Where Have All The Good Ones Gone?
It’s not often that I climb aboard my soapbox to preach about the morality of modern day pop culture icons. So infrequent is this in my repertoire of daily existence that I had to give my soapbox a solid dusting before I begin. Being a product of the 80’s I am well versed in the sudden overexposure and constant interest in the lives of celebrity and sports personalities. I have seen intrusions into their lives that even a fame-whore would blush at. But no matter how intrusive the lens, or how obscene the question, the general public chalks up the constant media feeding frenzy as coming with the territory, and to simply deal with it.
Normally I balk at this statement. People are people and they need their own share of privacy. There are times though, when I hesitate and wonder when the line between intrusion of privacy and a public’s right to know coincide and become a fine line that is blurred. Of course by now, I am sure that by reading the 10 million headlines pertaining to this figure you have figured out that I am referring to a recent scandal of one of sports all-time-greats, Tiger Woods. I can’t help but feel a bit of sadness at the recent fall of golf’s “golden boy.” Tiger was one of the good ones now fallen from grace. Is the public scrutiny of his numerous affairs too much, or simply the manifestation of a general public outcry of a loss of yet another sports hero. Tiger was the epitome of the “American Dream” a concept that many people living that dream see slipping through their fingers at an alarming rate. Perhaps the fall of another representative of that dream has caused their panic, their disgust and their intrusion into an otherwise private existence.
Do I care if he had affairs? No. Do I care that people have one less person to look up to, perhaps. Having read myself the countless articles, I can’t help but think, where have all the good ones gone? Are there none left that don’t have an army of skeletons in their closet waiting for their chance to surface? How can it be that each time this happens the public is surprisingly surprised? Until the next scandal breaks and another public figure in which many have looked up too disappoints us yet again, I come down from my soapbox. This time, I am hoping that it has time to accumulate more dust.