I’m wondering what Pete Rose fans are thinking after hearing the allegation that he had sex with at least one underage girl in the 1970s. I’ve always had mixed feelings on whether Major League Baseball should allow him in the Hall of Fame, and dispassionate feelings at that. Pete did compromise the integrity of the game, affecting players and fans in the process, and never did come completely clean about it. So if illegal gambling, tax evasion, and lies weren’t enough to get a supporter off of the Pete Rose bandwagon, how about statutory rape? He didn’t exactly deny it, either, he was just like, “I thought she was 16.” My guess is that there are Pete Rose supporters who are fathers of young girls who suddenly aren’t Pete Rose supporters anymore. And I’d bet (see what I did there?) that he has supporters that will remain supporters.
I never really had “heroes” growing up because for one thing, heroes are people who rescue babies and puppies from burning buildings or dodge bullets to save comrades, not dudes who make millions of dollars to play a kid’s game. But I had influences, and athletes and entertainers are influential. One person who had a big impact on me was Joe Paterno. The cat was an excellent coach and he graduated more players than other Division I football programs. He was humble. He gave back to the community. And late in his tenure, it appears he was also turning a blind eye to a child molester. It was tough to reconcile the public image of JoePa with this news, but in the face of overwhelming proof, all my respect for him disappeared. There’s just no excuse.
Bill Cosby was cool too, right? He was like America’s dad! I didn’t appreciate the judgments he passed on the youth and his fellow comedians, but I respected Bill’s career accomplishments and it was like the ultimate family man. Meanwhile, that ultimate family man was – allegedly – drugging and raping dozens of women. Like, for real.
Pete, JoePa, and Bill all have something in common. They still have a lot of supporters. Now, people get accused of things that they’re not guilty of all the time, and at some point in the future I’ll post something about the number of innocent people in the criminal justice system and someone will see fit to call me a hypocrite. The thing is though, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. There was a lot of evidence against Pete, plus he admitted it after years of lying about it. There is proof that after JoePa mentioned Jerry Sandusky’s behavior to his superiors, who took no action, Joe opted to just forget about it. And as for The Cos, well, if more than 50 women accuse a man of drug-rape, that shit probably happened. That’s a lot of smoke on these guys, so why the support? Is it that some folks just don’t believe these things or that they are able to separate the man from the act? Can they overlook some negative qualities to focus only on the positive?
Or maybe… some people just don’t care. “So what, he punched that woman. Have you heard his new album?” “He ran a guy down with his car, whatever. Did you see that touchdown run last night?” So I can wonder what people think when their heroes turn out to be assholes, but some people like their heroes to be assholes. They can hear racist, xenophobic, and unabashedly sexist things straight from a presidential candidate’s mouth and then line right up to vote for him because they see something in him that they can relate to, even if that means overlooking those things that would otherwise make them uncomfortable. They can witness lie after verifiable lie and still think the guy will make their lives better, or maybe they just trust the opponent even less.
Are we desensitized to immoral behavior from our stars? Have we become accepting of actions from our “heroes” that we wouldn’t accept from ourselves or our loved ones? It would be nice to put our faith in those who seem to be upstanding, but who thought Paterno and Cosby would go out like that? Still, there are good ones out there. Great ones. We don’t have to settle. We can start by looking within ourselves and at those around us. We will find them in all types of people and all professions. Well… maybe not in politics.