Joho the Blog
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October 17, 2004
I was re-reading Doonesbury's Greatest Hits: A Mid-Seventies Revue — I read from it every day because that's how my Liberal Overlords send me their coded messages — and came across this strip from 1976, when Gerald Ford was in office and his son Jack had acknowledged that he (Jack) smoked pot:
It got me thinking. Perhaps Clinton's "But I didn't inhale" remark was intended as a joking reference to this strip. Then, once it got taken seriously, Clinton felt like he couldn't correct the record for fear of looking like a liar or like someone who doesn't take drug "abuse" seriously. Or, perhaps he just didn't want to raise the drug issue again: "Actually, I did inhale. And I held my breath until I felt the sweet fumes aerating my brain, raising me to a higher consciousness." (Actually, my own multi-decade experiment with marijuana led me to conclude that it lowered my consciousness, albeit rather enjoyably.) Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But it's Sunday, so Joho should run a comic strip, right? A couple of pages later I found another strip that took me down memory lane:
Posted
by D. Weinberger at October 17, 2004 10:36 AM
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Comments
More than once it's occurred to me that a comprehensive study of Doonesbury and Trudeau's interaction with american culture and history would be a very interesting work to do (admittedly I confess I came up with this idea in 1978 or so, and I haven't done any work on it besides jabbering to my then 6th grade english teacher about it).
Maybe it can be before or after my CoEvolution Quarterly and Social Computing in the early 70s study.
Clearly, as has been said in many places, we need a system of patrons!
Posted by: Eric Sinclair | October 17, 2004 11:14 AM
you will undoubtedly find this to be of some interest: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1854/a07.html
although I agree with your assessment. if it were legal, however, i would probably toke on sat. nite, instead of drinking wine. it would be more relaxing, and much healthier for me (in the couple of tokes really necessary to unwind--it does enhance music, and sex! not that i have much of that, though, ...plenty of music, heh). why should I need something like any of that to relax in the first place--a lifetime of futile labor, full of imbeciles.
Posted by: bw | October 17, 2004 11:22 AM
"a lifetime of futile labor, full of imbeciles"...quite an (eventual) epitaph! :)
Posted by: David Weinberger | October 17, 2004 11:49 AM
"I heard he doesn't inhale."
It is definitely funny to think of Clinton repeating this line as a joking allusion.
On the Charlie Rose show last week Gary Trudeau told about getting into a White House function as the guest of his wife (Jane Pauley) during the Clinton presidency. Clinton and the King of Morocco stood together in a receiving line, and when Trudeau came up, Clinton introduced him to the King by saying "This is Gary Trudeau. He makes fun of me for a living." Trudeau said that the King's reaction of disbelief and outrage made him realize how good we really have it in this country with respect to freedom of expression.
Posted by: joe grohens | October 17, 2004 05:32 PM