Michael Phelps' Letter to America

Anti-Bunny · February 2, 2009, 5:31am

Okay, not really, but it should have been:

TheAgitator.com:

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

I put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. You’re watching the Super Bowl tonight. You’re watching 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. That’s about 20 years shorter than your average non-NFL player. Yet you watch. And cheer. And you jump up spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route across the middle. The harder he gets hit, the louder and more enthusiastically you scream.

Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have have without a shred of evidence beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else for committing the same crimes he committed. I’ll apologize when the sons, daughters, and nephews of powerful politicians who get caught possessing or dealing drugs in the frat house or prep school get the same treatment as the no-name, probably black kid caught on the corner or the front stoop doing the same thing.

Until then, I for one will have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I’ll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize for it, because by apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid lie, this idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government’s damned business. Or any of yours. I’m not going to bend over and allow myself to be propaganda for this wasteful, ridiculous, immoral war.

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours,

Michael Phelps

Wallapuctus · February 2, 2009, 6:03am

Yeah, you go Phelps! Seriously, who gives a shit?

Scrax · February 2, 2009, 6:24am

This is your brain:

This is your brain on drugs:

Timemaster_Tim · February 2, 2009, 6:32am

Being a mutli-gold medal winner means that he needs to keep a squeaky clean image to cash in on his endorsement opportunities. Marijuana isn’t a performance enhancing drug so it’s not really relevant to him as an athlete. If he were a snowboarder, marijuana would raise a single eyebrow. See Ross Rebagliati.

Wallapuctus · February 2, 2009, 6:38am

Did anyone honestly look at the guy, or listen to him speak, and think he didn’t smoke weed?

rei · February 2, 2009, 7:07am

pot smokers are losers.

Drastic · February 2, 2009, 7:11am

They sure can swim good, though. Part of it’s all the practice holding their breath.

Bahimiron · February 2, 2009, 7:27am

But they sure can capitalize!

delirium · February 2, 2009, 7:53am

If you don’t care so much, why do you keep posting in this thread?

It sucks that he has to apologize for it. Nobody would care if he was caught drinking a few beers at a party. The letter posted here is pretty over the top, because kids look up to him and I wouldn’t want him to just go around flaunting the fact that he loves to smoke weed. I do wish he could send a more honest message about it, though, and talk about how there’s nothing inherently bad about smoking pot as long as you’re responsible enough about it.

Bahimiron · February 2, 2009, 7:59am

My problem with the letter posted at the top was the repeated use of the term ‘dope’. Do people still call it that?

Brendan · February 2, 2009, 8:06am

Ok, I don’t really care about this one way or the other but maybe it’s because smoking weed is illegal and having a few beers at a party when you are above legal drinking are isn’t?

Wallapuctus · February 2, 2009, 8:09am

I’m annoyed at the outrage. I’m annoyed at the tabloids for trying to ruin him. It’s not like he was taking HGH, he was smoking weed. He probably had a beer too, and pre-marital sex. Leave him alone.

delirium · February 2, 2009, 8:24am

I know WHY people care more that he was smoking weed, I’m just expressing that it’s stupid that it needs to be this way. I wonder how many people actually believe that smoking weed is worse for your health than getting drunk?

Tyjenks · February 2, 2009, 8:26am

He did get caught for underage drinking before the last Olympics and made a similar apology. Whatever, boys will be boys, I say. I think his money situation is alright, so his endorsement image can suffer.

Charles · February 2, 2009, 8:31am

Dear America:

Please get over yourself.

Love,
The Rest of the World.

TimJames · February 2, 2009, 8:46am

This thread sucks until someone posts existing endorsement images with great photoshops of him smoking.

Bahimiron · February 2, 2009, 8:52am

Yeah, cos the Rest of the World is so much more enlightened about marijuana.

rei · February 2, 2009, 9:24am

addicts trying to justify their addiction is quaint. “no, it doesn’t cause impairment and we should be able to drive!”

suck it up, it’s not legal here in north america.

madkevin · February 2, 2009, 9:30am

I already suck it up. Yay Canada!

Charles · February 2, 2009, 9:34am

No, I’m talking more about the retarded obsession with the personal lives of celebrities / important people.