Dear Dan,
It’s always a pleasure to be named Hack of the Day by a publication I’ve never heard of [Referring to our sister paper, The Stranger—eds.]. Many thanks for the honor. I realize you are just trying to entertain readers, so I won’t quibble with the fantastic number of inaccuracies in your editorial. But it was especially dishonest of you to suggest that the story was about the war on drugs, no? The piece was about law enforcement’s inability to find much more than big pot plantations and a few growers and harvesters—how they couldn’t get to the money guys back in Mexico.
Warmly,
Bryan Denson
Reporter, The Oregonian
Yeah, yeah—it’s always a “law enforcement” piece when someone complains about a biased, unbalanced report about pot. But the particular kind of law enforcement you were reporting on is a part—a huge part—of the War On Drugs. Hello? Helicopters? Your report takes us to the front line of the War On Drugs.
And “this is what the government/law enforcement is doing” pieces typically get around to this question: “is what the government is doing working? is it effective?” Not yours. You’re not alone, though: there are lots of dumb fucking drug war stenographers at daily papers all over the country who neglect/refuse to ask that question. You’re all part of the problem and seemingly proud of it. And, hey, I’d never heard of the Oregonian before i moved to the Pacific Northwest. So we’re even.
Anxious to hear about the other “inaccuracies.”
Warmly,
Dan Savage
You should stick to sex advice.
Those inaccuracies, Bryan?
Our exchange goes on—and on and on and on—after the jump.
Dan, I’m busy here and I don’t have time to run them all down and open a dialog over your opinions about marijuana prohibition. But your whole editorial was predicated on a false representation of the story, and you know it.
Yeah, yeah: you’re a busy guy. But not too busy to make a bullshit accusation—”fantastic number of inaccuracies”—before dashing off to hide behind your crushing workload.
My blog post did not falsely represent your piece. Nice try. There are two sides to a drug war story and you told one, and were either too lazy or too biased to get a single quote from anyone qualified to question the massive expenditure of government resources those raids represent. Nor did you back up and ask the really important question: Why are people growing pot in secret on public lands anyway? For the same reason they grow pot in suburban basements: because it’s illegal to cultivate marijuana safely and responsibly.
A law enforcement story as long as the one you filed that doesn’t stop to ask, “Is the law effective? Is it just?”, amounts to a press release, Bryan, not a piece of journalism, and you know it. Hence your little fit, your false accusations of inaccuracies, your stupid attempt at a slight (you’ve never heard of my paper but you know what I do for a living?).xo
Dan
Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Danno. A reader alerting me to your post gave me your bio.
Hey—you found the time to clear that how-you-know-me-thing up, thanks! Now about those inaccuracies? There’s a fantastic number of ’em? Care to itemize, Bryano?
Bryan doesn’t want to tell me what was inaccurate about my post. Maybe he’ll tell you.
Once again, readers might like to read my feature in this week’s upcoming Mercury, entitled “Taking The High Road,” it’s an interview with Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, who essentially argues that the war on drugs is immoral. It’ll be live on the website at 5pm.
in the guy’s defense, it is kind of shitty to be called out as the hack of the day, and it might have been better placed in a personal email rather than on this blog, especially with the snark-to-serious ratio like elephants and ants on seesaws. and also because the o is a sinking ship.
ok, mr. (inter?)nationally-syndicated cable-news-show-guest-star-expert successfully-changed-the-way-many-think-about-popular-sex-culture-and-now-doing-the-obvious-thing-by-covering-other-social-taboos?
submitted in sincere respect
I think this can pretty much be summed up in the fact that Bryan Denson has never heard of Dan Savage of The Stranger. Being unaware of major players in the Northwest’s newspaper industry is just ridiculous when you work in that industry.
Ok so “The piece was about law enforcement’s inability to find much more than big pot plantations and a few growers and harvesters—how they couldn’t get to the money guys back in Mexico.” but you thought to really question WHY WE KEEP SPENDING MONEY busting growers and harvesters. If the whole point is that they can’t get to the big guys and can’t really punish the people responsible I would think that the next logical step in the discussion would be why we keep trying.
Ah, here it is!
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/ta…
Enjoy the non-credulous hackishness.
Uh oh! Someone at the Oregonian is hopelessly out of touch! Sound the alarms! This is a totally unprecedented event!
Boring. Typically boring.
Meaning the Oregonian, the official mouthpiece of the Portland Chamber of Commerce.
By the by, the people enriching themselves on other’s misery don’t necessarily live in Mexico. Walk out of the Oregonian building, face west and look to your left. What do you see? The Tualatin Mountains aka “the West Hills” to the illiterati of the city. Notice the homes. In one of them the money flows.
One shouldn’t confuse the Oregonian with facts any more than one should present to the Mercury.
Too, too easy to blame the wrong people for our own crimes and passions.
With a humble heart,
Jacomus
Well, in the spirit of discussing things, I think we should be going after these Mexican grow operations. The Mexican cartels are violent and a threat to the rule of law. Until we can get this legalization thing going, we need to work hard to keep any organized crime operations from getting a foothold in Oregon. We don’t want to have to deal with that, we have enough problems.
Dan Savage is a hypocritical asshole. Truly.
If only he would ever answer why he never writes about the youth pastors around the country doing great things, and instead focuses on the youth pastors who are up to no good.
But he doesn’t have to respond to criticism. He’s Dan Savage.
I think this exchange is a clear illustration of blatant ignorance and hypocris……………..wait, what was I saying? Oh man, pepperoni sticks and moon pies sound SO good right now!
I agree with Dan’s views on drug legalization, and on the foolishness of our “war on drugs,” but think he’s being a little unfair here.
The reporter was probably assigned the story and told to write about the problems with Mexican cartels growing drugs on public lands. Not “write a think piece about drugs and whether or not legalization would put a halt to cartels growing pot on public lands.” He wrote what he was assigned to write. It would be like yelling at a reporter who just covered a bad auto accident because he didn’t include quotes from bike commuters and anti-car activists, and because he didn’t include anything about how our consumption of oil is causing global warming.
So he was basically asked by his editor to do a lame job of reporting?
“Oh, I was just saying we should get rid of that baaaad Mexican pot!”
I feel like pointing out if we burn all the hippie grown Oregon product, more people will buy the evil Mexican terrorist pot. Or worse, Canadian. We don’t have to legalize anything, we just need to stop destroying a competitive domestic product (because the Mexican police strike me as unlikely to be as dedicated in their efforts)
Can’t believe this guy’s too busy to respond to the “inaccuracies” charge. If so, it’d be the first time this year he’s actually been plugging away.
A byline count from January 1 through Oct. 1 (from the Multnomah County Oregonian database) shows he had 80 bylines, or fewer than nine a month. That’s a couple of stories every week, or about half of what a daily reporter is expected to produce.
Perhaps he’s busy figuring out how to prove to his editors why he, as they prepare to lay off reporters over the next few weeks, deserves to keep his job despite his paltry production rate.