Stay cool, Mike

     
     Michael Phelps, with his astounding performance at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, is now poised to become one of the richest athletes on the planet.
     After all, a significant portion of the planet’s population avidly watched him gobble gold medals and world records like popcorn.
What red-blooded agent would not want to put that fame to work endorsing products for very large sums of money?
     This is potential far beyond the Wheaties box. This is Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan territory.
     Let’s hope, like those two examples, Mr. Phelps can keep his cool and class in the glare of the media beyond the sports world.
     He will be in the sights of paparazzi, flashing cameras into his eyes everywhere he goes, and followed by the drooling reporters for gossip mags hoping for the slightest infraction that can be blown out of proportion to sell more magazines or supermarket checkstand “newspapers.”
     We want to wish him the same focused calm with which he won his eight gold medals.
     Not for him, we hope, are the tawdry affairs, the nightclub brawls, the DUIIs, or the publicized check-in to the Betty Ford Clinic (and the unpublicized departure within 72 hours.)
     It’s not as if he shouldn’t relax a little, after all those years of dedicated training. But we hope he’ll keep things appropriate, and can serve as a hero to young people everywhere.
     We’re confident that’s the way it will be; for a guy who spends much of his life in the water, we think his size 14 feet are planted firmly on the ground.

They said that?

     President Bush: “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st Century.”
     Condoleeza Rice: “This is not 1958 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”
     Those are stunning statements, coming from this administration, but both of them are frighteningly real.
     Our question has to be the one Jon Stewart asked after playing those clips on his show last Thursday: “Do you guys have any short term memory?”
     Those stones Bush and Rice threw last week are crashing through glass walls everywhere at the White House. In the words of the Eric Clapton song: “Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.”