Richard Cohen is a doddering old man who sits in the Washington Post newsroom atop an overturned paint can, shouting about how the women and the blacks have gotten out of hand. Not to mention that young fella, the Justin, the Bieber. Listen here, son.

Someone let Richard Cohen publish something about Justin Bieber and weed. Why?

I know without checking that I have written columns over the years demanding the legalization of marijuana. I certainly confessed to having "experimented" with the stuff but found it not to my liking. Still, I was of the generation for which it was a rite of passage, apiece with sexual freedom and, much more importantly, civil rights and the anti-war movement. Old fogies warned about pot, J. Edgar Hoover hated it and Richard Nixon made war against — three good reasons right there to have a toke.

The reefer? Yes indeed. I, Dicky Cohen, am quite familiar, I assure you. I recall quite clearly hitchhiking to San Francisco with nothing more than a crumb of cheese in my pocket and my boon companion Samuel the Donkey to keep me company, just to purchase a lid of the Acapulco Silver. I took one puff and found that it ruined the taste of the cheese. It simply wasn't for me. Quaaludes—now there's a drug that goes down easy. Now then, Mister Beebur:

Justin, m'boy, you've got a habit or maybe just a strong indulgence, but whatever it is, the consequences are plain. Not to put too fine a point on it, you've been acting like a jerk. Maybe you ought to lay off the weed. Look at it this way: If it's legal and everyone's doing it, then it's no longer cool. And neither are you.

Justin, m'boy, come on over here. Closer now, boy. Closer. Don't be afraid of grandpa. Sure, my face may be lined and my brow furrowed, but I was like you one day: tossing eggs for funsies, strutting about shirtless, fucking eighteen-year-old nail salon technicians in hotel rooms from Pittsburgh to Santa Fe. I outgrew it, son. And it's time for you to grow up. To grow up, put down the ganja, and pick up something better— a little something called "responsibility." Pick that on up. Feel the heft. You like that? Now that's what I call cool, m'boy. Pick it on up. Yes. Don't let go.

Also pick me up a handle of Popov vodka, if you go by a liquor store. I'm parched.

Richard Cohen is a famous columnist at a respected national newspaper.

[Photo: AP]