Mr. Brooks, of The New York Times, has been there, and feels your pain

Do you sometimes get the impression that a member of the commentariat is forced to write a certain piece because they lost a bar bet with their editor?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/opinion/brooks-weed-been-there-done-that.html

To save you some reading, his argument, in the content of Colorado effectively ending pot prohibition as of Jan 1, boils down to the painfully familiar concept that people should be put in jail for smoking pot because won't somebody please think of the children??  The perversity of this coming from a member of the part of small government, ending the nanny state, etc, is plain.

On a related but more amusing note, I still remember a latter-day piece by Christopher Hitchens, written in perfect earnest dead-pan, of his experience going through a scalp-to-toes day spa treatment which I'm SURE was a put-on by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/10/hitchens200710

"No, really, I'm serious."