The other day I said I didn’t want to hear any more in the media about swimming champ Michael Phelps being pictured on an English tabloid cover sucking a bong that allegedly contains marijuana. But for the great quote in this story we at EFD will make an exception.
The Detroit Free Press sports column by Mike Brudenell details the hubub surrounding the photo and how even a good ol’ boy sheriff in South Carolina — where they photo was taken — is looking at arresting Phelps despite the fact that he is shown smoking a bong and the swimming champ may well have smoked up the evidence.
But while the story gives the opinion of one columnist who describes his as a “swimming family” and the impact this revelation that Phelps is human after all has on his kids’ hero worship, it also give clear perspective about what this saga is really about. The words I found so delightful and apt in the Free Press article come from Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and opinions editor at www.forbes.com. Said Varadarajan:
“In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle: However, a story Sunday in the News of the World (proprietor: Keith Rupert Murdoch) has made me scratch my chin and wonder whether we are,in fact, being a tad unkind to the dung beetle.
“The paper’s great coup was to lay its grubby, Little-England hands on a photograph of (Michael) Phelps with his mouth pressed firmly into a glass pipe, or ‘bong.’ The story’s pseudo-declamatory opening line (a tabloid art form, in itself) was: ‘This is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.’ Given that Michael Phelps’ career would have remained blissfully undestroyed had the paper chosen not to publish the photograph, one has to marvel at the amoral audacity of the News of the World: in purporting to ‘report’ on the potential harm to Phelps’ image and career from having smoked cannabis, the newspaper was, in fact, ‘perpetrating’ that very harm.”
Oh sure, everyone can rationalize their actions even Uncle Joe Stalin and the Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz. But knocking down a giant who did nothing more egregious than smoke pot yet whose deeds during the Olympics gave hope and inspiration to millions worldwicde is something weasels do and do so well.
Everyone needs to get over the tabloid picture. It is what it is. And Michael, go and sin no more or at least be damn discrete about it.