I really want to make fun of Michael Phelps.
I really do. Not for having a jaw the size of a 1958 Studebaker or arms longer than most species of mammal are tall. No, that would be too easy. And besides, when a man wins 14 gold medals, putting down his physical attributes doesn’t seem to make too much sense.
But pictures surfaced last week that show the world’s only human amphibian apparently going for the Acapulco gold: While at a party at the University of South Carolina, Phelps was caught on camera, mid-bong pull.
As expected, the public outcry has been swift and profuse. ESPN, CNN and the rest of the alphabet soup, cable news networks have each taken turns having a go at him. “How dare he,” they say. “How dare this 23-year-old act his age!”
It would be fun to take part in the Phelps bashing. It would make for an easy 750 words to lambast him in soaring rhetoric and caustic vitriol. But the fact of the matter is: so the heck what?
Call me when it’s a picture of him doing steroids or performance enhancers. I’ve known a pot smoker or two in my time, and none of them are going to win a gold medal or set a world record in anything other than the 100-Cheetos Freestyle.
This is a non-issue created entirely by the madding crowd that is sports mega-media. NBC needed a marketing ploy and found it in the humble, quiet kid from Baltimore who happened to swim better than any human ever has. The sports world was complicit, running Phelps countdowns, Phelps highlights and Phelps interviews until its screens nigh on to melted.
And just when they thought they’d milked every last penny out of their fin-footed cash cow, he makes one mistake. For just a brief moment, he wasn’t the “Savior of All Things Good and Righteous” in sports and was a college-age kid at a party. For just a brief moment, he let his guard down, and some preening greedy frat star of a gamecock whipped out a cell phone to make a quick buck.
Should he have done it? No. The guy uses his lungs to make his living, and corporate sponsors pay his rent. So far, Phelps has gotten lucky and avoided the tidal wave of desertion Kobe Bryant did in the wake of his “encounter” in Colorado. Omega watches and Speedo, two of Phelps’ biggest sponsors, have publicly announced that they plan to stand by him.
But to imply a moral shortcoming on Phelps’ part is downright idiotic. Celebrating like he did in 2004, by getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of his SUV, was dumb and a thousand different kinds of wrong. He jeopardized the life of everyone else who was on the road that night and was appropriately chided, both in the courts and in the media.
The only person in danger when Phelps put that bong to his mouth was him. His humility, sportsmanship, hard work and competitive drive still make him a role model, no less so than he was six months or even six days ago. While he has benefited from being in the public spotlight, saying he has to live there every moment of every day is backward, asinine and wrong.
All of the ticked-off, disappointed suburbanite parents out there, who have ducked the hard work of parenting by putting Phelps on a pedestal and simply saying, “Be like him”: Get over yourselves. He did the adult thing: apologizing for an unwise decision. Use the opportunity to teach your kids something about accepting responsibility and the consequences of making bad decisions. But don’t cast Phelps down with the unclean.
I won’t go so far as some have and say Phelps was acting in some manner of civil disobedience. As dumb as marijuana laws may be, I feel confident saying Phelps wasn’t striving to bring about social justice. He was getting high, plain and simple. Giving that any greater meaning, for better or for worse, is disingenuous and empty.
At the end of the day, this is one kid, making one pretty subpar judgment call. Try as the moral zealots may, it isn’t indicative of an erosion of the American conscience, nor of the arrogance of the American athlete. Hopefully, their horrendous hubbub will die down soon.
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