I’m up early this morning and watching Morning Joe on MSNBC. The show just started and they talked about a subject I’m going to address later but there was a rundown of guest they’re having on the show. One of them is Deepak Chopra. Now, there are a lot of people that hold him in high regards. I’m not one of them.
I have had friends who love his books and speak his praise. They ‘know’ him from what they see on TV and from his books. The people on Morning Joe were waiting in anticipation to hear his loving wisdom.

Why don’t I like him? When I used to work at a bookstore in San Diego, Deepak Chopra would show up on more than one occasion to check on his book and it’s placement in the store. I personally saw him about ten times in in an 8 year period. If the book wasn’t presented right in some cases he would complain that things would be made right. Now a few times I was there when this happened and I can tell you his book was prominently displayed, however that’s not the point. Here is a man who, to all the people that cater and pay for his services seems like the loving peaceful unflappable man, yet to the service people he was different.
Now we can say he was just being human, but that side definitely isn’t the side presented to most of the world. I don’t know if that side would be as loved and admired. The side that is cultivated is the one that makes him money and while someone might be shocked with the other side of him, it can raise the question which side is real.

This is the dilemma I think people have with Tiger Woods and for that matter any person we put on a pedestal.

Charles Barkley famously said he’s not a role model and the problem with role models is the fact they are a model. Just the other day I was talking to someone about Megan Fox and he said she’s someone that is great to look at but he would hate to talk to her. We take role models and put them in a light that is impossible for any human to match. We want them to be perfect in their professional and personal life, yet secretly we look for the chink in the armor so we feel better about ourselves. We can’t have it both ways but we want both ways.

We can argue if Woods should have been on the pedestal and sure, many of us probably wouldn’t have multiple affairs, but if the opportunity were presented constantly to you would you be able to resist? Again I understand in Woods case he’s been possibly caught with multiple women, well past the number where you can rationally say it’s a lapse of judgment, but he was made a role model because he hit a ball into a hole. Even more to the point, people made him a role model without looking at the whole package.

It’s kind of hard breaking this down because both sides are to blame. We prop up people we call role models to these impossible levels and they must be there 24/7. The people who become role models both love the attention and hate the loss of privacy. They want attention on their terms and we say you can’t do that. So far, not too many people can handle that pressure and that’s why people we put up as role models inevitably fail in our eyes. They can’t keep up with the fantasy because they are us, with all our nobility and failures.

At some point we have to realize people we put up as heroes are not like comic book characters of old. They have flaws and warts just like the rest of us. Instead of thinking of our role models like Golden Age characters we have to look at them in the light of Watchmen; brilliant but flawed characters.