Nancy Grace makes wonderful case for marijuana legalization
The whole thing reminded me of a magic eye picture, in the sense that I stared at it for 20 minutes and it made my head hurt and angered me.
Fran Lebowitz said that “the opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.” Grace doesn’t even bother waiting. By the end of her conversation with 2 Chainz, I found myself murmuring things like, “Please, let 2 Chainz finish; he is making good points,” which was not a sentiment I ever looked to express, especially not after that video with the bikini cake.
Really, the secret to looking like a sane, reasonable person with sound views is to appear next to Nancy Grace. She is the duff for opinions, if I’m using that right. (Is there ever a right way of using that? Possibly not.) By the time the segment is over, you want to dash out to whoever makes laws near you and demand “I’ll have the opposite of whatever she’s having.” Grace seemed to think that legalizing marijuana would force people to inflict it on their 2-year-old children, and nothing anyone said could sway her from this notion. She had video clips where this had happened, after all. It was all the sanity and calm of “Reefer Madness” without the exciting font choices.
If you watch Grace long enough, you start to think that you can turn something into a fact by:
• repeating the same information in a more urgent tone of voice
• saying, “But didn’t you just say [clear misunderstanding of what the other person just said]?”
• showing another video of the exact same thing that did not prove your point the first time and saying “HERE IS FOOTAGE. DO YOU SEE?” like Ralph Fiennes as the Tooth Fairy.
I’ve argued with third-graders who were more patient and listened better. The whole thing was like having teeth pulled while Jar Jar Binks offered you verbal encouragement, but a little worse. It was 20 minutes of my life that I will never get back. I could have spent those 20 minutes doing something comparatively enjoyable, like having a drunk beaver gnaw my leg off. I hope my colleague at Wonkblog is right that Grace is trolling.
I’m sorry. I’m agitated. When the segment began, I thought, “Well, it’s possible that there’s room for debate on this marijuana legalization business, if only to keep New York Times columnists from embarrassing themselves,” but by the time it was over I was hellbent not only on making it legal but also on finding enough of it to blunt the edge of this experience.
Reliving the discussion is making my head hurt all over again. Does anyone have marijuana? I hear it has medicinal properties. Also, Nancy Grace is opposed to it. That is all I need to know.