Posted on 06/01/2002 6:23:54 AM PDT by RippleFire
Smoking out 'The Osbournes' message
By BARRY SAUNDERS
Watch out, kids, it's a trick. On second thought, don't watch, kids: it's a trick.
Parents have been warning children about the evils of drug abuse for decades, if not centuries, and most of the warnings have been lost in a plume of reefer smoke. As a teen-age camp counselor I once had to show -- without bursting out laughing -- a group of impressionable adolescents the cult classic anti-drug movie "Reefer Madness," which purports to prove that the evil weed makes you wacky and violent.
That being the mid-1970s, I knew several friends who smoked pot, and I'd never seen any of them respond even remotely like the zany characters in the so-called educational movie. Most acted only slightly sillier than usual and started craving chocolate-covered donuts.
Parents, it seems, have gotten wiser. They know they can't discourage drug use with overblown rhetoric, scare tactics or expensive public service ads linking pot-smoking with funding terrorists, as the Bush administration is trying to do. The current drug czar acknowledges reluctantly that pot smoking in the 1970s didn't lead to the destruction of civilization, but he claims -- seemingly with little scientific evidence to back it up -- that pot is 10 to 20 times stronger now.
Is this a case of "Reefer Madness" revisited? Looks that way, and the impact, or lack of impact, is the same.
But parents seem to have discovered that when it comes to preventing the tykes from toking up, honesty is the best policy. Exhibit No. 1 in that new policy is Ozzy Osbourne.
"The Osbournes" is the top-rated show in MTV's history and probably the weirdest. If you've seen some of the music network's previous offerings -- such as a leering, geriatric Jerry Springer hosting a spring break beach party -- you know the show had to beat a lot of schlock to take that title. The "reality" family series, which features the aging (and not gracefully aging, either) rocker at home, has thrust Ozzy back into the spotlight he shared 30 years ago when he was a drugging, boozing frontman for the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.
While most teens who watch "The Osbournes" may think they're simply viewing a funny, dysfunctional family -- a family that makes everyone else's look normal -- astute viewers will see the show for what it is: an hour-long anti-drug screed. That's what makes watching it so insidious if you're a teen and an act of genius if you're a parent.
Who, after watching the tattooed Ozzy shuffling hazily through his huge crib, trying to grasp and articulate a passing thought as vainly as one might grasp a puff of smoke, will want to drop some acid, try some 'shrooms or smoke anything that might fry brain cells? No less an authority than former Vice President Dan Quayle, who attacked the cultural attitudes of television in the 1980s, has recognized show's powerful yet unintentional message: "In a weird way, Ozzy is a great anti-drug promotion. Look at him and how fried his brains are from taking drugs all those years and everyone will say 'I don't want to be like that,'" Quayle told the National Press Club.
I didn't relate to Osbourne's music when he was with Black Sabbath, biting the heads off live pigeons (or bats; the legend varies) and I relate even less to him now. But I do sometimes watch his inexplicably successful show. Why?
For home furnishing tips, that's why. To a buddy and me, the real star is Ozzy's magnificently appointed crib.
You can say this about Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's wife: she has horrible taste in a mate, but great taste when it comes to picking out just the right chair and end table combo for the den.
Well, so what if you're a cultural illiterate, as long as you're popular.
Ozzy may live in a mansion and have millions, put his place looks like a backwoods trailer in West Virginia that's used for disco dancing by the natives.
The man barely has two brain cells to rub together.
That people want to ascribe his horrible state to drugs is baffling to me........Ozzy says it's due to drinking.
That is absolutely true.
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