Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Shut the Hell Up!

Michael Phelps gets caught taking a bong hit at a supposedly private party. So what. All the Hasselbecks out there are outraged. 'He's a role model. He's a role model. There should be consequences.'
First off, damn right he's a role model. This guy has been more focused and more determined than any other person his age that I can even think of. He has trained and pushed his body to do things that were once considered impossible. The greatest athletes in the world stand in awe of the things he can do and the best swimmers in the world fear his ability. The other competitors in the pool wish he'd take a few hits before a meet just to slow his ass down. And to top it all off, not only is he the greatest athlete ever, he's also humble and gracious and respectful of his teammates. Not to mention he loves his mama. Any parent should feel they had hit the child-raising lottery just to have a child grow up and be like Michael Phelps.
Secondly, as far as consequences go, I think perhaps finding out the hard way that you can't even go to a party at a friend's house and do the things that all other kids your age do without it being a topic of international debate - well maybe that's quite a consequence. Yes, I know pot is still illegal. I think the fact that it is is a bunch of BS, but that's another blog. Right, Woody? Besides, where it happened at, what Phelps was doing was only considered a misdemeanor. Maybe it would do more good to have him do a few PSAs for kids about making the right choices. Evidently one of those choices being 'know how to recognize when someone is really your friend or just some douche-bag with a cell phone camera'. Maybe you don't smoke the pot around said douche-bags.
So, Hasslebecks and other like-minded holier-than-thou ass-holes, Yes Micheal Phelps was tokin' on some sweet ganja, no he doesn't have glaucoma, and yes he knows it was perhaps the wrong thing to do. However, he's a twenty-something kid who has super-human abilities and who for the record has decided to take a year off from competing. So what if he wants to go a little buck wild. And, oh, by the way. Just because you see someone on the TV all the time and think you know them and the things they do doesn't make it ANY OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS. So shut the hell up! The End.

2 comments:

Hunter said...

The great thing about the whole situation is that Michael Phelps did more for the legalization movement (unintentionally) than anyone in the past decade. The myth of the "pot-loser" has just been shattered very visually.

Let me reinforce that statement... Whether or not you smoke marijuana has been proven time and time again to have ZERO significant statistical correlation with your economic status, race, intelligence, etc. The percentage of people who smoke is a near constant among all demographics (excepting age). So stop believing what they tell you.

Jack Jodell said...

Ahhh, there are still Puritans among us. If a lot of these chastisers would pay more attention to what's going on in our corporate boardrooms instead of being obsessed with what happens in OTHER people's bedrooms (or smoking rooms, as it were), this country would be far better off!