Why Greenfield Will Return

 Posted on February 15, 2012 in Uncategorized

When I saw that Scott Greenfield had said, "so long and thanks for all the fish," I asked on Twitter, "Any truth to the rumor that this is part of @ScottGreenfield's settlement with Rakofsky?" I was being flippant, naturally, but I've realized that there is a germ of truth in the question. Not that he would sell out, but that with Greenfield not filing three or four new blog posts every day, the world is a little safer and more comfortable for legal charlatans and frauds.

Now people like discredited self-styled ethics expert Jack Marshall can write stupid things such as...

Whether they are preventing the culture from rejecting drug use because enforcement is expensive, or because they have a relative or friend in prison for drug-dealing; whether they are calling for legalization because they are libertarians and academics or Ron Paul, or because they are public officials who see a new revenue source; whether they are longing for the halcyon days of Haight-Ashbury and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, or just like getting stoned, these are the people that killed Whitney Houston, as surely as if they had shot her between the eyes.

...without danger of becoming the subject of a post on the widely read Simple Justice, where Greenfield once commented, "Just when you think the bounds of stupidity have been stretched to their breaking point, there's always Jack Marshall to prove that there's farther to go."

On the subject of Jack Marshall, Greenfield also wrote:

I have deliberately used a wealth of ad hominem attacks on Marshall because I believe he should be attacked for what he's done and how he's done it. I am deliberately harsh. That's what Marshall deserves.

Marshall deserves it no less today than he did at 6:13 in the morning on 8 April 2010, when Scott published those words.

Those words tell me that Scott will be back. Scott will be back thanks to Marshall, and Joseph Rakofsky, and Rachel Rogers, and Arkady Bukh, and ten thousand "lawyers in hot-pants strutting their stuff on the boulevard."

I'm not saying Scott can't quit, but Scott has said that himself: "It would be wonderful if we could all have a big group hug, but ethics precludes me from pretending this never happened...." It may not be authoritarian* Marshall's suggestion that drug addiction is a question of collective willpower and that Ron Paul killed Whitney Houston, but some day-probably very soon-someone will publicly say something so outrageously stupid, illogical, unethical or ugly that it will pull Scott back in.

* Authoritarianism has no place in ethics; it is a substitute for ethics.