Stoned genius

"The Daily Show" anchor Jon Stewart shared an unsettling revelation about his job on a recent episode of Comedy Central's acclaimed news program. You see, Stewart has always jokingly implied that his audience was fond of smokin' the reefer, and the assumption was reinforced by automatic applause from the studio audience to any pot-related joke. But when Fox News icon Bill O'Reilly made a crack about the marijuana usage of Stewart's audience when he was a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor," Comedy Central wasn't laughing.\nThe network commissioned a study, and found that Stewart's regular viewers are not, in fact, "stoned slackers," to use O'Reilly's words. In fact, Stewart explained on "The Daily Show", his regular viewers are more educated than the average cable news network viewers and are also more knowledgeable about international affairs.\nStewart pantomimed sheepish intimidation. The people watching him every night are practically a bunch of geniuses and he rewards them with fart and poop jokes. "I feel like a poopy-head," the anchor said.\nNow, the problem with this quasi-controversy is that everyone is assuming that there are two different categories of people: stoned slackers and smart, internationally-minded individuals. My question here is, can't someone be both at the same time?\nIn fact, how better do you explain the past four years than to assume that the most internationally-minded people in this country are a bunch of stoners? It almost makes sense that they would only stay tuned-in long enough to know what's going on and then hit up their good friend Mr. Bong to help them keep their sanity.\nTo prove this hypothesis, I had to do some research. I knew what kind of people watch "The Daily Show," so all I needed to do is find what kind of people smoke pot. Easy!\nOr not. Thanks to the war on drugs, it's hard to find statistics that say nice things about stoners. Most of it was propagandistic mush designed to make me afraid of weed. I found wildly varying facts and figures, some saying that over half our population has smoked marijuana at least once, or worse, that pot has four times as many carcinogens than tobacco. So maybe the smart people can't do anything about the miserable state of the world because they're all on chemotherapy. \nThat's when I remembered a brief news report I heard on the radio about a year ago. It said that one study showed that white suburban males smoke more pot than anyone else. So I could argue that these are the people who went to better schools, got better jobs and are just plain smarter than everyone else, right?\nAbsolutely not. I just transferred from a community college in Orange County, Calif., and you could not get more exposure to the white suburban culture anywhere else in the world. Trust me, suburban white males are not that smart. They almost made me racist against my own race. The missing link between smart, internationally-minded people and marijuana is not going to be found there.\nWith my deadline approaching, I was running out of time, and I had to use up one of my lifelines: phone a friend. "Pot generally diminishes your motivation, not your intelligence," she said. When people smoke marijuana, she told me, they're much more comfortable with having an intelligent conversation. But when not-so-smart people smoke it, she says, it's just not fun.\nSo what have we learned? Although "The Daily Show" viewers might not be stoners, they'd certainly be welcome to join in on a blunt and some conversation; the effects of smoking marijuana are exactly the opposite of drinking rum and Coke; that pot might be the only way to get the public interested international political fun; and if you want someone interesting to talk to, look for chemo patients.