Press: The Smart and the Stupid

Yesterday the New York Times ran a great in-depth article about Usain Bolt and his desire to help track move up to its rightful place near the top of the sports world. It's really worth a read.

One small aspect of the article was a reaction to Michael Phelps and the whole bong thing:

“That was stupid,” Bolt said of Phelps’s behavior. He acknowledged that he had also tried marijuana when he was younger and that Phelps might have felt peer pressure, but, Bolt added, “You’ve got to know who you are and how famous and what you mean in the country.”

So what does the AP run with today? Headline: Bolt tried weed as a kid. Of all the stupid mother*$#@ing pointless things to take away from that article.

A sidebar summary includes the "news" that "marijuana use [is] common place in his home of Jamaica". Next thing they'll tell us is that people drink Guinness in Ireland. It just goes to show that for every in-depth intelligent news story there are two or three short and dumb ones.