Last week The News of the World revealed that the winner of no fewer than eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, had smoked marijuana. So what?
The embarrassing pontificating from some op-ed writers in the Australian media only constituted arrogant preaching of morality, if not outright hypocrisy.
Their arguments seem to rest on two fundamental premises.
The first is that sports stars serve as role models to younger viewers and therefore should not be smoking marijuana as it might encourage younger fans to do so.
In general, sports stars should adhere to creditable behaviour for these reasons.
But why, specifically, should smoking a bong be seen as worse than other forms of behaviour? Sports stars, such as those in the Australian cricket team, regularly abuse umpires, fellow players and fans, often with profanities.
Others utter arrogancies of the worst sort to waiting journalists (Peter Fitzsimons’ Third Person Award taps a deep vein of public antipathy).
Some even engage in sexual practices of the most dubious and abominable nature possible; those found not guilty of coercion invariably are deplored by public sensibilities.
The only difference between such forms of behaviour and smoking pot is the illegality of the latter act. But that illegality itself is widely seen as irrational.
Dr Alex Wodak, a leading expert at St Vincent’s Hospital on the impact of drugs on young people, has said on numerous occasions that the best way to limit the harm caused by marijuana is to legalise it.
He is hardly alone.
A survey of marajuana usage among baby boomers in all professions would struggle to find too many who had never used marijuana, and fewer still who had never been at a party at which it was used and said nothing. Bill Clinton, Nick Minchin and Peter Garrett are all on the public record as users. They are surely the tip of the silent iceberg.
The second ground for damning Mr Phelps is that as sports stars’ wealth is predicated upon the value of their abilities in the media market, the public has the right to demand higher standards of behaviour from them.
On the one hand, having one’s income entirely dependent on public exposure inevitably means that one is held to higher standards of public scrutiny. Those who live by the Daily Telegraph die by it too.
But this works both ways.
If we accept that the rules of unfettered capitalism are sacrosanct, then we must accept that they apply consistently. It makes no sense to argue that those same market forces that inflate incomes cannot correct the value of sports stars whose behaviour causes them to fall from public grace.
If people truly disapprove of Phelps’ actions, his commercial value will drop.
The Bulldogs sex scandals was a critical factor in the break-up of a championship team. Wendell Sailor’s cocaine revelations led just as quickly to the demise of his once glittering career. And even though Andrew Johns and Ben Cousins dressed their serious drug abuses up as psychological conditions, the careers of both fell quickly into disarray.
The fact that this has not happened with Phelps only reinforces my earlier point: that society does not see the use of marijuana as a serious breach of social mores and thus sees no need to correct his social value in light of such misdemeanours.
So what can we conclude from this ridiculous saga?
Phelps insists he has never used marijuana before and never will again. No one should assume that either assertion is true. This is a public relations stonewall; any relation to the truth is entirely coincidental.
Instead the truth is that marijuana use is widespread in our community and its legality should be reviewed in light of that reality.
But failing that, at the very least it makes little sense to adopt Fred Nile postures when one of our sports idols engages in conduct widely accepted in our community.
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