Yes, the media does indeed engage in selective reporting. They do indeed look for the worst example of dress and deportment available to fit their stereotypes...and all too often, one of us provides them with what they want. Fifty people could be standing there in suits and spit-shined shoes, and one guy who looks like he sleeps in a dumpster. Take a guess who the cameras will zoom in on. The more disheveled and wilder looking and behaving, the better...for them.

Obviously this doesn't do much for us.

I live by rules everyday as we all do. I don't mind most laws just unfair laws.

Bob Dillions words come to my mind as I'm writing this. We've got to serve somebody.

And, unfortunately, some of our own are not savvy enough not to play into their hands:

""It's not just about the pot, it's about the laws," said Willy Slee of Clearwater, who was selling homemade shirts imprinted with everything from marijuana leaves to a picture of Bill Clinton holding a joint. "I don't like any laws. (Emphais mine) It's about someone trying to tell you what you can do."

Examine this statement; what do you think Joe Sixpack would think when he read it?

(Sneeringly) "Aw, poor kid. He doesn't like laws? Laws get in the way of doing what he wants? To smoke dope? While I have to go to work and support his sorry, Welfare-riding ass? Too bad! The punk should have to work for a living like me!"

Now, if Mr. Slee had had the presence of mind to realize he had an excellent chance to explain our position, he might have gone into how innocent people, including 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, have been killed to prevent Americans from using a weed that itself has not killed anyone in 5,000 years of recorded human history.

That kind of controversial statement makes an impact...and makes the media sit up and quit yawning and snickering; nothing like a little sharp-edged truth-telling that runs contrary to 'conventional wisdom' to stir the s**t-pot.

Which is just what the media likes to do. They could care less which way the cinders fly; they just want to be able to say they are performing their 'public duty' by bringing important issues to the public's attention; it satisfies some FCC regs and lets them keep their station license.

and, of course, up their ratings.

But even more important: Let Joe Sixpack get the idea that his kids could wind up as burnt offerings on the altar of the DrugWarriors, too, and he starts to wonder whether it's worth it rather than provide a pat, knee-jerk reaction...as he's been propagandized into doing. Which is another reason why the antis are pee-their-pants scared to go one on one with a reformer on live TV. Wake Joe Sixpack up from his workaday somnambulism? Get him politically active? No way! He might scrap the whole gravy train!

Very dangerous ideas indeed.

The old Chinese ideogram from "change" is made of two symbols: Catastophe and Opportunity. It's long past time we stopped blindly allowing events to trip us up and start taking advantage of our opportunities.