I’ve been  reading  a lot about a musician named Amy Winehouse.  She must be pretty good, since she won 5 out of 6 Grammy Awards last night.  But she wasn’t there to accept them, because the United States Department of Keeping People Out denied her a visa because of a photograph showing her smoking something from a pipe.

According to the government, this showed that she was engaged in the “use and abuse of narcotics.”  They relented at the last minute, but by then it was too late.

Now I have no idea who Amy Winehouse is.  I don’t know if I’ve ever heard her music, but if I have I’m not aware of it.  Chances are my daughter would know all about her, and if she ever pulls this Ipod earplugs out of her head, I’ll ask her about it.  My point is that Amy Winehouse is just another human being to me.

But I have some difficulty understanding how we maintain this archaic approach to people who want to visit the United States who have used drugs.  Our presidential candidates have used drugs.  We know this, regardless of what they have to say on the subject, because there are only 3 people who lived through the 1960s who never ingested any substances at all, and they are all now retired from the Bush administration.

Yet, our Puritan ethic prevents us from getting beyond this detail when it comes to visitors from foreign lands?  Do we really suppose that those British Airways jets are full of people who have avoided all contact with improper substances?   de Tocqueville knew this about us in 1840, and we have learned a darn thing since?

I’m not advocating drug use.  I’m advocating that we grow up.  We went through all this in 1972, when Nixon tried to deport John Lennon, the moptop anarchist. 

The people of the United States have come to grips with the fact that many most young people have at least experimented with illegal drugs.  Other than the ones misfortunate enough to have gotten arrested for it, and who spend the rest of their lives tainted as violent felons (as per Mukasey), the rest are forgiven and allowed to grow up to be President. 

Is the irony of this misbegotten mindset bothering anyone other than me?