Thursday, December 3, 2009

Knocking your heroes off pedestals


"Inquiring minds want to know." No, scratch that...nosy minds want to know. I need to let everyone in on a little secret that I thought I could keep to myself, but in light of the past few days, I must let this out now. Your role models and your "heroes" are not perfect, and as a matter of fact, they are human just like you. Please sit down, stop screaming, and take long, slow deep breaths. Since there are people that apparently believe that there are other men or women who are somehow incapable of wrongdoing because they are living the "good" life, then it is my duty to take the role of the person who first told you that Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny don't exist and that Elvis really is dead. The people we consider celebrities have the ability to do wrong just as easily as they have the ability to do right. It's pretty elementary to say, but it's a little surprising that we still get shocked and hurt when we hear about the latest celebrity scandal.

There are those that feel that celebrities are somehow required to give their fans a detailed account of how they spend their time and an intimate look at every mistake and sin they have ever done. If this is true, then these same people should start a blog called, "The wrongs I have done", and they should have a camera man walking with them 24/7 so that all of us can see how the next person acts in their private life. If this doesn't sound reasonable, then it's unfair to demand the facts of someone else's privacy.

When someone does wrong, the only ones that should know about it are the ones that are affected, and when a celebrity does wrong, it has no effect whatsoever on their fans. Our role models and our heroes should come from either our homes, our neighborhoods, or our cities because when your role models come from the people on your t.v., it means you're disconnected. There's a 90% chance that none of us know Michael Jordan personally, and we will never have lunch with Brett Favre, Alicia Keys or any other "famous" person you can name which means that we don't know these celebrities personally. We know how they live by how they tell us or by how the media portrays them, but that does nothing to fill us in on their private life.

The bottom line is that if you want to pattern your life after someone, choose someone you can actually come into physical contact with so that you can really know them. If you don't have anyone around that fits that bill, then look at the people around you as examples of what not to do. So before you worry about someone else's business, take care of your own first!