How Don Johnson Murdered Liberty

Back in the 80's there was no one hotter than Don Johnson. From the time Miama Vice hit the airwaves, he was center-stage in my teenage erotic dreams. I was glued to the TV every time the show came on. Hot men, hot cars, hot music--what's not to love? My quest to learn everything about the show even contributed to my winning a Trivial Pursuit tournament my senior year in high school. My opponants chose a sports and leisure question (orange--my weak link) and were surprised that I knew the sport with the fastest balls was Jai-Alai. I knew this because the game played over the opening credits of Miami Vice, so I looked it up at the library to find out more about it.

Clearly I was into the show.

So it should come as no surprise that after years of watching Crockett and Tubbs battle sceevy men over the Miami drug problem that I was hugely in favour of the creation of a Drug Czar and his attendant office. After all, look at the problems Lt. Castillo's team faced with drugs on a weekly basis! When they announced the policy of seizing drug dealer's property, I thought that was cool. I was envisioning all of the illgotten Miami mansions and flashy fast cars being taken away from the wicked Kingpins. And although I was only 18, I'm betting that most of America had the same visions I did. These are the drug dealers, these men from Cuba and Mexico licking uncut cocaine off the naked bodies of sexy teenagers while shooting at TVs.

But that's not who we're fighting, and that's not who we're locking up. We've escalated to taking the property of anyone we think might be guilty, regardless of whether or not they have, in fact, committed a crime. We're permanently taking away all the rights of young men in Alabama who made a mistake.

The drug war had great press from Miami Vice. Maybe it's time we had a TV show with a sexy lawyer in charge of liberating unjustly seized property.

Oh, and funnily enough, the picture here was a poster given to me by a friend for my 16th birthday. My mom wouldn't let me hang it up because he was smoking a cigarette. Ironic that even in Miami Vice world not all drugs are created equal.