The Detroit News, now fully owned by Gannett, ran one of my least-favorite non-news stories yesterday, i.e. Group you’ve never heard of expresses outrage over something stupid.
Headline: Health group calls on RFK Jr. to resign after cocaine admission
Lede:
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s shocking admission that he snorted “cocaine off toilet seats” amid his past struggle with drug addiction has led to detractors, including a prominent health care advocacy group, calling for his resignation.
Protect Our Care, a nonprofit advocating for better and more affordable health care, issued a statement after Kennedy’s confession on comedian Theo Von’s podcast “This Past Weekend,” which aired on Feb. 12.
Shocking! Shocking? The guy was a heroin addict. Cocaine was everywhere in the ’80s, and it was largely a bathroom drug. (Flashback to Jeff Borden’s keen insight, probably made in a line for the bathroom at a party, after three or four people emerged as a group: “I miss marijuana. That was social. You lit a joint and passed it through the party. Cocaine is exclusionary. You pick a few cool people to invite to the bathroom with you. That’s not good.”) So what if he snorted it off a toilet seat, which by the way I don’t believe. Why?
First of all, you didn’t need a toilet seat if the back of someone’s hand was available. Second, toilet seats slant toward the water, and you wouldn’t chop coke on a slanted surface. Toilet lid? Toilet tank? The back of the TP dispenser, provided it was flat? That I would believe. But Bobby is a natural-born liar, like his boss and all his colleagues, and “toilet seat” sounded spicy, so that’s what he said.
Also, please: “A prominent health care advocacy group” clutching its pearls? This is Schumering at its highest level. Try sending a strongly worded letter! That always does it.
Some people don’t have what it takes for the struggle we’re in. Nut up or shut up, folks — this battle is for America.
OK then. No blog overnight because we went to Ann Arbor for a show and didn’t get back until 30 minutes past mental exhaustion. We saw Terence Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane in a Miles Davis/John Coltrane tribute. It was nice to be in the old town again, and on a fine late-winter day to boot — there were lots of students on the street, and it just felt like there’s more oxygen in the air over there. (Because there is.)
And because I’m running late, that’s all there is for now, but rest assured: Fresh outrages are coming any minute now, no doubt. Let’s have a good week.
alex said on February 16, 2026 at 11:55 am
I did plenty of coke in nightclub bathrooms, but it was usually through a rolled up dollar bill and directly out of a baggie or envelope. I also used to snort out of a drag queen’s fingernail which she had grown extra long and fashioned into a coke spoon. I simply cannot imagine anyone trying to do lines in a public shit house, certainly not off of a wet countertop, much less a toilet seat.
It’s probably been close to four decades since I had any, but for many years the mere mention of the stuff would overpower me with cravings. One time in Chicago I was about to get into a taxi when the driver said “Hey, before you sit down you should know there was a guy doing coke back there and he spilled his stash all over the place.” I dove face first into that seat and Hoovered up whatever I could.
I was never an addict; just an opportunist who got a lot of invites to partake. I didn’t have the money to waste on it.
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