It seems to me there is a shortage of good public figure role models, and I’d like to discuss that a bit.
But, before getting into that discussion, I want to applaud a very fine role model: Oprah Winfrey. Yesterday I watched her press conference on the abuse that is alleged to have taken place at her all-girls school in South Africa. As I watched her, I wished that my oldest granddaughter had modeled her own life after Oprah instead of modeling it after Brittney Spears.
In Oprah I saw a person who had not only overcome hardships in her own life, but used those hardships to become the kind of person we could all aspire to be: filled with compassion, eager to use her talents to help others, a clear thinker and communicator, a person of utmost integrity, and on and on.
In my view she is not only a superb role model for girls: she is a role model for adults of both genders.
It seems to me that she is doing a fine job in addressing the horrid situation that developed at her all-girls school, and I wish her the utmost success in bringing any abusers to justice and in ensuring that it never happens again.
Now to the “shortage of good public figure role models.” When I was growing up, I had so many great role models to choose from: my Dad, several of my teachers and coaches, and of course Roy Rogers (and many other Hollywood actors). And just about every professional athlete was an outstanding role model. Many politicians were as well.
But it does not seem to me that children of today have very many role models to choose from. Nor do we, and we adults need role models, too. Maybe the role models are as abundant as ever, but we don’t see it because the press only emphasizes their negative aspects.
Maybe I am just old and cynical, and things have not really changed that much. (A very real possibility … I certainly can be cynical.) But it does seem to me that things have changed, and not for the better, in so many ways (role models included). For example, after Oprah’s press conference the news analysts commented that one in five children are abused. My God! Can you imagine that? It just does not seem to me that this would have been possible forty years ago, or even thirty.
Your thoughts?