Up & Coming Weekly

6 UCW DEC. 30, 2009 - JAN. 5, 2010 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Bringing Out the Worst In Us by MARGARET DICKSON The week between Christmas and New Year's is always a time of refl ection to me. I think about all the good — and the not so good — that happened in the year that is passing and speculate about what the new year will bring on both fronts. Some of this pondering is about me and those near and dear in my life, and some of it involves the larger world — our community and the world. Among the mysteries of life on my mind this year is what I have come to think of as the "mean girl syndrome." Many of us know what this is, a terrible manifestation of human nature in which adolescent girls make life a daily torment for some other girl, perhaps because she is overweight or wears clothing the group deems uncool or because she does well in school or perhaps for no discernable reason at all. I have seen television shows and read articles about this phenomenon, and occasionally I read about a girl who is so miserable over mean girl behavior that she turns on herself, sometimes with tragic results. It seems to me, at least during this year's pondering, that mean girl syndrome infl icts not only insecure young girls with herd mentalities, but many of the rest of us as well. Something in us wants to tear down the very heroes we have built up and idolized. Think Tiger Woods. I am not a golfer, but the men in my life tell me that Tiger Woods is the fi nest golfer alive, maybe the best ever. He grew up and trained under the careful eyes of adoring parents and an ever-increasing fan base, became a professional golfer, married a beautiful young woman, and, as if on cue, produced an equally beautiful family. Along the way, Tiger Woods became the fi rst professional athlete to earn more than $1 billion in prizes and commercial endorsements, an impressive feat even to those of us who barely follow any sport. Then the bottom dropped out of Tiger Woods' life. We have all heard the news and seen the interviews with young women who, inexplicably to me, can hardly wait to go on television to tell the world about their sexual encounters with Woods. Clearly this is TMI, too much information, but that is another column. We have all heard the latest Tiger Woods jokes, some of the cleaner ones wondering whether his young women friends might be forming a union. Please do not misunderstand. I am not condoning Tiger Woods behavior toward his family or toward the clearly willing young women. What I am questioning is our behavior toward Tiger Woods, once our idol and now a fallen hero. What is it in us that makes us want to tear him down at every turn? Writing in Newsweek, Neal Gabler asserts that celebrity can be defi ned as a person who is well-known not so much for his or her achievement but simply for being well-known. While Tiger Woods has obvious achievement in golf and has elevated the fi nancial profi le of the sport, he is also a celebrity to people like me who have little knowledge of his specifi c contributions. Gabler goes on to say that our culture has elevated celebrity, or more accurately the following of celebrity, to a new art form which now competes with and sometimes overshadows other, older and more traditional art forms. I had to think about that one a bit but I have decided Gabler is on to something. I cannot count the times I have been in my kitchen when the news ended only to be followed by a celebrity show which recounted more than I wanted to know about Paris Hilton, the Gosselin family, Branjolie and others. Each of these people is well-known around the world, though their "achievements" pale beside those of other people who are far less well known. What's more, celebrity, like blockbuster novels and movies before it, is a common bond among people in our culture and it goes on and on. We never know who might go into rehab or get a divorce next. But back to why we relish the downfall of a celebrity with such gusto. This is the theory of someone near and dear to me. The reason we are so quick to throw Tiger and other celebrity offenders off the cliff for their public transgressions, the theory goes, is that their foibles give us the opportunity to tell ourselves that we are much better people — that we did not wrong our wives and children with a dozen or more young women, that we did not exploit our children on television for money, that we did allow unsavory pictures and videos of ourselves which ultimately —surprise — found their way to the Internet. We, in our private lives, are much superior to these rich and famous folks in their very public ones. Tiger Woods humiliation really says as much about us than it does about him and neither is very attractive. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET

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