A telling phenomenon: the absent outrage over Phillip Seymour Hoffman's criminality

[Scootaloo]

55. I understood it just fine

1) Society tends to discard unfamiliar people who are found with drugs. We deem them criminal, lesser, sometimes even monsters or subhuman.

2) Hoffman was found with enough packages of heroin that were he alife, he probably would have bene charged with intent to distribute

3) Yet because he's famous, a "somebody," he doesn't get the vilification for this that would be directed at a "lesser" person.

4) cthulhu's argument is that he shouldn't, and the fact that nobody in our society is claiming otherwise - that hoffman should be ilified - exposes a dichotomy in our society's perception of drugs and their users. That being, that they're actually NOT evil terrible things unless we can't put a name to the face.

Cthulhu then concludes that, this being the case, it's beyond time to extend that grace to all people who use drugs - to re-humanize, to discard the rhetoric of abomination against them, because really, they're no different fro mthe late mr. Hoffman, or any other celebrity who uses and gets our heartfelt concern or a free pass.