| 4-20-98
By Luke Ford
Dennis Prager opened his show by passionately agreeing with this
column in today's Wall Street Journal:
Last week, Oliver Jovanovic, a 31-year-old doctoral candidate
in microbiology at Columbia University, was convicted of kidnapping
and sexually abusing a 22-year-old Barnard College student he had
met in an Internet "chat room." "The defense did not do enough to
defend Oliver," a juror said after the verdict. In fact, the defense
was hamstrung by the misapplication of a law, intended to protect
victims from being dragged through the mud, which instead has been
used to withhold evidence that could exonerate the accused.
Jovanovic and the Barnard student went on a date after meeting
in an America Online chat room in 1996 and exchanging electronic
mail. At his apartment, by her own account, the young woman let
herself be stripped and tied up; she claimed that Jovanovic then
kept her bound, against her will, for 20 hours and sexually tortured
her. The defense argued that what happened was consensual. This
argument, however, was crippled by Judge William Wetzel's decision--based
on New York's "rape shield" law, which restricts the use of the
accuser's sexual past--to exclude portions of the e-mail dealing
with sadomasochistic sexual activity.
Rape shield laws, now on the books in every state, originated
in the feminist overhaul of rape law in the 1970s. The reforms were
directed at real injustices: Once, juries were commonly instructed
that they could consider an accuser's lack of chastity as detracting
from her credibility, and defense lawyers could grill a woman about
her sexual partners. Such inquiries are now rightly perceived as
not only cruel but irrelevant: A woman's promiscuity doesn't prove
that she consented to sex with a particular man.
Yet sometimes sexual history is directly relevant to consent and
credibility. In the Jovanovic case, the defense contends that the
law ended up shielding perjury. The young woman testified that in
her correspondence with Jovanovic, she had never given any indication
that she was interested in sadomasochism--a statement that the e-mail
excluded from trial would have called into doubt.
Luke:
The first caller, a woman, argued that allowing any testimony
about a woman's sexual past would make any conviction for rape impossible.
Dennis says that the substitution of race, class and sex for morality
is the greatest intellectual obstacle to achieving a good society.
Prager passionately recommends Books on Tape. 1800-88BOOKS…
Mention KABC and Dennis Prager, and you will get a discount.
Prager devoted his second hour to attacking the anti-smoking movement.
He interviewed the author of For Your Own Good, by Jacob Sullum,
a syndicated columnist and editor at REASON magazine.
Jacob says the anti-smoking movement is paternalistic, trying
to protect people from themselves.
For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of
PublicHealth.(book reviews)
( National Review )
For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of
Public Health, by Jacob Sullum (Free Press, 338 pp., $25)
IN my 16 years as a regular smoker, I've quit twice. It's a filthy
habit that takes years off your life (three to seven, on average)
and degrades your health in the meantime. And I've gone back twice,
because nicotine is a wonderful drug, and cigarettes perhaps the
best drug-delivery device known to man.
I savor the bitter taste and dusty feel of the smoke as it enters
first my mouth and then my lungs; my spirits rise even with the
tiny buzz the habit now provides. It picks me up when I'm feeling
down, and adds to the joy of fine food, good drink, heartfelt conversation
-- of almost everything the good LLord put on this earth for our
delight. It helps me think.
Consider: nicotine is a mood stabilizer that also enhances short-term
concentration. Alternately a stimulant and a depressant (and, miraculously,
almost always the one you need), it never has so strong an effect
as to be disruptive. Meanwhile, the device -- fire on a stick that
you can hold between two fingers, with smoke you can expressively
exhale -- has a host of subsidiary uses: the perfect gesturing prop,
nervous-fiddling toy, meditation focus, and more.
On 12-1-96, Jacob Sullum published the following book review in
REASON magazine.
The Cigarette Papers.(book reviews)
( Reason )
In August 1970 a leading tobacco defense attorney, David R. Hardy,
wrote a confidential letter warning that indiscreet comments by
industry scientists, including references to "biologically active"
components of cigarette smoke and "the search for a safer cigarette,"
"constitute a real threat to the continued success in the defense
of smoking and health litigation. Of course, we would make every
effort to 'explain' such statements if we were confronted with them
during a trial, but I seriously doubt that the average juror would
follow or accept the subtle distinctions and explanations we would
be forced to urge." Such remarks by employees, Hardy explained,
would suggest "actual knowledge on the part of the defendant that
smoking is generally dangerous to health, that certain ingredients
are dangerous to health and should be removed, or that smoking causes
a particular disease. This would not only be evidence that would
substantially prove a case against the defendant company for compensatory
damages, but could be considered as evidence of willfulness or recklessness
sufficient to support a claim for punitive damages."
The letter was among the Brown & Williamson documents leaked
to anti- smoking activist Stanton A. Glantz and New York Times reporter
Philip J. Hilts in 1994. It nicely summarizes the quandary of the
cigarette companies, which developed largely because of their own
dishonesty and continues to this day. In the 1950s, responding to
the first widely publicized studies finding a link between smoking
and lung cancer, the industry adopted a skeptical posture that was
initially reasonable but has long since become a joke. It created
the Tobacco Industry Research Council, later renamed the Council
for Tobacco Research, supposedly to fund studies examining "all
phases of tobacco use and health." Although some CTR-funded researchers
produced further evidence of tobacco's hazards, most worked in areas
far afield from the CTR' s ostensible focus, while certain "special
projects" were deliberately selected to cast doubt on the connection
between smoking and disease. The CTR helped maintain the pretense
that more research was needed - always and forever. The industry's
strategy, as Tobacco Institute Vice President Fred Panzer put it
in a 1972 memo, was "creating doubt about the health charge without
actually denying it." Company officials steadfastly maintained that
the case against smoking was not conclusive, and it soon became
clear that no amount of evidence would sway them from that position.
Luke:
Dennis Prager says that Sullum's book is not as angry about the
anti-smoking crowd as Prager is.
Prager made fun of an ad that compared cigarette smoking to illegal
drug use. DP has pounded home for years that there is no comparison
between them. Sullum disagreed. He said they were similar addictions.
But that people misunderstand addiction. Addiction does not mean
that you can't stop because there are as many people who have quit
smoking as there people who smoke. Similarly, most cocaine and heroin
users quit the drug.
Sullum disagreed with several things that Prager said, and several
times Dennis cut him off, not allowing Jacob to articulate, for
instance, his point that the long term harm from the use of cocaine
etc is exaggerated.
Prager and Sellum agreed that smoking saves the public coffers
rather than draining them. DP says the reason he is so passionately
opposed to the anti-smoking movement is that the movement makes
otherwise decent people into liars.
DP kept making allowances throughout this hour to the large number
of his listeners who are tired of him harping on this one issue.
P gets stuck in ruts at times: Around 1990 it was against Stanford.
In 1995, it was over Baby Richard. And the last few years, he has
ranted repeatedly against the anti-smoking crowd.
In his third hour, P discussed marriage. The late Linda McCartny
spent every night with her husband but one in their 30-year marriage.
Prager says that couples should spend as much time as possible
together, as should parents with their kids. Quantity of time is
a quality. Prager enjoys spending as much time as possible with
his wife, he says.
P's father claims that he has never seen a movie without the presence
of his wife, P's mother.
P says some guys particularly need to sew wild oats before getting
married.
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