Post Maks Strange Bedfellows
The Denver Post
This is a tale of Pat Robertson, Tom Tancredo and ... me.
Something is seriously wrong with that construct, I know. What I can't figure out is whether it's them (Pat and Tom) or me (me).
But if we're all on the same page — and it looks like we are — I have to start worrying that I've been reading from the wrong book. After all, when your life is based on the compass school of ideology — for example, I'm happiest when standing 180 degrees from Tancredo — you can see the chance for misdirection.
It all began when I saw this shocking headline in The New York Times: "Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should Be Legal."
I couldn't have been more surprised if the headline had said: "Pat Robertson Says He Plays Bob Marley on his iPod."
Pat Robertson, pro-doper? Sure, and Hunter Thompson was a televangelist.
I'm not exactly a huge legalize-marijuana guy, maybe because I haven't smoked any for many years. I take so many medicines now — this is what happens in old age, folks — that I'm lucky if I can sneak the occasional beer.
But if you grew up when adults made you watch "Reefer Madness," as I did, you pretty much know the war on drugs — particularly on pot — is a silly obsession, which I had always assumed would give way when my generation grew up.
Then a strange then happened. When my generation did grow up, they became like all previous grown-ups, particularly those who entered politics and either claimed they had never inhaled or said they'd "experimented" — as if a Bunsen burner were involved — and then found they didn't like it.
But now, it looked like the original grown-ups — if the headline about 81-year-old Robertson was true — had become us.
The first thing I did was check to make sure they were talking about that Pat Robertson, the one who last made headlines when he blamed the recent tornado victims for not being sufficiently prayerful. This didn't surprise anyone who remembers that Robertson blamed the Haiti earthquake on a pact with the devil.
A pact with the devil is one thing. But Robertson in a pact with devil weed?
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