Bong hits 4 Jesus

Dahlia Lithwick on what Ken Starr seems to think is the defining issue of our day (after terrorism, of course...and Bill Clinton's cigars).

Starr insists that "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" promotes drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asks whether a sign that said "Bong Stinks for Jesus" would be more permissible. Souter asks whether a simple sign reading "Change the Marijuana Laws" would also be "disruptive." Starr says that interpreting the meaning of the sign must be left to the "frontline message interpreter," in this case, the principal. Then Starr says schools are charged with inculcating "habits and manners of civility" and "values of citizenship." Yes, sir. In the first six minutes of oral argument Starr has posited, without irony, a world in which students may not peaceably advocate for changes in the law, because they must be inculcated with the values of good citizenship.

Chief Justice John Roberts wonders why students should be allowed to set the classroom agenda when teachers are trying to teach Shakespeare and Pythagoras. Starr says that in the Vietnam protest case, the school tried to "cast a pall of orthodoxy" by banning student protest. Whereas, he suggests—again without a whiff of irony—that students should be able to offer no dissenting opinions here because drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are bad.

Breyer (who seems to be having one of those "my hand looks sooooo big" trips) thinks maybe a better rule is one that bans any and all 15-foot banners on field trips.

I love Dahlia Lithwick. She concludes.

It's hard to imagine that the students of America will be better served by giving their educators the ultimate gateway drug: the apparently limitless power to define their "educational mission" in any way they please in order to suppress any and all student speech that doesn't conform. That kind of power strikes me as more addictive, and even more dangerous, than any drug.

It's amazing the fear that marijuana still strikes in certain people. Now, I realize Ken Starr may be the prissiest person in America, but the fact that his over-the-top descriptions of what a meaningless phrase such as "bong hits 4 Jesus" might do to the moral fabric of our nation are not met with blank stares and giggling, means that attitudes haven't changed much since "Reefer Madness" first appeared in theaters.