The Famous Fuck-Up

Before recent weeks, John Terry was a paragon of morality and an awe-inspiring captain and role model. Ashley Cole was another hero, an all-star North London boy-come-good, with the home grown popstar girlfriend to match. Footballers were the pride of England, the Capitalist dream of working hard to earn a living, clawing their way up from the council estate to the 60,000 capacity stadium and the bright lights of Premiership superstardom.

Bullshit. Super twat of 2010 John Terry, and the majority of England captains that have come before him, have had tainted histories of nymphomania and addictions to gambling and other “immoral” activities that we secretly all embrace. They get paid obscene amounts of money simply for kicking a ball around. And sometimes it’s their off the pitch exercise sessions that garner more coverage than their pitch-based game play.  

We have a propensity to put celebrities on pedestals, licking their dirty toes until the day they fuck up, and then we violently wrench them with our dirty hands back down to our sordid little level. Everyone wanked off over Jordan until she apparently became a cruel slut and broke some greasy Aussie’s heart, and then she became more vilified than Hitler.

The transparency of public life now means no one with any ounce of fame can live an elusive life, and will pretty much always be found out if they fancy a bit of bestiality or Nazi bondage. However, the question begs as to whether these figures sprawling themselves all over the public eye should set an example of perfect morality and present themselves as role models who we are to love and copy forevermore?

Or do we really like it when they mess up, big time? Are we not just being utterly selfish and using these people’s flaws as a reason to feel better about our own fallible selves? That lovely man Nietzche (who was said to have died from a bout of syphilis caught from prostitutes; score) proclaimed that morality is merely a means of control, and a way of creating the illusory concept of being. We effectively need these people to be our martyrs.

 Let’s look at two prospective role models.

First up, we have John to the T. It’s a bit of a shocker that anyone can really challenge Capello’s decision to remove his captaincy from him. You can’t really expect to keep your spot on the England team if you pork your teammate’s girlfriend on multiple occasions in multiple locations. Fact. Wayne Bridge isn’t likely to pass balls to Terry knowing that Terry has passed a truckload of sperm to his ex. Some would say lad, most would say douchebag. What is also a shocker is that we always knew he was a bit of a rogue, deep down; in 2005 he shagged some poor girl on crutches with a broken leg in a nightclub bog. Taking disabled access a bit too far? To make matters worse, in 2008 he was caught parking his Bentley (in which he had previously cheated on his wife) in a disabled parking place. A man full of contradictions.
 
But I beg you to find a football player that hasn’t been the subject of questions of immorality and slander. They are placed at the height of temptation, they have an abundance of drugs, women and money at their fingertips but then they are taunted each time they give in to their natural urges. I would argue that the reason why so many inches of column space in our newspapers are given over to these footballer infidelity stories is because we like pinpointing flaws in people who we have held up to be role models. We enjoy watching the rich guy get his comeuppance, and we enjoy feeling morally superior.

Then on the other hand, you have the anti-role model: Gossip Girl’s albino blonde and Avril Lavigne wannabe, Taylor Momsen, who charmingly states, in response to mothers who are claiming she is corrupting their little darlings: “I don’t fucking care. I didn’t get into this to be a role model. I can’t be responsible for their actions.”

Touché to her. Can we really expect all celebrities to be role models? Taylor effectively states that she’s in her career for the fame and the money. Nowhere in her contract as Jenny from Gossip Girl does it state that in her private life, she must strive to emulate Mother Theresa.

We need these people to be paradigms of perfect morality and then staunchly fall in order to feel better about our half achieving selves. So secretly we all whooped and cheered when we found out about love rat John Terry because he was actually emulating what a human being is; flawed by the definitions of morality in modernity.