11:11 AM
04/19/24
04/19/24
July 24, 2002
"No other brand of celebrity is automatically imbued with the strange moral authority that we adults bizarrely confer on pro athletes...: As often as not, these clowns are big, dumb, coddled, selfish, self-indulgent, womanizing, violent head-cases with poor impulse control and bad hygiene." So why should they be role models?
posted by kirkaracha to culture at 06:38 PM - 1 comment
There are a lot of good points in this article, but the problem is that kids are really drawn to pro athletes. It's mentioned in the article, but the author neglects to acknowledge that when kids play games (which is what kids do), they tend to pick an athlete to emulate. Remember playing around as a kid and saying "Larry Bird from the three point line", or "Gretzky with the puck... he shoots, he scores!"? Of course you do. The comparison with actors is ridiculous. There might have been a few kids out there playing house and pretending they were Mr. or Mrs. Brady, but certainly not as many as there were pretending to be Pele. I think I was a fairly typical child, and the only actors I modeled myself after were John Belushi and Robert Downey Jr., and that was only between my junior year in high school and my graduation from college. The comparison with rock stars is a bit tougher to argue with, but it's almost a given that if you're in a band, you're doing drugs. From Louie Armstrong to Janis Joplin to Willie Nelson to every member of Wu Tang, we all know that they're getting messed up. It's not surprising when they overdose or get arrested. The problem with pro athletes is that they are the embodiment of what most kids and regular Joes want to be like. As such, they should be role models. The Olympic Motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius". It means "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Maybe we should rethink that middle one.