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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

America, Get Over Yourselves

When the media isn't hyperventilating over this horrible Democratic governance that the whole country voted for last November, they're hyperventilating over a 23 year-old kid smoking a bong. Guess what, bobbleheads - every one of your kids and probably a lot of your colleagues have done the exact same thing, and this mass case of the vapors makes you look like a bunch of rubes. Adam Serwer says:

Obama and Phelps do have one other thing in common besides media obsession and lankiness. They've both smoked weed. Between the first black president and one of the most successful athletes in American history, the case that puffing a blunt destroys one's life as easily as addiction to crack and heroin has pretty much been destroyed. Apparently, smoking weed doesn't necessarily result in you running over a little girl on her tricycle while picking up burgers at the drive-thru.


Radly Balko writes the letter Michael Phelps should have written. We have mass theft happening on Wall Street but put billions of dollars into stopping petty crimes like this, when their effect on the greater health and welfare of Americans is more than dubious.

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.


RTWT. America is such a bunch of Gladys Kravitzes I can't even stand it.

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