A-Rod, Phelps and Real Change

Today it was reported that A-Rod tested positive for enhancement performing steroids in 2003 the same year he won his first MVP increasing his market value and securing a fat contract from the New York Yankees. He used designer steroids that didn’t result in the muscle head appearance like Barry Bonds. Everyone thought he was clean and kids looked up to him as the guy who could become the real home run king in baseball by exceeding the asterisk of Bonds’ steroid injected record.

Excluding bonuses Alex Rodriguez aka A-Rod will earn 28 million dollars this year playing a game with a ball for the New York Yankees in front of those who can still afford the price of admission those among the hundreds of thousands of people who haven’t been laid off from work each month.

In 2007 A-Rod told 60 Minute viewers during an interview that he never used steroids. Today he has nothing else to say to the press except “ask the union”. Well maybe the union also knows how many games were won or lost, how many records were set or surpassed, and how many wagers were influenced by A-Rod being juiced up. At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter because A-Rod will keep his 28 million dollar salary plus bonuses.

Meanwhile at the deep end of the pool Michael Phelps, the swimmer who won 8 gold medals in Beijing setting 7 world records and one Olympic record in the process loses his advertising deal with a cereal company and his $1,300 a month stipend will be suspended as will his competition for three months all because someone took a picture of a 23 year old smoking marijuana from a water pipe who just happened to be Michael Phelps because basically “kids looked to him” as a role model.

What bullshit. Kids looked up to A-Rod as a role model who was juiced up on performance enhancing drugs when he was competing but everybody knows including the kids looking up to Phelps that smoking marijuana may enhance your perception unless you misuse or abuse it but no way is it going to enhance your performance in any competitive event besides it really isn’t unusual for a 23 year old guy to smoke marijuana.

What sheer rank hypocrisy when A-Rod gets to keep everything for committing a fraud on the public and Phelps gets punished for inhaling. In the “Age of Ignorance” the keepers of morality don’t want the truth exposed that people can smoke marijuana and still lead productive and competitive lives.

In the “Age of Ignorance” the message about marijuana remains this is your brain on drugs, the picture is of someone disheveled living life in slow motion who speaks in early Cheech and Chong promoting the myth that marijuana use results in a mindless stupidity. That myth is easily exposed by reading what George W Bush said about talking to God, mushroom clouds over Cincinnati and WMD on the desert front of a war that would pay for itself, his response to Katrina, crashing the economy – no one has ever said “what’s he smokin’” – they didn’t have to because he wasn’t smoking marijuana but he was talking to his imaginary friend.

Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals for himself and presumably for his country but he certainly has that rare opportunity to do something for his country now by exposing the myths about marijuana and leading us away from the “Age of Ignorance” and toward the “Age of Awareness” by speaking truth to power and not apologizing for educating the public about the rich six thousand year history of marijuana.

The truth he can speak is that history of cannabis includes its use as food, made into clothing, rope and sails, used for paper in fact “our” Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, it can be used as a biomass fuel that might reduce Exxon’s profits, and it has been used for centuries as a medicine for more than one ailment and yes it can be and has been used for thousands of years to “get high”, recently a 2700 year old stash was found in China that was intended to be smoked or ingested to get high and there are no deaths recorded to marijuana use.

Indeed one group of people refer to marijuana as “the wisdom weed” and the historical record gives credence to their view but for the dominant religious group in this country who prefer the name “dope” it would be worth mentioning Genesis 1:12, Genesis 1:29, Exodus 10:12, Proverbs 15:17, or Psalm 104:14 – I mean how else do you explain a plant that can be used in so many ways for so many things begging the questions: can you name any other plants or natural things that do as much for man and how do explain why so many true believers are willing to wage a war against a plant and each other over a plant that could actually benefit the planet.

Michael Phelps has the chance to be this generations Mohammed Ali who was denied his career by opposing an illegal, unjust and immoral war in Vietnam, or Tommy Smith and Juan Carlos who raised their black fists at the Olympic stand in solidarity against racism here at home where they would get death threats for speaking out and not getting any endorsements.

In the process Phelps can expose the myth that marijuana is a gateway drug because the war on marijuana is in fact only a gateway to the further erosion of the Bill of Rights and the establishment of a police state that ruined the lives of millions, destroyed families and cost this country the billions of dollars that could now be used to replace the billions of dollars for states and education which the Republican Party gutted from the stimulus package.

If President Obama is serious about cutting programs that don’t work he can start by legalizing marijuana, regulating it and taxing it. Now that’s real change that will take this country one step away from “the Age of Ignorance” and one step toward an age where fact replaces myth and public policy is based on reason and knowledge rather than fear and ignorance because it is only the truth which shall set us free.