moral turpitude as a function of fame

[boodie]

With the recent death of Peter Brock, and the attendant publicity, when does an icons 'private life' impinge on the public persona, and should it matter at all to the people who idolise that identity.

Case in point, Peter Brock, turns out that 'Peter Perfect' wasn't such a nice person at all, morally speaking, outside of his car racing identity, many affairs, allegations of wife beating, a long running on going affair with the woman he finally left his wife for, also possibly some very dodgy financial dealings that may leave his ex wife and kids without any money at all, and the possibility of losing the family home.

Same with Shane Warne, we all know what he has been up to, but really is it any of our business what they do outside of what they are famous for, do they owe us, for the adulation we bestow on them, to act in a better way, to be role models for our children, for ourselves.

Or do we accept that they are just ordinary people with an extraordinary talent and forgive them for their pecadillos, or do we hold them up to a higher standard than we would for ourselves.

After all, are Peter Brock and Shane Warne, that disimilar to many other millions of men around the world, who have affairs, do we condemn those men publically, of course we don't. Because we couldn't really give a stuff.

Does being a famous indentity strip away your right to privacy, turn you into an exemplary human being, infused with all the moral integrity of a saint, simply as a function of that fame.

Of course it doesn't, sure if you're in the public eye, you should realise that you're always under scrutiny and your actions will be held up, but that doesn't change the fact that you're still only HUMAN.

Comments

[charles.livejournal.com]

I tend to forgive Warney because he's never been anything but "genius on the field, absolute bogan off it". His infidelity is a matter that's entirely between him, his ex-wife and the Vodafone billing department.

We shouldn't expect celebrities to live up to unreasonably puritan moral standards. On the other hand, we shouldn't give them a free ride on things that are, in fact, utterly reprehensible. Beating your wife and then screwing her out of her divorce settlement is hardly a 'pecadillo'. (Not following the Brock story, so I've no idea how much evidence there is for these particular allegations, of course.)

Although in the case of dead celebrities, there's something to be said for allowing the matter to stay buried -- nothing that happens now is going to have any material effect on Mr Brock himself after all.

[ysbrydd.livejournal.com]

The difference is whether THEY take themselves out of the human plain and place themselves on a different level. If they start preaching to us mere mortals on how we should be like their public persona, and then get found out that who they would like us to think they are is different to who they really are, then fair game, shoot the buggers down. If however, they just claim to be good at something and are in every other respect just like us, then they deserve our respect and their privacy.