The Gift of GAB Blog

While listening to wbhm 90.3 this morning, I heard a brief Frank Deford talking about Role Models and how athletes are always called role models. He goes on for about 3.5 minutes with his “rant” , but the one paragraph that caught me attention was this
“Why, pray, of all people, are athletes, pretty much alone in our society, expected to be sweeter than the average angel? It is politicians and clergy and those maestros of finance on Wall Street who ought to be held to a higher standard. Why aren’t they ever called “role models?” Why can’t some tearful little impressionable tyke sob, “Say it ain’t so, Goldman Sachs, say it ain’t so” — and thus change the pecking order in our cultural mythology? ”

And that got to me thinking, why do we allow athletes and celebrities be the only “role models” for our children. Rarely do you ever hear how an accountant, veterinarian, or even a local farmer is a role model…unless it is context of sports or by their own kids. But the minute somebody is a celebrity or an athlete, we push us and our children to “watch” and “copy” them because they are automatically gods and goddess and can do wrong. Why? Why is that we automatically think that when people reach a certain level of fame that they turn into this perfect beings that we should strive to become like? And then watch out if one of them falls from their pedestals that we have place them on. We, the low undeserving people who place them up so high, bare our shiny claws and rip them to shred for not living up to OUR expectations, much less their own.

It seems that we have done a great in justice to the generations behind us. Instead of becoming role models ourselves for our children, we have stepped aside and let fame and fortune decide who will be their role models, for good or for bad. Daniel J. Boorstin said it well:
“Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.”

Some great quotes to think about:
Whether or not you have children yourself, you are a parent
to the next generation. If we can only stop thinking of children
as individual property and think of them as the next generation,
then we can realize we all have a role to play.
-Charlotte Davis-Kasl

Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents.
Parents are handing life’s scripts to their children,
scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out
for the rest of the children’s lives.
-Stephen R. Covey

(Quotes found onLiving Life Fully)