobacco is a legal product that kills 1,200 people every day -- in this country alone; forget about innumerable victims in foreign lands -- whereas pot is illegal and the worst that can happen is maybe you'll raid your neighbor's refrigerator. But when Bennett was a pundit panelist on a TV show about that subject, the only example of marijuana causing death that he could cite was a train wreck in Canada where the engineer had supposedly been smoking pot. When he went to college in Texas, Bennett dated Janis Joplin. Did they turn on together? Probably, but we'll never know. Perhaps he was like Bill Clinton, experimenting but not inhaling. Last August, through his organization, Empower America, Bennett stated, with all the logic of a moron joke, "The burning of black churches has caused justifiable outrage in the country. President Clinton has taken it upon himself to speak out, time and again, against church burnings. And he is right to do so. But drugs have destroyed many, many, many more black families than church burnings. Yet on the drug issue Bill Clinton is virtually silent -- in word and in deed." Clinton seems to have responded to this criticism by sharing Bennett's lack of compassion and fighting state laws that would allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It is as though he were announcing, "I feel your pain -- I just don't want to relieve it." Following Bennett's stint as drug czar, he became education czar. And what did he accomplish in that official capacity? There are still teachers who must pay money out of their own pockets to buy textbooks for students who don't know how to read. And now he has appointed himself virtue czar. Pick a virtue, any virtue, and William Bennett has copyrighted it. Simply mention the word "charity," for instance, and he will automatically receive royalties. He tried to rape the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech by leading the campaign against rap lyrics that encourage rape. Next, he attacked daytime television talk shows, being careful to point out, "We are not talking about shows like Oprah, or Regis and Kathie Lee." Of course, Kathie Lee Gifford was the beneficiary of child slave labor in Third World countries, but at least she didn't have guests like the woman who claimed that she became pregnant while making a pornographic movie. Bennett is Catholic, so it's not a total surprise that he should be opposed to abortion rights, but once again, his reasoning makes Dan Quayle appear to be an intellectual by comparison. He compares "abortion in this century with slavery a century and a half ago." Hey, wasn't there an old movie with a scared Stepin Fetchit saying, "Come on, fetus, move!" Satirist Harry Shearer knew I was writing this and asked me to be sure and quote his opinion: "William Bennett is the most dangerous man in America." Maybe so, but all I know is that when Bennett asserted that presidential candidate Pat Buchanan was "flirting with fascism," it was like Charlie Sheen deriding Hugh Grant because he had to pay for sex. For Bennett himself is, after all, the friendliest fascist you'll ever meet. |
