Is a Celebrity Obliged to be a Good Role Model?

Is a celebrity obliged to be a good role model?

I admit that it's not the sort of question to which I am much inclined to give time, and have thought about it now only because of the way that, in a manner entirely consistent with the increasingly demented state of the cultural discourse in the country, Taylor Swift's personal life, in spite of a complete lack of what ordinarily makes for scandal, has become a subject not just of culture war but a matter of presidential politics (!).

I will say it again, the nervous breakdown evident in the '90s has just gone on getting worse--while the '90s seems to me especially relevant because amid the chatter I couldn't help recalling how basketball great Charles Barkley defied the conventional wisdom about that question by answering it with a firm "No."

Considering the question I find myself siding with Barkley here for the plain and simple reason that a celebrity does not surrender their rights as a citizen and bring upon themselves subjection to a higher moral standard just because they have become famous--with this especially going today with the intensity of the surveillance of public figures hugely amplified by the digital age, and the emergence of a "cancel culture" which regards any social misstep as meriting the destruction of a career, while equating accusation with guilt. ("An actor provoked by an irresponsible idiot of a director lost their temper on set twenty-five years ago--allegedly! That's just totally unacceptable! See that they never work in this town again!")

Indeed, with so few of those prone to scream loudest about morality inclined to hold even those elected or appointed to the highest public offices to any standard at all in not just their private life but their conduct as public office-holders, it seems absurd and grotesque that they should hold an athlete, or a pop singer, up to such scrutiny.