An open letter to Kellogg’s re: Michael Phelps February 16, 2009 | Posted in The Rogan Blog | Blog Archives | Dear, Kellogg’s. I’m writing this letter to express my disappointment in your company in firing Michael Phelps as a spokesperson for your products because he was photographed while enjoying some mar1juana. I respectfully would like to communicate my opinion on this matter because I think it’s of great public interest. First of all, although it is true that Mr. Phelps broke the law, I think any reasonably intelligent person would admit that it’s one of the most ****ed up and corrupt laws that we have today in this country. mar1juana is relatively harmless and certainly far less dangerous than a host of other things that are not only legal but also readily available, like alcohol and prescription drugs. The only reason it remains illegal to this day is because it’s a plant and you can’t patent it and control it’s sale, and because if it were legal it would greatly affect the demand for a host of prescription drugs that rake in billions of dollars each year for pharmaceutical companies. That’s it. mar1juana has never killed anyone EVER in over 10,000 years of use. We’re not protecting people from themselves, we’re not saving the children - it’s just a horribly illogical law that is in place because of corruption and propaganda. The fact that it’s against the law is just a disgusting reminder of how r****ded our system is, not a reasonable reaction to a proven threat to society. I have to say, this whole thing saddens me, because I personally would like to think that as Americans we’re better than this. These television news anchors will shake their heads at the thoughtless mistake Mr. Phelps had made by “smoking dope,” and then without even the tiniest sense of irony they will cut to a beer commercial. This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? We’re not supposed to be a nation of little b****es giving in to the whims of corrupt politicians and the pharmaceutical companies who’s interests they’re representing. It’s 2009, and in this day and age with the incredible access to information that we have available there’s no ****ing way that we should be allowing human beings to tell other human beings that they can’t do something that they enjoy that hurts no one including themselves. THAT is madness. THAT is ignorant, and THAT is completely ****ing un-American. I don’t want to hear any of that, “he’s setting a bad example with the children” nonsense either, because we all know if he had a gin and tonic in his hand instead of a bong this would never have been an issue, even though every single study ever done has shown that mar1juana is FAR less dangerous than alcohol. mar1juana laws are a horrible waste of resources and law enforcement, and especially in this day and age with our economy in such horrible shape I believe the last thing we need to be doing is wasting tax payers’ money on any of this victimless bull****. I find your reactions to Mr. Phelps situation both ignorant and short sighted. I think what would have been a far better response from Kellogg’s would be to support Mr. Phelps, and perhaps point out that maybe we as a society should take a closer look at the evidence and possibly reconsider our position on this misunderstood plant that so many of our productive citizens find useful. Now, I’m sure if you really were running Kellogg’s and you were still reading my bull**** all the way down to this, you must be thinking, “Why the hell would we stick our necks out like that for pot smokers?” And of course the answer to that question would be, because we buy your ****, mother****er. Do you guys even know your consumer statistics? Well, let me fill you in on some of my own personal scientific research on the subject, because I have been closely studying my own purchases for over 20 years, and I can tell you that I’ve been high 100% of the time I’ve bought your ****. I mean, do you guys ever think about what you sell? Pop tarts? Are you kidding me? I would be willing to bet that 50% of the people buying pop tarts are stoned out of their ****ing minds. Just to be perfectly clear on my position, I would like you to know that I enjoy your products. I think many of them are quite tasty, but lets be honest; you guys sell sugar-drenched **** that’s horrible for your body - in fact, it’s actually way worse for your body than pot - and you market this **** specifically to children. You assholes go as far as putting lovable cartoon characters on the boxes just so that kids will beg their parents for it. Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand my point, because I in no way want anything bad to happen to your company. Like I said, I genuinely enjoy your products. There’s nothing quite like being stoned out of your mind at 2am watching a Chuck Norris movie and eating a bowl of fruit loops. Your company and its products have been a part of some very pleasurable moments in guilty eating, and I’m glad you’re around. All I’m saying is that it’s high time (no pun intended) that you mother****ers respect the stoner dollar. There’s WAY more of us than you might think, and we tend to get upset about dumb **** like this. There are millions of us, and if we decide that we don’t like a company, they’re going to feel it. I think if you looked into it carefully, you would be surprised at how many undercover potheads there are out there. Pot smokers don’t all fit into the obvious, negative stereotypes; we come in all shapes and forms - including by the way, the form of the greatest ****ing swimmer who ever lived, EVER. Think about THAT **** for a second.. So in closing, I would like to ask you nice folks to please smarten the **** up. I would request that you check the calendar and note that it’s 2000 and ****ing 9, and next time you think about getting all uppity about pot you might want to do a quick google search on the facts. It’s 4:40am here in LA, and I’m going to wrap up this blog and to celebrate its completion I’m going to enjoy one of my personal favorite Kellogg’s products: Eggo waffles. I’m gonna pop 4 of them b****es into the toaster, and then I’m gonna stuff the bong with some fine, American grown “Train Wreck” and sacrifice the sacred plant to the fire gods in tribute to the unjustly persecuted 8 time Olympian hero. Then I’m gonna get some butter, and I’m gonna smear it on those Eggos, I’m gonna cover them with maple syrup, and I’m going to eat the ever loving **** out of them. Good day, sirs. Yours truly, Joe Rogan. http://blog.joerogan.net/archives/454?? I would have put this in the Phelps thread, but someone has disabled the search.
"The only reason it remains illegal to this day is because it’s a plant and you can’t patent it and control it’s sale, " uhm . . you mean like tobacco? Dear Mr. Rogan, We here to sell ***** not make stances on mar1juana use Mr. Phelps and his bong could have potentially cost us 30$ so his *ss had to go We won't tell you how to have sluts eat disgusting crap on TV and you don't tell us how to sell our sugary bad for you crap . . . . Sincerely Kellog SERIOUSLY One of the biggest turn off among the mar1juana legalization comminuty is the great big ole high horse of arrogance and pomp amongst it Rogan just seems to come off as a giant douche trying to justify his need/want to smoke some tree. Should it be illegal? Debatable I really don't care one way or the other [unless the person is operating something that can harm me .. then i don't want them on anything druggish .. ] I just find his tone in this peice irratating [but then again . . . Rogan is on the skis and the Shark is about 2 feet away] Rocket River
Yeah, good luck with that. Kellogg made a perfectly justified and understandable move. I have no doubt that tons of people at Kellogg, the very same ones that dumped Phelps, smoke pot. But really, is any major corporation going to take the chance of alienating the majority of Americans to appease the pot-smoking minority? It's just not going to happen. While weed seems to be slowly gaining acceptance, no one can deny that it typically carries a negative stigma. While I agree with Rogan's overall message, his anger towards mar1juana laws is totally misdirected. Send letters to your Congressman, not a freaking cereal maker.
That's where I stopped reading. STFU, Mr. Rogan. First write your lawmakers to change the law, then argue anything you want. Again, STFU.
I thought the letter was funny personally. if he wanted a serious reaction he probably shouldn't have cursed -- but funny none the less.
If you weren't aware, Joe Rogan was/is a standup comedian before he made a complete tool of himself on Fear Factor. However, one good thing has come from him. Anyone who hasn't seen it should check out the video of him absolutely destroying Carlos Mencia for stealing material from other comedians. It's fantastic. I always thought Mencia sucked, but that video just sealed the deal.
While I don't agree with much of what Mr. Rogan says in this rant, he's absolutely correct on this one, Mr. River. Tobacco can in no way be compared to the mar1juana plant. Tobacco is extremely environmentally-sensitive and it takes great care to produce the plant used for its narcotic properties. As a result, it is quite easy to regulate (and, therefore, tax). There are few regions in the United States that can properly produce "usable" tobacco (Virginia and the Carolinas come to mind). Much of the tobacco growing terroir is located in and around the Caribbean. mar1juana, on the other hand, can (and will -- and does) grow wild in all fifty of the states in the Union. The ramification of this difference in plant vitality and adaptability is that if mar1juana were made legal (or "decriminalized"), anyone with a second grade education could simply throw some seeds out in the yard and water the sprout a couple of times a week. Voila! Usable (smokable) mar1juana! The US Government is well aware of this fact. Therefore, all these stoned-out yayhoos that somehow get in front of congress to present their money-generating tax proposals for the mass-production of cannabis are simply wasting more of our taxpayer's money. I do not use mar1juana at this point in my life. There was a time when I did, however. I can see the logic on both sides of the decriminalization argument. The tobacco vs. mar1juana plant/tax scenario simply doesn't hold any weight. Carry on.
i think the debate over legalizing marjiuana isn't over whether or not it has any potential harmful uses...because that's an impossible statement to make for any product in the world. sure, if a surgeon is stoned out of his mind you probably don't want him performing open heart surgery. but he isn't going to be able to do that great if he's drunk either. he also isn't going to do a great job if he's trying to solve a rubik's cube in the middle of surgery,but you don't see anyone trying to make rubik's cubes illegal. why? because it's an unnecessary measure for a risk that is easily mitigated by one simple rule: no rubik's cubes in the OR. you don't have to make a product unlawful simply because it has harmful uses; you just prohibit the harmful uses. in the end, there are products which are far more harmful than mar1juana, and their legality completely undermines the ban on mar1juana. nobody can argue that marjiuana is physically more toxic than tobacco. and nobody can argue that mar1juana poses a greater risk to performance than alcohol. and if those are the 2 main areas of concern, (1) immediate physical toxicity and (2) potential negative externalities, mar1juana simply doesn't raise as many concerns as either of those products. maybe that sounds pompous or arrogant, but it's the only logical conclusion you can make. if you support the legality of tobacco or alcohol, you have to question the logic of criminalizing mar1juana.
I thought that letter was pretty funny. I would think that he didn't actually send that to kellogs and even if he did i bet it never got opened. It seemed like he wrote that more for entertainment then seriously wanting kellogs to read it.
also, rofl at people criticizing rogan for writing an open letter to kellogg's rather than congress. he obviously wrote it as a joke and doesn't expect any actual response from kellogg's, nor is this his attempt to start some grassroots effort to decriminalize mar1juana. he's a comedian and he wrote a funny reaction to the phelps bong hit on his blog. write congress instead of kelloggs? thanks captain obvious, your deductive reasoning skills have saved the day yet again!
I'm aware of that, but I am unaware of him ever actually being funny. It's kind of hard to take the "legalize!" crowd seriously when this douche is writing open letters to cereal companies trying in vain to argue the case. Besides the line about the system being "r****ded" (wow, that was fresh.....), my favorite line was this one: LOL, the irony.... Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write an open letter to Folgers Coffee lamenting the thuggish behaviour of the RIAA. I get that. However, I think the problem with this scenario is that the letter isn't funny.
dookiester, I didn't take him SERIOUSLY; I only think he's writing to the incorrect people. He really should address non-funny open-letter type essay to someone who cares. I know how to spell that word. I wanted to italicize it, so you could see I truly meant to write it that way, but I didn't want to spell it out although he deserves to be called such thing. The quote tag automatically italicizes, so after realizing the italics don't come out again, I gave up. You caught it, you know what's up.
maybe you don't take the content of the letter seriously, but you are clearly taking the fact that it's addressed to kellogg's seriously. and the fact that he's writing to a cereal company, one which has all kinds of food products that you'd have to be stoned to come up with (pop tarts? leggo my eggo?) is clearly part of the joke; obviously kellogg's doesn't have the power to legislate, so obviously he isn't writing to them because he thinks they are the 'correct' people to write to. you and ima_drummer2k both say you get that it's a joke (even if it's not a very funny one), but if you really understood that you wouldn't be trying to point out that congress is the appropriate avenue for venting this concern, or saying stuff like this: lighten up guys. call him a dbag if you really dislike him for other reasons, but don't call him a douche just because you think he should be writing to congress instead of kellogg's. that would be a douchey thing to do.
I admit, I'm a little biased. I've heard some of his stuff on XM etc. and I've just never been a fan. Dropping F-bombs doesn't automatically make you funny unless you are actually funny to begin with (Pryor, Murphy, Carlin, etc). Just my flea bitten opinion.
