Heroes? No more than the next guy

Here we go again with another tainted athlete, this time swimmer Michael Phelps.

As if "tainted athlete" weren't a redundancy, like crazy stunt man or goofy sports writer.

Anyway, stop it. Stop expecting athletes to be what marketers tell us they are. Stop expecting them to be what they can't be.

Stop it, stop it, stop it.

We're in such need of heroes that we'll create them on sports assembly lines if necessary.

We want these young people to be role models for younger people and antidotes to the real world for older people.

For every Rod Blagojevich we require a Phelps. For every Bernie Madoff we require a Larry Fitzgerald Jr.

What the public needs the media tries to deliver - until the subject proves flawed. Then we turn on him and herald the next candidate for sainthood.

Folks, we'll never learn that the only "Heroes" are on TV, except for some in Iraq and Afghanistan and assorted others serving mankind.

Phelps is an example of someone whose athletic achievements we try to translate into human perfection.

But after excelling in the 2004 Olympics, Phelps was charged with a DUI. Now after dominating the 2008 Olympics, he was photographed at a party inhaling from a marijuana pipe.

Why are we surprised? The Olympics have become a myth of idealism we manipulate our minds into believing. By extension, Olympians are myths of purity we manipulate our minds into idolizing.

That's much more convenient than the truth that the best among them are pampered like the pros they are.

Olympians are figments of our imagination and, more important, of a public-relations firm's imagination.

Yet we cling to the perception that the Olympics attract, nurture and showcase young people who are as good away from sports as in them.

Listen, I don't mean to single out Olympians generally and Phelps specifically.

News flash: Athletes in all sports are subject to being human. The ones we make bigger than life are the ones who will fall on us the hardest.

Take the Super Bowl. Hardly anybody received more attention last week than Fitzgerald Jr., a Cardinals wide receiver.

It would be impossible to count the words devoted to his athletic gifts, to his journalist father, to how his mother's death impacted him, etc.

All are nice stories to go with an image so much more likable than the likes of Terrell Owens and Plaxico Burress.

But hardly a disparaging word was dispensed about the alleged domestic violence that prompted the reported mother of Fitzgerald's child to file for a restraining order against him.

Apparently it wasn't time yet for Fitzgerald's personal life to be exposed and examined.

If Fitzgerald did what his girlfriend accused him of, he made a serious mistake. If Phelps drove under the influence and tooted pot from a bong, he made a couple of serious mistakes.

But it's as much our fault for being disappointed as theirs for disappointing us. We keep falling for the notion that young athletes are better at living life than mere mortals are.

No, folks, they're as vulnerable to temptation as Madoff was and to fits of creepiness as Blagojevich was.

Maybe if we accept that athletes aren't perfect we'll stop viewing them as heroes.

mimrem@dailyherald.com