>Entertainers were important to those who wanted to be entertained.
Entertainers are important in a broad cultural context, not only in the
sense that they are often not mearly a 'reflection' of their times, but
also leaders and trend setters as well. Youth idealize their music heroes
especially, and Jimi Hendrix was the most high profile black musician
that middle Americas white kids were flocking to see, attempting to
dress like, play guitar like and party like, and whose music they were
cranking as loud as the sound equipment of the time could amplify!
His well known, and only somewhat apocryphal industrial strength
zest for life and all it's pleasures and pains; his wild stage antics;
his brilliant and poetic visions of a world unshackled by blind convention;
his simple honesty and willingness to speak his mind; all this made him
anathema to everything middle America was afraid of.
To say 'Entertainers were important to those who wanted to be entertained'
belittles to an absurd degree the influence and contribution of music on our
culture and thus on our lives.
>If Jimi was not a junkie, Mr. Ed was not a horse.
I think that the fact that the autopsy report stated that he was 'not
addicted to heroin at the time of death' and the lack of any evidence
that he ever HAD been addicted leaves the question of Mr. Eds origins
in doubt.
>You are quite right that most drug users these days are white and
>middle class, and from homes where they were neglected or abused.
LOL! The only time you state that I'm right about anything at all in your
post, is in regard to something I definitely DID NOT say!
Where did that come from, BTW?
>That is why all the whining and sniveling about being punished
>for drugs by the law.
I'm not sure I can recreate to any satisfaction the train of thought by
which you came to that conclusion from the premise preceding it.
I will state this: Laws against consensual, or victimless, crimes are
unconstitutional and any perceived 'whining and sniveling' done to
further the upholding of the basic rights provided by the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights is whining and sniveling of the most noble strain.
>In the Fifties, the only people who had drugs were criminals and bohemian
>types who bought drugs from criminals.
Joe The Bartender!!! A CRIMINAL!!! Say it ain't so, Joe!!!
Of course, Joe WAS a criminal some years previous, during alcohol
Prohibition.Talk about an example of the futility of legislating morality!
I would prefer that these kinds of laws remain in the police states
where they belong. (Hmmm)
>The Mexican word for hemp is Cáñamo. marijuana is the name for
>the drug from the leaves and buds. Mexicans who grow it, do not
>let their kids or workers use it because it makes them stupid and lazy
>in their opinion. Cocaine and amphetamines do make people crazy,
>sometimes permanently.
Drugs also make people feel good and have been known to be
instrumental in many experiences often described as 'spiritual',
whatever that is.
>The opium laws in San Francisco were aimed at preventing whites
>from getting opium because it was becoming popular among bohemian
>whites.
Actually, said law was pointed directly at the Chinese immigrant in
that the only form of opium outlawed was smoking opium, the kind
preferred by the Chinese. No politician of the time would have dreamed
of passing a law that would ban Grandma Murtles Wonder Elixir! The
white folks drank or ate their opium, unlike those terrible Chinese, who
smoked it.
>Read the papers of the time online at Bancroft Library.
How accurate a reflection would a future reader receive of our times
solely from the reading of our newspapers?
>Those who use drugs are supporting the right wing dictatorships and
>military criminals who produce them.
Those who OUTLAW drugs are CREATING the right wing dictatorships
and military criminals who produce them.
>Drug use is a product of bourgeois decadence,
>not revolutionary in any sense.
Anti-drug laws are the product of moral decadence,
not humanistic or libertarian idealism in any sense.
Wally 'Slogan' Sass
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts
to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out
of things that are not crimes." -Abe Lincoln