megfowler.com

So.

I’m a New England Patriots fan, as well as a Tom Brady fan.

(Yeah, yeah… I saw the game.)

This puts me in several categories, as far as the general public is concerned (as well as my friends and family):

1. Smart — Tom Brady is a legendary athlete and great leader, and the Pats are one of the best teams in NFL history

2. Bandwagonner – You’re just hanging onto the coattails of success (which isn’t true — fan for more than a decade)

3. Traitor to my gender — He’s a baby abandoner! He’s a supermodel dater! How could you! (despite the fact that OH YEAH I WASN’T THERE AND NEITHER WERE YOU. Do you know Bridget or Tom? Is it anyone’s business but theirs? Does it have ANYTHING to do with football… his actual job? Or hers as an actress? Yeah.)

4. Brady FanGirl — Is Tom Brady attractive? Yes. Is he a great athlete/leader? Yes. Do those two things have anything to do with one another? No. I’m thinking Randy Moss doesn’t catch the passes because Tom is a fine-looking man — he catches them because they’re accurate. And there are a hell of a lot of good-looking athletes out there I’ve never even thought twice about.

I get a little irritated at the same old “blah blah blah Patriots! blah blah blah Brady!” comments, not because people don’t have a right to their opinions, but because the stuff they pick on really doesn’t have anything to do WITH FOOTBALL.

It has to do with the fact that no one really likes “perfect.”

Even as I say that, I cringe, because there’s no way either the man or the team is perfect. As soon as someone scores on them, they cease to be technically “perfect” and just become really, really successful. And why? Because, generally — with the exception of a bizarrely lackluster performance last night — they do what it takes to win.

I don’t really know much else about Tom Brady beyond that. And I don’t want to.

I think I’m in the minority there, though.

And this is just one tiny example among millions.

For every person that loves to love on people who have lives that seem “ideal”, there are people hunting for the chink in the armor. For every person that wants their heroes to be “Teflon”, there’s someone looking to make things stick to them like glue.

We couch the need to punish the “perfect” (and yes, I’m still using that term facetiously) in things like “rooting for the underdog” and “taking the piss” and “cutting people down to size”, but does our response to their success (or fame or money or notoriety) say more about us than it does about them?

I think so.

It has to do with our own moral codes as applied to (our perception of) other people’s lives.

It has to do with prurient fascination with other peoples’ “dirty laundry.”

It has to do with frustration with our OWN experience… as in, why are they successful? I could do THAT.

And it extends past the Patriots to political candidates and pop stars and public figures of all kinds… pretty much anyone who does anything that extends them 15 minutes of fame or 15 bucks in royalties.

I’ve had a problem with celebrity gossip and our smug culture of cynicism and snark for a long time, even as I know that I’ve taken my fair share of potshots at my own little set of less-beloved celebrity figures (from Oprah to Joe Francis.) I’ve been convicted about that stuff lately, though… I mean, why am I obsessing about it? Am I just adding to the problem with my own purely opinion-based voice? Am I saying anything new or thoughtful or helpful to the culture around me?

Let me make this clear, too: it’s not that we can’t say anything at all about public figures. The mechanisms of fame are fascinating and worthy of discussion. Still, cultural analysis is one thing. Ethics is one thing. News is one thing.

But excoriation is another thing entirely.

There’s a difference between trying to understand the influence someone has on our culture and the nature of their success… and posting photos of them not wearing underwear. And we know which one gets more attention — which is why those photos exist.

The level to which the media — be it web or print or broadcast — has accelerated into covering these stories is extraordinary. There have always been gossip sheets and tabloids, but nothing like this. Obviously there’s a market, or they wouldn’t do it. After all, they exist to perpetuate their own role, and they’ve obviously found that the public will take as much as they can give.

And they’d have nothing to say without the publicists feeding them their information, relying on our fascination with muckracking and the lowest common denominator to keep their clients in the headlines. Why are we honoring their desire to hook us with absolute bullshit?

How much is going to be enough?

Is it “true” because someone printed it?

Why do we need to know the things we know?

Why does learning who someone sleeps with/fights with/hangs out with have anything to do with their talent or artistic/athletic/intellectual output?

Why are we buying in?

Why does someone owe me back the price of a movie ticket with a chunk of their private lives?

I’m just not cynical enough to think it’s a fully consensual relationship on all sides, either.

For every celebrity playing the game with a steady hand, there’s four more who are too addled to think for themselves, for reasons we shouldn’t perpetuate, even if they are responsible for creating the mess they’re in. For every savvy image-pusher, there’s an actor who just wants to act, or a singer who just wants to sing, or a guy who just wants to make the TD… and they can’t, because “that’s the price of fame” — even if there’s a huge difference between being known and being vilified.

And for every single one of them, there could be a family that hasn’t made that same deal with the devil.

Does it help a certain actor’s family to see speculation about his death splashed across every website and newspaper going? Does his daughter need to read all of that when she grows up someday, or is that a story her family and her family alone should tell her about her dad?

Does it help the children of people in the public eye to grow up with their parents’ private lives on display? Sure… their parents are responsible. Sure, they’ll get the inheritance when they crash and burn. But when you put down your money for it or click on the URL, you might as well be making their therapy appointments twenty years from now.

Does it make us more informed about the world when we read a story in OK! magazine that someone got paid a million dollars to share… and did everyone close to them make a choice to put their lives on display, too?

There are thousands of examples. People are dying to both stay and get out of the public eye as we speak, and neither situation seems worthy of support.

So what’s your problem with “perfect”?

What’s your “need to know”?

Why are you content with indulging the worst part of your human nature?

Why are people getting rich off of your hunger to latch onto the latest lies and rumours and tales — even richer than they’re getting off their actual jobs (if they have one)?

And what COULD you be learning about if you turned the volume down on the crap?

I don’t pretend to be immune to it all, or to be naive about the system that makes it work. I hear you telling me to chill out and “c’est la vie!”

I just wonder why it’s okay to shrug at the madness and let it shape the world around me.

I should be the one doing that.

And unless I figure out how to hear my own mind and heart above all the voices around me, I don’t stand much of a chance.