I laughed out loud when I saw the picture of Michael Phelps, bong and lighter in hand, looking much like, well, like many people in America, particularly young ones.

Then I started following the story, in an attempt to stop following the octuplet debacle in California. And, just as I thought, sponsors stood behind him, while disappointed parents everywhere bemoaned the broken image of their child(rens) "role model."

I even took a few minutes to respond to one hand-wringing mother, that "dreaded" the conversation with her son about his hero's "poor judgment." Get a new hero. A REAL one. Get a better role model, a REAL one.

What seems to be lost in this latest tabloid feeding frenzy is a cold hard look at why we, as a culture, are so sports-crazed, and why we elevate athletes and singers, and, well, ANYONE from Hollywood to the status of "role model."

America loves sports, no doubt about. I love them too, sometimes. After all, I was on a swim team when I was 5, and competed for the next 13 years. But to want athletes and entertainers, people for whom the vast, vast majority of us can never, ever be, to set an example through every one of their actions and words for our children seems to be a bit much to ask. It is more than we typically ask of ourselves, particularly when you factor in the age of some of these stars.

We look, for some reason, to the rarest of the rare to show our children how to live, how to be better people. Why is that? There is nothing particularly balanced about Phelps's - or any high-level athlete's or movie star's life. Every day, every thing they eat, everywhere they go, all of it is determined by the intense demands of their sport and career. They are single-mindedly focused on themselves; they have to be.

Then they become millionaires, the very very few lucky enough to win. Many more academic scholarships are offered than athletic ones, yet parents spend multiple weekends and multiple dollars on their children that participate in sports, hoping for that sports ticket to school.

I feel for Phelps, and any "role model" caught up in this backlash. When he checked off the boxes of the events he was entering last summer, I'm guessing "role model" wasn't one of the choices. He doesn't actually owe us anything. No celebrity does. It is we who put them on a pedestal of our own making, and so it is we who are most disappointed when they stumble at the top. Boycott his sponsors if you truly feel disappointed by him. Have The Talk with your kids about drugs, although it is hard to argue that smoking pot will make you a loser with no friends. It isn't exactly "performance enhancing," unless the performance you seek is to eat an entire bag of chips in .5 seconds.

Or, encourage your kids to look closer to home - and to their history books - for real heroes, real role models. They are all around you. They probably live in your house, stand in front of a blackboard at school, teach Sunday School classes, have overcome true hardship and disability, work every day to make the world they live in a little better, treat their husbands and wives and partners and animals and friends and relatives with kindness and respect.

Let those examples lead the way for your kids, not a 23-year-old athlete at a party. Really.

Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at her blog Flipper and Me.