Is there a double standard at play here guys?

WOW I think your right. In 1980 Ozzy Osborne bit the head off of a live dove while on stage at a concert and two years later he did the same thing to a bat....How come that topic isn't coming up?He was given a show after that and was the spokesperson for pepsi.

Matt Jones was caught with cocaine and put out of the league.Was it the right move? YES!!!...How come people like Lohan can still make movies and get paid without the public ripping into them and Jones can not?.........

Maybe, but athletes get more of a role model status and are rarely punished when signs of criminal behavior manifest.

Let's face it, nobody considers Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., et all, role models. They entertain people, nothing more. Nobody wants to be like them, although they want to be famous. And Lohan, Downey, Drew Barrymore, and others, have harmed mainly themselves with their drug problems.

Athletes, on the other hand, all too often harm *others* There was that guy at the University of Nebraska who had a bad rep for abusing girlfriends but was never benched and was drafted by an NFL team. Michael Vick ran an illegal enterprise in which he himself took part in the "execution" of underperforming dogs.

Yes, athletes entertain people, too. But they also have role model status, unlike many other entertainers.

Because a lot of athletes are often looked up to. Just to name a few, Randy Moss, Ray Lewis, Brian Dawkins, even Terrell Owens.

It's the outstanding players in the Professional Leagues that are most often under the spot light because they stand out so much. That is why they are often looked up to obviously. When they do wrong it is such a ... oh how do I put this.. disappointment. Many many young athletes want to be just like them and to see them disobey the law or get in trouble is never a good thing, not just for them but for anyone.

Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan and all of them are entertainers but not role models, they are just pretty people who made it big. They are not held to any standards besides keep it PG - 13 on TV while most don't even do that. They aren't role models because besides young pre teens, no one really wants to grow up to be them. While they would like to be as successful, they don't want to be exactly like them.

Make sense?

Good question.

edit: Also a thing I wanted to point out, a perfect example of being Biased at it's best.

Thanks for the definition Stan.

Stay out of the football section if you don't know Football, thanks.

Well, as a woman and a Biologist, I'd say in the animal kingdom there's a pecking order. The fit male lion gets his pick and he'll choose the healthiest females. The lower placed males and females take what they can get. The beta(etc) females will mate with as many males as she can, since she doesn't have the alpha male's protection. This way, so many males (inferior) will bring her the odd tidbit and think her offspring is his. It's survival. In humans, it's similar, but the fit lion may actually be a fat balding rich man and instead of a healthy alpha female or females, he may choose a surgically enhanced phoney. I suppose the point I'm getting at, is humans have animal instincts, but they are muddled by the veneer of society and greed. A typical woman wanting a father for her offspring will tend to look for qualities such as healthy, tall, well educated/strong and with good bi-lateral symmetry. A typical man (by this, I mean of course a typical heterosexual man) will also be attracted to good bi-lateral symmetry (a sign of good health) shiny hair, bright eyes, good teeth aswell as the more obvious female attributes. Then of course there's the whole smell and taste thing, ah it's mighty complex and I don't know whether I've made things worse! On the whole, men don't like to think their mate is the local bike, if she's pure, she won't be able to criticise his "performance". Men are prone to exaggeration about how many women they've slept with. We females don't want a virgin, we want an experienced man and we lie about how many lovers we've had, don't we girls?

I think the difference is the connection between pro teams, college

teams and merchandising. Part of the prestige of the NFL is the fact that it is full of college graduates. These athletes make money off of endorsements because of their all- American reputations. On top of that an athlete also has to maintain the good name of his alma mater. Hollywood celebrities don't bear the weight of representing a franchise city, Nike, Reebok, and the big-time university that they came from in the first place. Their problems are viewed as having a more negligible effect because of that.

I think there is an attitude that athletes are thugs who don't deserve what they have to begin with. Lots and lots of people bemoan the fact that athletes make millions of dollars a year for playing their sport, but you hardly ever hear anyone bemoan the fact that a top-level actor or actress can make upwards of $20 million--for a single movie. Act in just 2 or 3 movies a year and your earnings will greatly overshadow what most athletes make. And do they really do anything more to deserve it?

The days of good hollywood is long gone by. No one looks to them for an example of morals and standards because they have been corrupt out there for so long but sports as a whole has been good clean family fun. There have been scandals and run ins, of course, but families take their 5 year olds to see a sports game, not a lindsay lohan movie. It needs to be kept wholesome, as another user already said.

Sports people are more thought of as heroes than most movie stars and pop stars. Robert Downey Jr. was blackballed for a long time until he cleaned up also.

Sports is supposed to be wholesome.

This is a really great point. Someone mentioned that substance abuse isn't the same as hurting dogs...you and I both know this to be true...but this doesn't account for things like steroid use. I might get a lot of flak for this because of the sheer ignorance people have regarding steroids, but let's lay this out for what it is: professional sports is an arena where we demand peak performance, and steroids allows these already-great athletes to kick it up a notch. We can sit back and claim that we don't care about how big and powerful our athletes are, but the fact of the matter is that things like baseball were actually at risk of going by the way side until juicers like Mark McGuire started hitting the field and whacking those balls out of the park. "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" had a tag line to their title: "If everyone's doing it, is it still cheating?" The fact is that professional and college football players use steroids to enhance their endurance and strength beyond their normal ability. Steroids doesn't give them muscles. If I took steroids, I wouldn't suddenly be an Olympic gymnast or lineman. I wouldn't be able to hit a home run. Steroids allows a person to increase his/her ability to perform at what s/he is already good at...it is literally a "performance enhancer."

Athletes are arrested and charged with steroid use/possession, some are not allowed to play their sport ever again. Remember, we the public demand peak performance and hard hits, and our hard-earned money increasing sales of seats and products related to sports show that we like what the steroids do for the athletes.

Compare this to something like cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.. These are dangerous drugs that alter a person's perception of reality. I recall a statistic that stated 1 in 3 car accidents that are caused by the driver being under the influence of something have the driver under the influence of marijuana. We consider pot rather harmless and many would like to see it legalized (I personally see this as a good thing). How many steroid-induced accidents have you heard of? Did you know that there are more side effects to supplementing with VITAMIN C than with steroids?

Additionally, these illegal drugs don't allow these actors and singers to perform better. In fact, it impairs their ability to do so. I recall the tale of one child actor who was on cocaine and as the show went on, they couldn't actually zoom in on her because of the ravages of the drug made her less attractive, and they ended up having to fire her because she couldn't act anymore.

Let's compare for a second Michael Phelps and Amy Winehouse. They actually wanted to take away Michael Phelps' gold medals because he smoked pot, but Amy Winehouse, who's on several drugs, pops in and out of rehab instead of being thrown in jail. If I'm caught with, what, more than an ounce of marijuana, I risk up to 10-15 years in jail, yet she's still allowed to sing? Come on.

It's the public's fault, really. If we want to send the message that we don't condone this, we need to stop handing them our money. Same with buying items made in sweat shops.

There's no double standard.

There's quite a bit of difference between someone abusing drugs/alcohol which is hurting only themselves, and someone who takes delight in stealing small pets from neighboring backyards and throwing these pets in pits with pitbulls to watch as the pitbulls tear these little animals to shreds as part of their "training."

There's a difference between someone abusing drugs, and someone hanging dogs from their back legs and beating them with metal pipes,...

or throwing dogs in pits of water and watching with glee as they scrape their nails against the sides struggling to keep their heads above water,...

or attaching battery jumper cables to a dogs testicles in an attempt to electrocute them, and if they don't die soon enough, bashing their heads into the ground.

Anyone who can't see the difference in these actions is also a sick excuse for a human being.