Your Assignment, Mr, Phelps

is to not have your fucking photo taken when you are doing a bong!

Can we please do away with all of the hand-wringing and panty-bunching of how Phelps is supposed to be some sort of role model for kids?

So he smoked some weed, boo fucking hoo. The guy is a swimmer; he's good at jumping in a big pool of water and swimming faster than anyone else in the world. He's not embued with super-morals or even super-intelligence. As far as I know, he cannot write a sonnet, analyse DNA, deconstruct a Hemingway novel, solve a quadratic equation compute celestial orbits or shoot an apple from the head of a child.

He can, however, swim very fast and win a shitload of gold medals doing it. He is the best there is at his sport.

Phelps is not perfect in every facet of his life. Big deal. Phelps at least can do one thing very well. That's more than George Bush will ever be able to say. Many of the same people who are decrying Phelps's doing some grass had no trouble voting for a recovered coke-head and current drunk as president in 2000 and 2004, despite his glaring lack of any recognizable talent.

So if Phelps feels like smoking some pot, leave him alone.

And maybe, just maybe, it is past time that we re-think this bogus "war on drugs."