One of the most traumatic moments of high school for me was February of junior year (1998) when Red Sox first baseman Mo Vaughn was arrested for drunk driving. Mo was my hero during my unstable adolescent years, and I was shocked to learn that someone whose perseverance and community values I worshipped could commit a crime.
Hero worship is an integral part of American culture. Every second grade girl develops a crush on a popular male singer or actor. Likewise, every second grade boy has a favorite athlete whose jersey he sleeps in every night and won't let mom wash because that would take away the smell it got when he wore it to the ballpark/arena/stadium that one time. From an early age, children look to prominent public figures as role models, and they use their worship of them as a way to define themselves and figure out who they should be.
The idolization of sports figures is a critical part of teaching children the norms of American society. Sports magazines, shows, and newspaper articles praise athletes for embodying the values that society prizes at each time (usually things like perseverance and physical prowess). This teaches children that people who embody these values are superior, and many children learn the norms of society by rooting for particular players and teams.
However, there is a paradox that comes from using hero worship to teach societal values. Athletes, musicians, actors, politicians, or whoever else a child might choose to idolize are only human, but hero worship holds them to superhuman standards. Americans expect their public figures to lead perfect, by-the-book lives, but this is virtually impossible - it is something that few people even expect from themselves.
This contradiction leads to much confusion, because inevitably there will be some moment when a hero's imperfections become evident, and a child will feel disillusioned by society.
Such an incident occurred when Mo Vaughn was arrested. He came of age in baseball at just the time when I was coming of age in life. When I was a lonely, unsure high school freshman, I could come home each night and know that I could turn on the television and Mo would be there. As a sports figure celebrated by the Boston press he was the perfect person to worship. He had risen above a humble background to become a physical and spiritual leader on the Red Sox team, and he was constantly praised for his work helping underprivileged children in the Boston community.
But that praise ended in February of 1998. Worse than the drunk driving charge was the fact that Vaughn was on his way home from the Foxy Lady strip club, of all places. The interplay of alcohol and sex made the incident a huge scandal, and the Boston media had a field day. Vaughn was no longer at the top of the hub - he was the laughing stock of it.
The whole incident was rather unsettling for me. I had thought Vaughn was an angel, and here he was, a criminal. My hero was a human, and my heart was broken.
Vaughn's arrest represented the breaking of the bubble of my adolescent, fantasy world. From then on, everything was unfair, everyone had a fault, and my perspective of famous people became much more critical. Though I have since come to terms with Mo Vaughn's demise, the whole hero worship element of American culture continues to puzzle me.
We hold every person and everything to an incredibly high standard of perfection. We expect our politicians to never accidentally contradict themselves, to have perfect grammar, to present themselves as perfectly groomed in public, and to never have given into the vices of alcohol and sex that normal people give in to every day and often do not feel bad about. We criticize presidential candidates for doing dumb things in college, while we would be hard-pressed to find any person who has not done something stupid in college because they were either drunk, na??ve, or both.
Our standards for our celebrity heroes are just as high. We expect athletes to be in perfect physical condition, and we boo even our favorite stars if they are having a bad week. And we don't entirely respect heroes who have vices in their personalities. Babe Ruth was the single greatest hitter ever in Major League Baseball for what he did in his time, yet many people frown upon him because he like to have fun. The same goes with Mickey Mantle.
Now, I am not advocating that America start idolizing promiscuity and drunkenness (I'll save that for my next column). The point is that this paradox, in which we make children believe that there are individuals in society who are perfect, has negative effects. The world of sports reinforces these confusing propositions by constantly heralding people who have superhuman abilities.
The most adverse affect this has is not on our views of heroes but on our views of each other. The culture of hero worship teaches us to be upset and outraged when we find out that others have human flaws. We go through our lives constantly trying to point what's wrong with other people, and we have a lot of difficulty coming to terms with the fact that it's okay for humans to have vices and weaknesses - which are in fact what make us human.
