Letters to the Editor
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At risk of sounding even more like a broken record than I already do
The MSM has been carrying water for the right wing for literally decades.
Every time a media source runs a story about a cannabis bust and fails to mention that cannabis is a far safer drug than alcohol they are carrying water for the right wing.
It is the right wing which initiated the War On (some) Drugs and it is the right wing which largely benefits from the WOsD.
Even heroin is a safer drug than alcohol.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/addictiv.htm
Relative Addictiveness of Various Substances
In Health, Nov/Dec 1990
"To rank today's commonly used drugs by their addictiveness, we asked experts to consider two questions: How easy is it to get hooked on these substances and how hard is it to stop using them? Although a person's vulnerability to drug also depends on individual traits -- physiology, psychology, and social and economic pressures -- these rankings reflect only the addictive potential inherent in the drug. The numbers below are relative rankings, based on the experts' scores for each substance:
100 Nicotine
99 Ice, Glass (Methamphetamine smoked)
98 Crack
93 Crystal Meth (Methamphetamine injected)
85 Valium (Diazepam)
83 Quaalude (Methaqualone)
82 Seconal (Secobarbital)
81 Alcohol
80 Heroin
78 Crank (Amphetamine taken nasally)
72 Cocaine
68 Caffeine
57 PCP (Phencyclidine)
21 Marijuana
20 Ecstasy (MDMA)
18 Psilocybin Mushrooms
18 LSD
18 Mescaline
Research by John Hastings
Relative rankings are definite, numbers given are (+/-)1%
http://www.mydr.com.au/default.asp?article=2911
Long-term use
In its pure form, heroin is relatively non-toxic to the body, causing little damage to body tissue and other organs. However, it is highly addictive and regular users are very likely to become dependent on it, even after a few days. Some long-term effects include constipation, menstrual irregularity and infertility in women and loss of sex drive in men.
http://web4health.info/en/answers/add-alcohol-longrun.htm
Those who often drink too much run a high risk of suffering physical damage. The level of damage depends on the amount. The organs that are used for the absorption and digestion of alcohol, like the stomach, the liver and the pancreas, are vulnerable. The brain also suffers from continuous abuse.
The liver is an important organ for the breakdown of alcohol. Excessive alcohol use can cause fatty degeneration of the liver, causing so-called fatty liver. Liver research has shown that probably more than half of the alcohol addicts have fatty liver. This can cause nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, loss of weight and fever. After stopping alcohol use, the liver can recover from fatty liver.
The most known incurable liver disorder caused by alcohol abuse is liver cirrhosis. More.
Other frequent diseases of the organs are gastritis (infection of the mucous membrane of the stomach) and inflammation of the pancreas. Gastritis can cause stomach bleeding; inflammation of the pancreas causes lower absorption of nutrients, causing, among others, loss of weight.
Several investigations have found a relation between excessive alcohol abuse and cancer of the mouth, throat and esophagus, especially with drinkers who also smoke. Heavy drinkers also run a higher risk of contracting cancer of the liver and the large intestine. Women who drink a lot have a higher risk of breast cancer.
Brain damage, like Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome ( more ) can occur.
The list of disorders caused by alcohol abuse is so long that we cannot mention them all.
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El Cid Is Quite Right
I would be among the first to acknowledge complexity at any level of my own analysis of the media.
However, despite Glenn's dislike of 'overarching' approaches to media performance, and the fact that there is actually journalism practiced occasionally, notice something significant.
Like recent problems with voting machines, notice that when there are huge, glaring, dangerous problems with mainstream media reporting of issues -- and ESPECIALLY with regard to foreign policy -- these problems always favor the right.
And those giant errors favor the right even at those very moments that the right feels beset upon.
If any of us see systematic problems going on for at least the last century of US news coverage, it isn't because we are unable to intellectually grasp complexity as well. It is precisely because we are able to understand that systemic realities can reveal themselves even through complexity & chaos.
Some folks feel the ned to strike a "reasonable" pose and say suff like, "well, the media may have had a liberal bias at one time" and it always makes me wonder when that might have been.
Was it during WWI, when they went along with the total censorship of anti-war views? Or the post-WWI Red Scare, which the media was instrumental in promoting, and which vanished almost overnight when it vanished from the pages of the papers?
Was it during the Great Depression, when the Literary Digest predicted FDR's defeat in the 1936 elections? (They were right, he lost--Maine and Vermont.) Was it during the McCarthy Era, when they printed McCarthy's wild accusations, and never asked to see the "list of names" he waved above his head, which later turned out to have been a blank sheet of paper?
Was it during the Civil Rights Movement, when a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. never made the New York Times front page? Was it any time since second wave feminism first appeared, when feminism has been repeatedly reported dead every four or five years or so? Was it during the 15-year long "global warming debate" when not one peer reviewed article was published on the "skeptics" side of the debate?
When, exacly, was this period of liberal media bias, when the majority of American papers have endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in every election since the Great Depression, except for 1964?
Yes, indeed, there is an incredible complexity of causes at work influencing the media. But the end result is overhwelmingly biased in one direction only--while reality itself is biased just the other way.
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You speak the truth!
Great work as usual, Glenn. You always hit it in the head.
The crazed "we're about to live under sharia law" that Michelle Malkin promulgates is probably the worst example of this hysteria.
You should also mention the media's glaring omission of the Republican delegation that was in Syria at the same time as Pelosi. Not a peep of the wingnut outrage about them.
One other thing - we really need to stop calling our military presence in Iraq a "war." It is an occupation, plain and simple. Calling it a "war" just perpetuates the neocon fantasy that we're fighting "terrorists" in Iraq who are about to invade our country and put us under sharia law.
Call it what it is - Iraqi occupation.