Celebrities and Heroes

Americans have long been enamored with celebrities. The glamor and glitz of their whirlwind travels, their on-again, off-again relationships, and their tragically charmed lives appeal to a large portion of the population. American Idol recently saw more votes cast than any presidential campaign in the history of our nation, and magazine covers broadcast every detail of celebrities’ tawdry affairs and seemingly never-ending divorces.

Why does America care so much about a group that, in all reality, offers so little to society in the way of actual substance? Perhaps more interesting is the question of what role they should play in public life. The answer is simple: None.

Celebrities have the potential to be role models; they have the platform and the ability to influence a generation and shape the course of our society’s way of thinking. However, as the fictional hero Spiderman was warned, “With great power comes great responsibility.” They have squandered their power on themselves and bought into the myth that they are somehow better than the man who goes to work in a factory every day to provide for his family.

Hollywood is in almost every home, almost every American life. They are lauded as heroes, as American royalty. They have the power to teach dedication, honor, courage, and love of country. They have the capacity to show boys how to respect girls, and girls how to respect themselves. They could teach us all how to be better husbands, better wives, better citizens. Instead, we are treated to a steady stream of their excesses; we are shown time and again that they are perhaps even more human than we are. We watch their divorces, their affairs, their arrests for drugs or shoplifting or drunk driving. We see them treated with a level of deference that the average citizen would never be given. We are taught that love is cheap, fidelity is overrated, and life is only fulfilling if your house is worth a few million.

Actors and actresses are fond of pontificating about society and the government, global warming, starving children, and a host of other causes they claim are dear to their hearts. They are political activists, fancying themselves enlightened revolutionaries in a dark time. They travel to Africa to be photographed feeding children; they travel to New Orleans to be filmed “helping the victims,” they adopt children from overseas and proudly tell us about what they’ve done to help the “global situation.” In reality, they are just hired spokespersons, being paid for what they do best: become someone they’re not, in front of a camera.

Meanwhile, the real heroes, the real role models, are down in the shelters serving soup to the needy. They are quietly volunteering at their local Big Brother/Big Sister charity. They are going to work every day and raising their kids to know what the meaning of honor and integrity are. They are coaching Little League and counseling unwed mothers and helping abused wives. They are standing in an airport at 2 in the morning so troops coming home from the horrors of war can have some warm food and a free phone to call their families. The people we should be paying attention to are regular guys from places like Indiana and Iowa who spent thirty days fighting on Iwo Jima so that fifty years later an actress could call them terrorists while wearing a dress–once time–that cost half a million dollars. The role models we should be looking to are the kind of men James Bradley wrote about in Flags of Our Fathers: strong, determined, brave; the kind of men who willingly laid down their lives for our freedom. Instead, our country idolizes people who slip in and out of identities so easily that they don’t even know themselves, so devoid of character that the only job they’re fit for is being something they’re not.

If the meaning of life is cars and diamonds and being on the cover of magazines, then celebrities have it made. I happen to believe the meaning of life is deeper than an Olympic-sized pool, and a lot more precious than a Brad Pitt DVD.

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