Verses from:  To An Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Housman:

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

______________________________________

Kobe Bryant.  How many second acts can you have?  As many as the fans will give you apparently. So sad and such a shame that we can’t see the rest of the story, can’t see his daughter Gianna carry his name and legacy forward. How strange that his death should occur the day after LeBron James moves ahead of him in all-time scoring? More than 20,000 crowded the stands for the public memorial on February 24 at the Staples Center in L.A.

While all heroes have feet of clay, how many recognize, apologize, try to make it right, and rise above their failings? The cheating, gambling, PED-tainted baseball players could take a page from Bryant’s life. The lesson? Once you’ve sinned the only way to make it right is to never forget that you have an obligation to…make it right, that this has to be your raison d’etre if you are to be forgiven at all.

By all his subsequent good works and also the acknowledgement of a wrong done, Kobe Bryant earned the forgiveness of fans and the media. Little mention was made of the long-ago charge of assault in a hotel room of a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Coming to terms with the failings of one’s heroes is hard for fans. Finding out that those we adored are not the wonderful people we wanted them to be feels like the betrayal of a bargain we made with them. We promise to adore them, they’re supposed to be worthy of our love. Because they make us laugh, sing beautifully, score a zillion points, create emotion and wonder on the screen, we want them to be our version of morality and goodness and perfection. But they’re human just like us.

Some years ago Robin Williams, beloved comedian and character actor and also an individual sorely afflicted with mental illness, divorced his wife and married his children’s nanny. The entirety of these events did not play out smoothly in public and the personal circumstances were not well-known until the documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, aired on HBO in 2018. By that time, Williams was four years gone, having taken his own life in 2014.

Friends of mine evoked a holier-than-thou self-righteousness and vowed to never watch another Robin Williams movie. The “divorced his wife and married the nanny” narrative was a bridge too far for them. Now watch the documentary, the interview with the wife, and then understand that the truth was far more complex, Williams was not the villain of the piece (no one was), and really, at the time, none of your business.

Besides performing some skill or art with what we view as superhuman ability, celebrities have to live their lives in a spotlight that no one’s life could bear. Isn’t it enough that their art is a source of joy and entertainment for us? Do they have to be devoted spouses, superb chefs, perfect parents, inspired homemakers, dutiful citizens, and, in short, paragons of every virtue?

It’s true, some celebrities are less than lovely human beings — Sean Connery and Henry Cavill and Mel Gibson come to mind. But will I give up watching Sean Connery as James Bond, as Dr. Henry Jones Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables? Never. And who knows: Henry Cavill is young and he may yet redeem himself. Mel Gibson’s sins arrived well after his best movies and really, how much of the garbage he spews is the result of alcohol abuse? Or personal pain? You don’t know and neither do I. He’s fashioned himself into a mostly contemptible creature, but if there’s one thing that’s true, every life can have second, third, and fourth acts. And the most beautiful story in the world is redemption through love. Return of the Jedi is one of my favorite movies for this reason.

Barring felonious behavior, I’m going to give a lot of folks the benefit of the doubt. And if I don’t like their political beliefs, which seems to be the current way we divide society, I may still give them a pass. Just because you know how to act, play ball, or sing, doesn’t mean you’re exceptionally smart.