From ESPN.com
“[Manti Te’o] was more than an All-American linebacker from Notre Dame; he was an ideal, a template for integrity, compassion and humility.”
Nope, ESPN writer. Pretty sure he was just a 20-something college kid, mythologized by a ready and willing media and an equally ravenous public, starving for its next great saint.
The Notre Dame mess and Lance Armstrong’s doping admission provided two cheap and easy opportunities to roll out the mock outrage this week for a delicious moment of self righteousness. It’s been entertaining to hear just how “disappointed” and “ashamed” some are over this past week, when we mourned the loss of two more “template[s] for integrity, compassion and humility”.
It brought to mind this New York magazine piece from last month, which chronicles better than I ever can our general gullibility to “heroes”, their stories ripe for a Mitch Albom retelling and the ensuing waste bin in which we discard the whole lot when our “heroes” turn out to be tragically human.