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Michael Phelps blows off IBM
LAS VEGAS--I'm here at IBM Pulse 2009, the IBM Tivoli customer conference (more on Pulse09 in my next blog). Many months ago, IBM hired Olympian Michael Phelps as a keynote speaker and the company was quite excited about having him present. When pictures of Phelps "pulling on a bong" emerged, I really felt bad for IBM, imagining an emergency meeting between the Pulse09 event team, corporate marketing, HR, and legal to decide what to do. IBM ended up sticking with Phelps as planned.
Michael Phelps made it to Oracle's OpenWorld, shown here with Oracle President Charles Phillips. But the Olympian cancelled on IBM.
(Credit: Dawn Kawamoto)Given these events, I was very interested to see how IBM and Phelps handled this dicey situation. It turns out that I'll never know. Tivoli General Manager Al Zollar Tuesday morning announced that Phelps called IBM last night and canceled his appearance. Zollar mentioned that Phelps was going through a tough time and IBM wished him well--very classy indeed.
Behind the scenes, I can only imagine how angry IBM must be. IBM, a company that prides itself on business ethics and respect for individuals, stuck by Phelps in spite of his juvenile and embarrassing behavior. How does Phelps respond? By kicking IBM in the teeth at the eleventh hour.
IBM handled a bad situation with extreme grace and not one customer I spoke to blamed the company for this situation. As for Phelps, he is quickly moving toward a celebrity neighborhood populated by the likes of John Daly and Tonya Harding.
Jon Oltsik is a senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. He is not an employee of CNET. 
Most (if not all) of the endorsements he signed will have moral clauses as an out for the sponsor. If you need your pot so much that you need to smoke it in public and threaten your income / job, so be it. You get what you deserve.
Trust me - if I were getting paid millions upon millions of bucks to conduct myself in a certain way, I would do my level best to avoid doing anything so patently stupid as, say, even pretending to take a hit off of a bong.
Parks specifically did what she did to make a statement against gross injustice. Phelps did what he did to try and look cool for his buddies.
Anyone else see the vast difference between these two human beings and their behavior? Thought so.
"It's nothing more than temporary blip, before everyone forgets."..
...him.
You missed that last part. Unlike a president, Phelps doesn't have much going for him outside of a few weeks in last year's Olympics.
Maybe he's on track to be the next president. Cut him some slack.
shut it fool.
This is on par with something you would read in a supermarket tabloid.
Okay, so let me get this straight. A person who smokes pot recreationally is placed in the same league as John Daly, who has been arrested for physically abusing his wife, and Tonya Harding, who hired someone to assault and batter a competitor.
When a journalist can't differentiate between the moral value of violent and non-violent crimes, I weep for the morality of the nation.
Then again, if HArding can do it, maybe Phelps can get a slot on "World's Dumbest..."?
sanenazok: he's got the reach, but them arms look a bit too rubbery to hold up for more than three rounds :)
I'm curious what you call the millions of people around the world that go to bars and ingest alcoholic beverages that are toxic to your stomach, brain and liver...
and is alcohol is one of the leading preventable causes of death among teens?
That said, dude, it IS juvenile to toke it for "recreational uses". Just like binge drinking (or drinking to get buzzed) is juvenile. Only the immature seek it. Adults face down and conquer their problems, not try and escape them with a mind-bending chemical just for a few moments of artificial joy.
It does blow that he made a deal and opted out of it at the last minute however - ESPECIALLY when IBM was still behind him.
Dude's done more in his lifetime than most folks ever will, smokes some weed in 'privacy' without hassling anyone, and here go the morality police.
Ok, he probably shouldn't have canceled on IBM, but hey, understandable given the situation.
Please though, cut Phelps some slack. He's human - and 23, you know ..
That said, Phelps seems like a smart guy. He should be smart enough to know that the media and public will over-react when things like this happen. However unfair it is, his celebrity holds him to a different standard than most people and he needs to act accordingly. If he wants to smoke pot - fine, but he needs to do it in private now that he's in the public eye, and certainly not allow pictures to be taken of him.
I think it's ridiculous we as a society consider an adult smoking some put such a big deal. But Phelps needs to understand the consequences if his private life gets into the public.
Unfortunately, the only thing society likes to see more then someone's success, is to see them fail and stumble. It's a negative aspect of human nature and humanity.
You're just using the whole pot scandal to squeeze one more article out of a ****** situation, and frankly, it doesn't seem like many are buying it.
I suppose next you'll be telling us that getting a speeding camera ticket puts you in the same neighborhood as people who rob banks on video...
Mr Phelps is no juvenile. He did something this summer in Beijing that nobody else in the world has been able to do. He made this country proud. I think we need to report this post, it's incomplete and mostly speculative.
I don't even want to try coca-cola, that doesn't make me one of the best. Because he smoked pot, it doesn't make him bad either.
Be sensible, don't be sinsible.
Who cares there are stupid federal marijuana laws? It's illegal to spit on the street or have oral sex in lots of places in this country too. Until every idiot that takes potshots at Phelps acknowledges that they have never in their life tasted an alchoholic beverage, I say those in glass houses should stop casting stones and grow up. They're the ones being "juvenile".
- by cracm February 10, 2009 8:36 PM PST
- I just keep thinking about how Rosa Parks got arrested for breaking the law. Her illegal actions were quite embarrassing and juvenile as well.
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- by Penguinisto February 11, 2009 6:14 AM PST
- Rosa parks was willing to take the punishment along with the glory in the name of the cause she supported. Phelps OTOH caved and cried about how he was sorry.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (50 Comments)Parks specifically did what she did to make a statement against gross injustice. Phelps did what he did to try and look cool for his buddies.
See the diff?