Today’s post is an arti­cle writ­ten by Gor­don Man­ley, one of my stu­dents at the Inter­na­tional School of Brus­sels. In it he shares his insights into pop cul­ture, moral­ity and the oblig­a­tions of pub­lic life.

I watched Tiger Woods’ apol­ogy the other day, and I have to say I was dumb­struck by one of his com­ments. He offered a pro­found apol­ogy. He said he “let us all down.”

I wasn’t let down.

There seems to be a main­stream con­sen­sus that celebri­ties, or in gen­eral, peo­ple in the pub­lic eye (politi­cians, talk show hosts, promi­nent social fig­ures) have an oblig­a­tion to behave respon­si­bly in their pri­vate lives. It’s as if they took a Hip­po­cratic Oath of sorts to lead an exem­plary life for all of us to fol­low. It’s an atti­tude that dic­tates that if you are famous or well known in gen­eral, you have a vital oblig­a­tion to lead your per­sonal life to the stan­dards that the gen­eral pop­u­lous imposes on you, whether these are reli­gious val­ues, com­mon sense or just a dif­fer­ence in moral beliefs altogether.

There are few greater exam­ples of human arro­gance and self-importance than this phe­nom­e­non. It is sim­ply absurd to think every­one has to abide by your morals and prin­ci­pals. The main­stream media is a per­fect exam­ple of this. Main­stream news, both TV and online medi­ums, are obsessed with the pri­vate lives of celebri­ties. They greatly blow every scan­dal out of pro­por­tion. And they would never pass up on an inside scoop.

But let us return to the orig­i­nal issue here, do peo­ple in the pub­lic eye have a respon­si­bil­ity to behave in a respon­si­ble fash­ion in their pri­vate lives? I whole­heart­edly dis­agree with this state­ment. First and fore­most, where did this oblig­a­tion come from? Is there a law that dic­tates that when you become famous you are oblig­ated to behave your­self in a fash­ion that the pub­lic sees fit? Let me explain why this is absurd from a pure moral stand­point. Firstly, to adhere to the orig­i­nal state­ment one must con­done the impos­ing of one’s believes upon another person.

This is intrin­si­cally wrong, we all live the way we want, we make our choices and we behave the way we want to behave. Yes it is per­fectly accept­able to voice your opin­ion but it can’t be taken much fur­ther than that until it becomes a vio­la­tion of pri­vacy. In my opin­ion, you should only get involved in some­one else’s per­sonal mat­ters if it threat­ens lives and you have exhausted all other possibilities.

I have never been a big fan of author­ity in gen­eral and this atti­tude is a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how some peo­ple are so con­vinced that their moral beliefs are the only valid ones that they aggres­sively seek out oth­ers to harass until they accept their beliefs. I see no rea­son why celebri­ties are required to behave them­selves in a respon­si­ble fash­ion, espe­cially when their fame is usu­ally derived from being irre­spon­si­ble in the first place. Elliot Spitzer, Tiger Woods, Lind­say Lohan are all per­fect exam­ples of well known peo­ple who became front line news for weeks because of their scan­dals. It is as if we con­demn their behav­ior while at the same time cel­e­brat­ing it by giv­ing it so much atten­tion. If the peo­ple who think celebri­ties should behave respon­si­bly really want to be con­sis­tent they should stop dra­ma­tiz­ing all of these events or even giv­ing them any atten­tion. Like many other things in our lives, this “oblig­a­tion” that some of us have imposed on the famous came from nowhere. It is prob­a­bly rooted in our arro­gant beliefs that every­one must share my moral guide­lines or be wrong.

How­ever, this touches upon my sec­ond point, why would we want celebri­ties to behave in a respon­si­ble fash­ion? Some would argue they should because if they don’t it sets a bad exam­ple for those who adore those celebri­ties i.e. if Tiger Woods has mul­ti­ple mis­tresses all young golfers who are fans of him are going to engage in extra-marital activ­i­ties to put it lightly. But let’s face it; do they really have that much of an effect? If your child is so sus­cep­ti­ble to change his actions based on the actions of his idol, then he obvi­ously wasn’t raised correctly.

The truth is that most of time it is the fault of the par­ents, who spend more time com­plain­ing about the crazy actions and influ­ence of the celebri­ties and the effect on their chil­dren instead of actu­ally spend­ing time rais­ing their chil­dren. The best way par­ents can com­bat any chance of their child mim­ic­k­ing or some­how emu­lat­ing the “out­ra­geous” behav­ior of said celebrity is raise their child com­pe­tently enough so that they don’t do any­thing so irrational.

I would also argue that peo­ple in the pub­lic eye have no oblig­a­tion at all to live their lives respon­si­bly.  I believe all peo­ple should live their lives as they want to. Who are we to dic­tate what some­one should do in their pri­vate life.  We call it “pri­vate life” for a rea­son. I hon­estly don’t care if they are cheat­ing on their wives or hus­bands. I don’t care if they’re gay, I don’t care if they do drugs. It isn’t our busi­ness, whether they decide that it’s wrong or not is up to them, it is some­thing they must dis­cover. These scan­dals and var­i­ous other events are exag­ger­ated and pro­moted to cre­ate con­tro­versy because con­tro­versy sells. I think if the celebrity of famous per­son con­tin­ues to pro­vide the enter­tain­ment or ser­vice with­out dan­ger or threat, then it really isn’t my place to judge their per­sonal lives. Our soci­ety judges per­sonal lives more severely than any­thing else. Take Bill Clin­ton for exam­ple, the Mon­ica Lewinksy scan­dal got a lot of atten­tion and gen­er­ated a ton of polit­i­cal flak against him that will last until he retires. How­ever, when a pres­i­dent lies about weapons of mass destruc­tion over­seas, sends Amer­i­can troops to fight for the pur­pose of pre­vent­ing an attack and kills thou­sands of inno­cent civil­ians in the process, he doesn’t even get a trial. It shows where Amer­i­cans or the gen­eral pub­lic put their money and focus, they care more about someone’s per­sonal lives, what reli­gion they fol­low, who they marry, what friends they had instead of focus­ing on actual qual­i­fi­ca­tions. For exam­ple if I were to ask Amer­i­cans what leg­is­la­tion pres­i­dent Obama pro­posed and who his rev­erend was at his church, many more Amer­i­cans would know the lat­ter. It is here that soci­ety mis­judges and places empha­sis on the wrong things.

And until soci­ety in gen­eral accepts the fact that per­sonal lives are irrel­e­vant as long as they don’t inter­fere with the func­tion of that per­son and that we are all pecu­liar and human, and then I will con­tinue to argue my posi­tion that we have no right to judge those in the pub­lic eye any­more than we should be judged our­selves. Because we have no right, because we shouldn’t and because it’s use­less. And most of all because it’s prob­a­bly a dis­trac­tion from the real issues going on. Just ask your­self. How many Iraqi civil­ians have died in Iraq since the U.S. inva­sion in 2003? How many mis­tresses did Tiger Woods have?

The above arti­cle, enti­tled “Peo­ple in the pub­lic eye have an oblig­a­tion to behave in a respon­si­ble fash­ion in their pri­vate lives” was orginially deliv­ered as Com­mu­nity Meet­ing speech at the Inter­na­tional School of Brus­sels on Fri­day, April 30th, 2010. Gor­don gra­ciously agreed to let me share it with you.

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