Robin Williams: Should Society Open the Gates to Drug-Enhanced Talent?

Is was bad enough when upscale and subsidized athletes could buy high-tech gear to break old sports records in baseball and golf.  It was even worse when players started using performance-enhancing drugs to transcend the bounds of natural ability.

      It seems that the whole celebrity world is full of cheats and fakes, thanks to the public’s supply-and-demand appetite for the sensational.   Or is it the new normal?

     If the Robin Williams we are mesmerized by is nothing more than a psychotic state induced by drugs and mental illness, then what are we really celebrating?  Surely not the genuine article, as such.  Isn’t America’s shallow entertainment culture at least partially responsible for his decline and ultimate death?

       Should students taking the ACT and SAT “coach” themselves with amphetamines?  Should colleges dispense them at finals time?  Should all athletes be given steroids “to be all they can be”?  What about musicians, preachers, and politicians?

        Sure, alcohol makes the dullest person into the life of the party, but is this a principle we want to openly embrace?  Was Robin Williams’ talent any different?   Mainstream media now takes advantage of the built-in “political correctness” which surrounds the obituary world.  Sanctifying and whitewashing is encouraged, criticism isn’t allowed.