Calling Drug Abuse Illness Is Sickening

Earl Warren once observed that he opened each day’s newspaper first to the sports section so he could read about mankind’s triumphs--and only then turned to the front page to read of its failures. Judging by recent events in Southern California, the late chief justice’s preference is no longer available to readers of the morning news.

The arrest of the Anaheim Angels’ Tony Phillips on charges of felony possession of cocaine, splayed across local sports pages, portrayed a gifted and talented athlete who presumably sought a thrill other than victory. It is hardly the symbol of human triumph that Justice Warren envisioned.

The Walt Disney Co., which operates the Angels, moved to enforce its anti-drug policy by suspending Phillips indefinitely so he could enter rehabilitation. The baseball players union filed a grievance for Phillips and an arbitrator lifted the suspension.

Now comes the rub. The lawyer for the players union blasted the Disney organization for being more concerned with its reputation as a promoter of wholesome family values than with accepting major league baseball’s squishy policy which prohibits discipline of first-time offenders.

Excuse me? The Disney folks have had their problems lately with public image issues, but this is one time when the whole lot of us should be thumping the tubs on Disney’s behalf. It hardly should be viewed negatively when a corporate leader sets high standards for its employees, and challenges drug abuse policies which discard strong discipline of insupportable personal conduct.

Welcome to politically correct America, where accountability and consequences are shoved aside for touchy feely human repair.

And back now to the front page where we read of the recent arrest of L.A. City Councilman Mike Hernandez on suspicion of possessing cocaine. According to newspaper reports, the councilman was living out of his car and hadn’t been paying his bills in order to support a huge daily drug habit.

Enter left-wing Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg with this dose of tripe: “It’s time for American society to grow up and see these kinds of substance abuse issues as the illnesses they are and not as personal shortcomings.� Today’s lesson, children, is to cop a plea to illness when you break social rules because your fellow citizens might otherwise unreasonably think of such violations as personal shortcomings.

Perhaps it was just such an “illness� last year that caused the Baltimore Oriole Roberto Alomar to spit in an umpire’s face when he disagreed with the ump’s ruling. The “no personal shortcoming rule� was in effect because in short order Alomar was back on the field despite his disgusting behavior.

And on another cultural front, Newsweek reported the details of an L.A. party earlier this month where actor Christian Slater was arrested for “allegedly punching his girlfriend . . . and then chomping into the stomach of a man who tried to help her.�

He allegedly struggled with the cops, tried to grab an officer’s gun and later admitted he had taken heroin and cocaine that night in addition to being on a drinking binge.

But hey, America, grow up. Slater could be suffering from Goldberg syndrome, a trendy malady whose symptoms exclude personal shortcomings.

Here’s an ironic juxtaposition. Just a few miles down the road from Tony Phillips’ alleged personal idiosyncrasy of lighting up rock cocaine, there are 14 kids in South Mission Viejo who just became national Little League champions. Right now those bright-eyed and disciplined sluggers are physically near, but light-years away in character, from the Anaheim mess.

But what standard will they grow into? Will it be the silliness and hokum of a society that excuses and rationalizes execrable personal behavior? Or will it be one where accountability and consequences mean something?

If anything haunts America as it’s poised for entry into the new millennium, it’s the current national ambivalence toward drugs and their abusers. There’s a big crowd--including some conservative leaders and even an Orange County judge--who push drug legalization.

Well, Mom and Dad, unless this is what you want, you better take up the fight. The lesson for those Little Leaguers and all our kids should be to seek winning in life as well as athletics.

Sports has its halls of fame--but it’s hall of fame human beings that we should be striving to build.