Huffington Post Ticks Me Off Again

Huffington Post has a terrible habit of writing misleading headlines.  When they wrote “Miley Cyrus Wears See Through Skirt” you better believe I clicked through to look, but it was only see through below the knees.  When they write Sports/Music/Film Legend Dies, I always click through to see just how much the world has been lessened, and the answer is generally “not much.”  No disrespect intended but, as often as not, it’s somebody I’d never heard of.

Still, as misleading as Huffpo is, that’s how gullible I am, so it’s somewhat of a symbiosis.  When I saw the headline today, “Commander and Chief,” over a big grinning picture of the Big O, I suspected some story about a recent political or diplomatic victory.  I was not too flabbergasted by them saying Commander and Chief instead of commander in chief.  They’re not always perfect spellers, either, but that’s not what ticked me off.

When I clicked through to read the article, it was more about that anti-Obama book that’s out now, and selling quite well, I hear.

Particularly the part about Obama smoking pot when he was a young man.  Now, first of all, shame on Huffpo for making this a headline story.  It’s a story, sure, if you’re going to be devoting a whole slideshow to Miley Cyrus’ very normal wardrobe, then I guess that Barry smoking the  good herb is a story.  But not a headline story.  First, it’s old news, because he already wrote about it in his own book.  Secondly, it was never really a scandal in the first place.  Lots of people have smoked pot.

So, I wrote in and called bullshit on the headline switcheroo, and somebody answered my complaint by saying “Didn’t you get it?  Chief is slang for marijuana.”

Well, I’ve been smoking reefer for about 4 decades now.  I’ve called it pot, reefer, herb, dope, wacky backy, ganja, grass, sensie (not sure of the spelling on that one, short for sinsemilla), pako andlolo, skunk, chronic and plain old smoke.  But I don’t recall ever calling it chief.

Cannibear

I suspect some headline writer was looking for a cheap pun, went to Urban Dictionary, found a couple of pages worth of words that somebody, somewhere once said were slang for marijuana, and chose the one that could be a presidential pun.

Or maybe they were just wasted.  Nothing wrong with that.