Burn Your Idols
We regularly build people up so highly that we’ve never even met, only to be let down crushingly by their inevitable flaws. But maybe — maybe — it’s essential to keeping society in order.
When I was in middle school, I wanted three things, and three things only: (1) A tattoo of Sublime’s 40z to Freedom album cover on my shoulder; (2) Robin Hood: Men in Tights on VHS; and (3) to marry “Mike”, the only non-robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
My parents, strict as they were, granted me just #2. And while Cary Elwes’s wry mustache was a close second, he was no Mike.
Twenty-plus years after I stopped watching MST3K, I still sometimes would find myself lost in Mike’s (Wikipedia entry’s) eyes, imagining a happy life with “the one that got away”, where we’d do all the things normal couples do — go to brunch with friends, take the robots to soccer practice — and then spend our weekends blissfully making snarky remarks while watching terrible movies in bed. Nothing could be sweeter.
But then one such Wikipedia-stalking day, while on a mad Ctrl+F hunt for any mention of “wife”, “girlfriend”, or “wildly interested in slightly brownish white chicks in their mid-30s”, I saw what could never be unseen, tucked away in his “Personal Life” section:
“He has described the role of Christianity in his family as ‘the very centerpiece of our lives… almost every career and life decision I make depends upon it… I read the National Review cover to cover… I do vote Republican.’”
I texted my equally obsessed best friend Kristen from the 6th grade in a panic with a link to the page and a simple “AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” I couldn’t even find the right emojis, though in retrospect, they certainly involved the gun, the wilted rose, and the cartoon-cat-doing-The-Scream (or perhaps more succinctly, the poop and the SOS sign). She responded immediately:
“The absolute only thing about this that makes me happy is the fact that you are spending your Saturday reading Michael J. Nelson’s Wikipedia page.”
We were crushed. It was over. Our whole lives were a lie. It didn’t matter that our other best friend Lisa was a devout Christian from a Republican family, whom we loved and respected dearly. This was different. This was Mike — our Mike.
Except that of course he wasn’t ours, he was a fictional character on a sci-fi show from our youth, and given his predilection toward wholesome values, probably had led a pretty righteous life without us heathens leading him astray.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel legitimately disappointed. Over someone I never knew, had virtually no chance of meeting, and wasn’t all that into anymore — these days at 52-years-old, he’s a 6 at best (well, a San Francisco 8). So why was I let down? Why did learning something unsavory about someone completely uninvolved in my real life, wreck an otherwise pleasant, solo-bottle-of-wine/creepy-internet-activity-filled Saturday night?
When I was in middle school, in 1994, I found one of my favorite football players suddenly all over the news. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you then (or now) what position OJ Simpson played, or even for which team, but I knew I liked calling him “The Juice” and thought he was downright hilarious in The Naked Gun (this also marks around when I stopped watching the Oscars).
That was enough for me to stop at nothing to defend him for the heinous crimes he absolutely committed. I had no clue what the evidence was — all I knew was his lawyer was equally funny, and that the prosecutor looked like a cross between my mean math teacher and what I undoubtedly would resemble in 30 years, alone in a studio apartment, eating canned soup with my pile of cats.
Lisa, my Christian friend, was absolutely certain he was guilty. Her devout parents believed that justice must be served for these innocent victims, and that Lisa still wasn’t allowed to watch The Naked Gun because of all the farting. The OJ trial was yet another topic we’d have to add to our conversational “avoid” list, along with George Clooney’s disputed handsomeness, and why sex ed is really important.
It was only a few more years before another one of my idols — smooth criminal President Bill Clinton — would also be on the stand. I liked him because my parents voted for him, but more importantly, because Phil Hartman did a hilarious impression of him.
So, I defended him as well. Lisa and I added another item to our no-fly list.
I still remember the day he addressed the nation and admitted that he did in fact engage in an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He had lied. I was bereft, and felt a profound disappointment that until then had been completely foreign to me. My mother was upset too, not because our president had perjured himself and let his nation down, but because he had let me down.
Little did I know that this would be a continuous theme in my life. A few years ago, I watched Mad Men in its entirety. The only semi-redeeming character was Peggy Olsen, played by Elisabeth Moss. The inevitable Saturday night came when I found her Wikipedia entry, setting me on the ultimate emotional roller coaster as I read that she married Fred Armisen (yyyeeEEAAAHHH!) but then divorced him when her Scientology got in the way (NOOOOOoooooo!)
Earlier this year, my sardonic desk-neighbor at work popped my Eric Clapton love-bubble, insisting I was idolizing a racist.
“You’re just too sensitive!” I insisted.
“Dude, read his Wikipedia.”
“…I hate that site…”
Within minutes, I was poring over anecdotes recounting the numerous times Clapton had publicly proclaimed white supremacy. I was appalled.
“Holy shit… what even *is* a ‘wog’??”
“Basically someone who looks like you and me.”
It was the Michael Richards incident all over again.
Around the same time, the king of dad jokes, dad sweaters, and childish desserts was rightfully taken down when countless women came forward and accused the once-family-friendly Cosby of sexual assault. I remembered watching his comedy special repeatedly with my own family some 25 years ago. At least this time, my mom wasn’t nearby to see my disillusioned face.
Remarkably, I’m actually less disappointed when it’s someone I do kind of know. Friends regularly do things that don’t sit well with you, but that also don’t leave nearly the sad taste in your mouth as, say, finding out that your beloved Lt. Topper Harley from Hot Shots is a womanizing crack addict.
The simple explanation is that we have a complete picture of our friends. We know them well and love them dearly, whereas we never actually got to meet Charlie Sheen when we were 11, or to successfully convince our friends to be our “pretend-husband-Charles” while playing house for long enough to get to know the real him. Maybe if we had, we’d have looked past that time he gave himself a hernia after doing cocaine for 36 hours with prostitutes; ingested an entire briefcase full of cocaine; accidentally shot his wife; not-so-accidentally pulled a knife on his new wife over an argument about “Drops of Jupiter”; and finally, pulled a knife on his dentist (his dentist!)
So while it’s a travesty that Christian Mike votes Republican, it’s absolutely ok for Christian Lisa to do the same (and often serves as fodder for great mutual jokes, a la “writing in Huckabee again this year, are we??” to which she’ll double-over laughing with a sheepish “you know me well!”)
My father loves to point how obsessed we Americans are with not judging people. “You can kill me, but you can’t judge me!” he’ll yell, and then laugh at the phrase’s inherent idiocy, yet remarkably popular sentiment. “Hey, no judgments!” is often a semi-comical refrain you deliver when a loved one/that hobo living in your recycling bin presents an unpopular opinion. Exclaiming “don’t judge me!” after admitting you considered naming your son “Josh-Groban”/once killed a man is enough to make even the most scrutinizing eyes soften and shrug with a forgiving “who hasn’t…?!” We are a no-judgments obsessed culture.
And yet all we do is judge public figures. They fall in our eyes based on their mild spirituality, and are cast aside as idiots without consideration of any other aspect of their personal history. I’m so quick to judge celebrities, I prematurely close articles that hint at another one of my heroes having different beliefs than my own (like the time I accidentally restarted my computer in a Chrome-quitting frenzy, upon seeing a headline that Robert DeNiro addressed the debate on vaccines and autism — I still refuse to find out whether he was in support of or against it.)
The San Franciscan in me yearns for a day when we treat everyone with a little more understanding, while the New Yorker in me shudders at the thought of such a boring world, and tells my San Franciscan half to stop being so gay. Part of me actually thinks we need to let out our judgments in some way. Maybe all this repression of ugly thoughts would lead to awful explosions at our loved ones around us, if we didn’t release it by skewering celebrities (who are rich and presumably don’t give a crap). The ever-apt South Park parodied this in an episode where a tween starlet gets literally sacrificed by the townsfolk in order to maintain order and ensure a bountiful harvest each year.
Were they really that far off?
