Mel Gibson, whose image has been seriously tarnished by allegations about his treatment of former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, once was my role model.
Of course, I was barely 15 and knew Gibson only as Mad Max.
As every therapist knows, we outgrow this kind of hero worship pretty quickly.
Or do we?
Because celebrities are prominent people who have "made it," our media-saturated, hyperconsumerist culture encourages us to venerate celebrities well into adulthood. At the very least, we love them for achieving what we all want - fame and fortune.
Pundits, educators, and self-proclaimed guardians of America's moral values continually remind us that actors, sports stars, and singers shouldn't be regarded as role models.
But do we have any other shared symbols of success?
Haven't we, as consumers - of products, but also of images and ideas, of shared hopes and moral ideals - allowed stars to eclipse any other role models?
It's a troubling thought, given the recent revelations about the private lives of Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Jesse James and Sandra Bullock.
If audio recordings released this week by RadarOnline are any indication, Gibson is an enraged, foulmouthed, jealous, and insecure lover who treated her more as a prostitute or sex slave than an equal partner. His hateful, vitriolic monologues suggest he is misogynistic, racist, and narcissistic.
Lohan and Spears are postadolescent starlets; not Mel. He is supposed to be a grown-up. What's more, he's a self-anointed role model, if only because of his outspoken views as a Catholic - a radically conservative, radically observant brand of Catholic.
Gibson sparked a public row in 2003 when he stated that no one outside the Church could be saved. A year later, he was in the news again for his controversial if extraordinarily accomplished film The Passion of the Christ, which depicted, in graphic detail, the physical tortures and humiliations Jesus suffered on his way to the cross.
There is something deeply unsettling about the apparent contradiction between Gibson's stated faith and his alleged behavior. The perverse link between his choking rages and his religiosity may be violence: a fascination with the violence done to Christ, and a romance with his personal, unreasoning rage, in which he (if it is Gibson) threatens Grigorieva with all sorts of attacks and degradations. Degradation is another link: of Jesus, of Grigorieva, and, obviously, of himself. Perhaps his obsession about the degradation of Jesus' body is a clue to the way he debases himself and others.
If the Gibson debacle teaches us anything, it's that when it comes to the rich and famous, the line between public and private has been all but erased. Stars have learned that to sell - movies, albums, books, cosmetics - they need to play peekaboo with the public about their personal lives. Boldfacers daily tell Oprah, David Letterman, and Jay Leno about their childhood traumas or their favorite sexual positions.
In some sectors of the celebri-sphere, a sex tape is all but required. Once unshakable taboos are now to be indulged in, and shared, and sold. It's a good career move.
To be sure, Gibson never meant to go public with his rages. But thanks to his DUI arrests, and thanks to someone who apparently leaked last week's recording, his private rage belongs to us all now.
So what's next for Gibson?
Will his career end, or will he be able to salvage it using the standard method: offering a tearful, contrite public confession on network TV?
Perhaps he'll announce that he is checking into rehab for treatment of (fill in the blank) addiction.
Our prurient interest in celebrity dirt, and the televised confessionals that follow, aren't a sign so much of our hedonism as of our deeply rooted puritanism. The celebrity mea culpa is a leftover from the public confession demanded by Puritans, who believed forgiveness came only when the penitent revealed his inner secrets to everyone.
The Diane Sawyer tell-all chat is far more Scarlet Letter than Penthouse Letters.
What lesson should we take from this sordid mess? That we are complicit in the whole game. As long as millions continue to turn it up, to follow avidly the public death spirals of celebrities, there's no fix - except perhaps to reconsider our own addiction to celeb news, and, at least from time to time, to turn it off.