Random Thoughts

June 26, 2002

Recently, local marijuana activists raised a howl of disappointment that the region‘s media didn‘t cover their march in Traverse City on May 4. In fact, the media pretty much ignored the Million Marijuana March the whole world over.
We‘re guilty as charged at the Express. Although we ran a notice that the march was going to be held in a preceding issue, the paper‘s photographer (yours truly) was headed out of town that weekend and didn‘t lose any sleep about missing the marchers waving signs downtown.
Most likely, many of those marchers feel there was a conspiracy by the media to keep the lid on their effort to end the War on Drugs. But the truth is that protest marches no longer get reporters flying down firepoles in hot pursuit as was once the case. Marchers ranging from Right to Life to the March of Dimes are also disappointed that their efforts produce more yawns than TV cameras.
If there‘s any conspiracy, it lies in the fact that today‘s media is controlled by the Baby Boom generation, which smoked pot by the hay bale in its youth, but could care less about the stuff today. And since most of the folks in the boomer generation have experienced the joys of child-rearing by now, they‘re wised-up to the notion that they don‘t want to encourage their kids to be any more zoned-out than is already the case. Marijuana will never be decriminalized by the been-there-done-that generation because they‘ve moved on to chardonnay and Ibuprofen as their drugs of choice.
Marijuana activists might be more effective in decriminalizing the herb if they‘d focus on voter registration. Lack of enough petition signatures has kept the legalize-it PRA proposal off the ballot for the past two years, with little hope of regaining momentum.
Voter registration and the leverage of niche politics are important to any youth-oriented cause, be it decriminalizing marijuana, the draft, or raising the minimum wage.
Yet, if you ask many people under the age of 25 if they voted on election day, the answer is usually “huh?“ Without a voting constituency, this issue is taken about as seriously as a Cheech & Chong movie.

STABBING SENSATION
What‘s really disturbing about all this, however, is the claim by Bob Vanderlewn of Manistee that his ads for the march were rejected by some unnamed newspapers in the region. Rejecting an ad over a legitimate political issue stabs at the heart of the First Amendment.
Newspapers and the broadcast media use the First Amendment as a shield in order to expose serious matters involving the public interest. Constitutional scholars, including attorney Gerry Spence and former special prosecutor Archibald Cox, have noted that a primary function of the First Amendment is also to allow unpopular ideas to be stated, published and broadcast.
Our history is full of “unpopular ideas“ which were suppressed by the media of their day, including women‘s suffrage, the right to unionize, civil rights for black Americans, and the right to birth control, to name a few things we now take for granted.
Yet can the First Amendment stand for long if newspapers lack the courage to publish something as innocuous as an ad for a marijuana march because it might offend a few fuddy-duddy readers? The shield of the First Amendment implies the responsibility to have the courage to wield the sword of revelation.
Newspapers routinely (and rightly) reject ads involving hate speech or obscenity, but a marijuana march is neither; it‘s a legitimate issue calling attention to the 700,000 citizens who are captive in America‘s penal system at a cost of billions of dollars. Their liberty, our justice, and our tax dollars depend on discussing this matter in a forthright manner.
Maybe our local press can be excused for being lazy or disinterested about covering another march on a sunny Saturday in May, but the press can’t be excused if the root is simple cowardice.
It‘s too bad that young people -- trusting in democracy and freedom of speech -- learned such a harsh lesson in hypocrisy on May 4.