Did 14 gold medals really just go up in a puff of smoke? Michael Phelps must think so. One snapshot of him grasping a bong at a party and he faces a three-month ban from professional swimming, the loss of a sponsor and the hand-wringing of hypocrites across America.

Aside from his physique, the photo of Phelps could be any young American on a night out. After all, this is a nation that loves cannabis so much that they gave it its own celebratory day (April 20, since you ask.) Phelps's bong is replicated across college campuses. While smoking a cigarette earns you a trip to rehab, I've seen students happily puff away on water bottles, tin foil and, in one alarming experiment, an apple. The only difference is that none of them could swim the 200m butterfly in 1 minute, 52 seconds.

Phelps isn't shooting steroids. And unlike some of his Olympic peers, he is not cheating himself and his country. He's just a 23-year-old who, in a rare break from training, got invited to a party.

But he's still going to take a hit. Po-faced pronouncements about his role model status have already begun. These are utterly bogus. Phelps is part-man part-fish, the greatest force to move through water since Jaws and an athlete who proves we can transcend the limits of our bodies. When Speedo gave him a $1 million bonus after Beijing, he did not take a trip to the dealers. He set up a charitable foundation.

One bong cannot take away from all this. But it won't stop the sponsors from getting up on their soapbox. Kellogg's was the first to drop Phelps, suggesting his antics are no longer consistent with its image. Instead, it's going with the line that putting a tiger called Tony on the cereal box will motivate kids more than a man who won more medals than France.

Such sanctimonious mindsets are not unusual in America. H.L.Mencken defined Puritanism as: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Today's critics particularly dislike it when this happiness manifests itself in a public figure who really should be doing something that makes us all feel better about ourselves.

Take Barack Obama. He headed up the Harvard Law Review, wrote two bestsellers and still found time to become the first black president. Now we want him to give up the odd puff he still enjoys on a cigarette.

This need for a hero without even a toenail of clay is oppressive and unrealistic. I cheered when Obama admitted to his earlier drug use: “I inhaled frequently. That was the point.” And it is equally refreshing to know that Michael Phelps is a fish with a social life. At the end of the day, a role model without the odd human flaw is no role model at all.

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