Saying Hi to the Bad Guy

Because Crack [and Jerry Ceppos] Can Be Dangerous

You know you can take the boy out of the punk rock…but you’ll probably never successfully take the punk rock out of the boy. It’s like rooming with an ex-con who enables all of your worst impulses, even if for the best of reasons.

But when crack hit, who was ready for that?

If you’re old enough you know it was like nothing anyone had ever seen. Not like post-Vietnam War when all of the heroin hit, back from Southeast Asia complete with the need to self-medicate from what all had happened in Southeast Asia. Heroin makes you relatively easy to find though and with a narrowed window of operations pre-scoring, easy to track. It did lend itself to crimes of commerce but, in general, the population of users was fairly narrow.

Crack though was like the so-called Neutron bomb, scrambling the insides of houses on streets and neighborhoods like a plague. Mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, gone, shot through with a cheap, all enveloping, destabilizing high that lent itself to crimes of crazy.

The official responses varied as well. Heroin, all part of the mid-70’s malaise, obscured by coke, me-generationisms, disco, punk rock could still get you busted. But crack got itself a Drug War. With a significant body count and an enforcement response that filled prisons and ruined lives on top of all of the rest of it.

All of which was going through my mind when, after Apple’s Steve Jobs had sent me an email asking me to meet with a klatch of media big wigs, I found myself seated next to Jerry Ceppos, then Executive Editor at the San Jose Mercury News.

…was it the anti-commie Contra rebels in Nicaragua who used coke dollars to finance their “struggle”? The CIA and likewise other shady actors?

I had sort of a chip on my shoulder being there anyway. I had caught a consistent amount of shade from my “real world” journalist friends who acted like going in-house and corporate was a cheeseball money grab, confused in thinking that I was somehow too good for cheeseball money grabs.

I was just fine being there and the fact that Steve Jobs had sort of taken an interest in my daily doings as an editor at Apple was a plus. But sitting next to Ceppos as we collectively discussed the future of media and g-d-knows-what, I had a mantra and it was simple.

“Don’t mention Gary Webb. Whatever you do, don’t mention Gary Webb.”

Gary Webb had been a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and he logged a year investigating the crack epidemic, and specifically the government’s role in it. The paper published it from August 18 to August 20, 1996 under the rubric, “Dark Alliance.” That would have been cause for kudos had Ceppos stopped right there.

But he didn’t. Under pressure Ceppos didn’t just throw Webb under the bus, he drove it over him. He seemed like a nice enough guy at the meeting but I couldn’t shake the wet and trembling statement he released nine months later that said that Webb’s article “did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series," and that he [Webb] “had oversimplified the manner in which the crack epidemic flourished”, among other critiques.

Webb disagreed, found his career dead-ended, and by the end of 1997 he had quit. Eventually selling his house he could no longer afford and getting divorced.

“Kind of mindblowingly terrible what all happened with Gary Webb,” I said after he had handed me his business card by way of saying hello.

I don’t often feel bad for being a prick but I was sort of feeling bad for being a prick.

Ceppos looked at me and I don’t know what I expected but the look I got wasn’t what I expected. He looked genuinely…sad.

“Well, yeah….” longish pause. “…That was very difficult,” Ceppos said.

“Which part? Fighting the government or giving in to the government?"

He sighed, but didn’t look away. I don’t often feel bad for being a prick but I was sort of feeling bad for being a prick. Even now. But now I remember that Webb is dead. Cause of death: suicide.

Yup. He shot himself. In the head. TWICE.

So was it the anti-commie Contra rebels in Nicaragua who used coke dollars to finance their “struggle”? The CIA and likewise other shady actors? Or was it just Webb, out of options? The shooter(s) I mean.

“It was all difficult,” Ceppos said.

“Uh hunh.” I went back to my notes.

Stalin had, it is said, wanted a confession out of someone. The man would not break. The interrogators came back and told him so and he asked them a curious question: “How much does Russia weigh?”

They scurried off and tried to actually figure this out. When next they returned they copped to what they believed was the truth: it was unknowable.

Stalin continued and purportedly asked, to get their heads right, “does he weigh more than Russia?” Then they understood. They got their confession and the unnamed man who gave it, presumably, found out the hard way that he weighed much less than Russia.

The “good” part here? Webb’s books can be bought online or from your favorite bookstore.

The bad part? All the rest of it.

And now we have “problems” with opioids and meth. It’s now what they call a “crisis”.

Uh hunh.