John Yoo and Michael Phelps
Poor Michael Phelps, lost his cheerios box. Oh well, hitting the bong in the Carolina’s has a way of ending up on utube. The next thing you know, America’s super Speedo with the pterodactyl wing span has taken a major tumble down that tower of grace the popular culture police like to set up.
Kellogg’s says he is no longer the appropriate role model for their Wheaties.
I always dreamed of a world where you could have your occasional hit and eat your Wheaties, too. I can accept that I was wrong. But, I can dream.
When you think about it, no one can argue pot is a performance enhancing drug. Think of what he could have done had he not been a weekend warrior. Well, we are a culture that believes in the public lashing. Bad behavior must not go unpunished.
Perspective is essential to getting it right. Sometimes, I think we aim at the wrong target.
I would much prefer to greet my cereal box in the morning with my foggy get up and go and my fifty two year old feet still shuffling to the grind if Michael Phelps was on it. I’d be happy to see Michael.
Michael, Michael, go to Madonna’s camp and take that class on know who your friends are and be savvy and be smart and play a good hand of cards.
I’d take Michael any day with his follies of youth and experiment and happiness over the malevolence and narcissim of a character like John Yoo. There, he is in his Brooks Bros. suit and Christian Dior ties with cufflinks with his JY engraved while he was carving up the Geneva Convention and authorizing our collective barbarianism in how we played the game.
John, John didn’t you learn at that top tier law school you attended that it’s really all about how you conduct yourself on the way to the dance. It’s all about your grace under pressure and the skill of dignity and the power of the brain for negotiation and kindness and diplomacy. Didn’t you learn that the guy who wins the fight is the guy who doesn’t have to raise his fists but rather raises the bar for how we act, treat one another, give and receive.
John, John somehow you got so blinded by some God awful belief that it was your right to rewrite our rules that so very long ago defined and enabled our greatness.
Can’t you see how torture is never justified for it can never, ever be just?
Can’t you see where fear is not a good enough reason for falling below the bar of civility and decency, rightness?
Can’t you see how they didn’t talk and all we got was shame and the very worst kind of notoriety?
John, John can’t you see?
So, let’s keep our crimes and punishments in focus, balanced and reasonable and just. Some things are bad and some things are wrong. But some things are outrageous and profoundly destructive and rise to the level of distorting the core value and ethic of what is fundamentally right and wrong.
Pass me the Wheaties and put Michael back on the box and put John Yoo in the box where he belongs.
