The power of Celebrity
I understand I had my time during the Thanksgiving break but with Christmas approaching fast and my schedule getting tighter, I thought I’d make my post early. Plus my post is topical right now and may not be in the following weeks. This hopefully will provide a change up for Seth (who if I read his last column right, thinks I may need to retire because I know wrestling is a work? lol) when he writes his column.
What is it that makes us want to believe a celebrity is infallible? I know that has been tackled before with other writers, but it really baffles me. What brings this up? Tiger Woods and his “Transgressions”, that’s what. I was having a conversation today at my shoot job and made a small talk comment that sparked some of the most ridiculous statements ever uttered. The comment I made was this “Wow, Tiger really screwed up huh. He should have called Kobe the minute it came out and asked if he could hire his P.R. guy!” Apparently, the woman I was telling this to is either working for the Tiger Woods’ defense team or is on his list of “Transgressions”, but I think she may just be a huge mark for Tiger. I’m not really into Golf. It looks like a sport that (like baseball) would be way more fun to play than watch. My extent of Golf knowledge comes from the movie Happy Gilmore and the video games, that’s about it. So, while it would be cool to meet Tiger, "I (as Chris Rock would say) wouldn’t break a lunch date to meet him." Her response to me was, “Well Tiger is just a private person.” Like she had spent many summer days just hanging out with him in his parent’s basement making demo tapes like a radio DJ. “This is Tiger on WTIG The Tiger, now here is some new Aerosmith!!!(Tiger sound effect)” No, that didn’t happen.
So, what is she basing her claim on? She never even met the guy! When I brought up the fact that they had pictures of Tiger and his girlfriends and text messages from Tiger that said “Delete the name on your voice mail, my wife may call you.” Her retort was that it could be faked. Yes, in this day and age pictures can be faked. My wife works for the Police Department here in Jackson and she told me they can’t take photos as credible evidence anymore (this may be different in your city). Yes, everyone has Photoshop nowadays! I can understand that if you have a picture of Tiger you can make it look like he’s plowing your best friend’s mom while he’s in mid backswing, that’s just common Photoshop knowledge. But how do you fake a text. Granted, you can save anyone’s number in your phone under the name Tiger and be thrilled when you receive a text, but how do you fake getting texts from HIS NUMBER? Sure, there are ways of hacking the phones, but I highly doubt that the waitresses he was messing with knew how to do it. When I proposed this argument to my work colleague, she tried to turn the argument around to Technology and the way it is unreliable…..HUH?? To quote Chris Rock again, "this woman and gonna let a thing like logic fuck up her argument."
She then asked me if I’d trust my life to cell phone technology. I thought about it for a second. Cell phones can be pinged, in emergencies, through satellites and satellite towers to locate the phone wherever it may be, like GPS. They also have the
capability of dialing 911 and connecting you even without a service chip. That means if you are in the middle of the woods and have a track phone with no minutes left and blow your foot off shooting at a deer; you can call 911 and it finds a tower on any carrier (att,Verizon,sprint,etc)to carry the signal. Knowing all of this I said Yes, I would definitely trust cell phones with my life. Apparently, she must have been talking about trusting it to pull me to safety like a scene in Cliffhanger, because she laughed at me and said I was crazy….HOW DID THIS GET TURNED AROUND ON ME? And was I out of line for calling her Amish with no understanding of technology? Probably, because like I said before, she is a mark. Marks want to believe that what they see is real, the good guy always wins, and everything always ends happily ever after.
I went through a similar situation when Benoit did what he did. I couldn’t believe that someone I had looked up to could be so evil. I even felt bad when Steve McNair died. I kept telling myself that he didn’t deserve to die because he was a football hero. But in the end I accepted these things. But why did it take me so long to do it? There are no perfect people! The ones that seem to be perfect usually end up dead with drugs in their system or the windows of their ride busted up with Golf clubs. Maybe we shouldn’t put that much stock in celebrities….but we always will…..that will never change. I know I'm quoting Chris Rock like he's Jesus, but one other thing he said was this. "A man is as faithful as his options." How many options you think a billionaire who travels the world has? At one point in the argument the Tiger Mark co-worker of mine actually said she wishes she would have been one of the girls he slept with, and shes got a husband and 2 kids. That should tell you about his options. So, long story short, celebrities are human and humans make mistakes.
----Born Richard Mullikin, Maxx Corbin is a 7 year pro in wrestling and provides RRO with a monthly column. While growing up in Bemis,TN as a kid, he had no cable and lived week to week on the wrestling tapes he got from family and friends. He likes to think he has a great since of humor and makes light of tense situations. This is why he no longer works at the local hospital. He enjoys playing video games, stand up comedy, and music that very few have a taste for. He won an award in his middle school technology class for building a small bridge out of hobby wood. The bridge held 55lbs. He graduated from his high school with a 3.4 gpa. He was super bad ass at WCW vs NWO World Tour on N64(usually taking out opponents during Jerry Springer commercial breaks).
