Phelps -vs- Barry

There has been much hoopla over the past several months about Michael Phelps being photographed using a bong, or 'water pipe' as the media seems more comfortable with. Some have said he should be banned from competition for life, his sponsors nothing at all should happen to him. When a grown man relaxes using herbal means and gets caught, some people cannot wait to take him down a peg.

I'm not here to persuade anyone one way or the other. What I would like to do instead is invite you to hop into my time machine (just finished it last night after dinner) and travel back with me to all the way to a mystical era - the 1990's.

On January 18, 1990 Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. was nabbed in an FBI sting operation at the Vista Hotel in Washington D.C. At the time he was the D.C. Mayor, a town with a slight amount of national clout. Videos of him smoking crack had the country fuming. Eventually he was convicted on a single misdemeanor count of possessing cocaine, knocked down from the original charge of ten counts of possession and three counts of felony perjury. Needless to say people seemed to have lost their trust in the man.

Then, in 1994, the populace of D.C. decided that crack wasn't so bad after all and reelected him. A year later he tested positive (the tests stemming from tax evasion charges) for marijuana and cocaine and was placed on probation. Sometime you pick a winner and sometimes you pick an ass.

Marion Barry was smoking one of the most addictive substances known to man while governing a quasi-important city that just happens to be the Capital of our nation and was given a second chance. My suggestion to all those who want to have Michael Phelps drawn and quartered over a bong hit is to chill out. Until you have freakish physical talent and are pictured on a Wheaties box, give him a break. And a lighter.