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Tom Brady and baby in a digital age |
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Written by Lisa Olson, McClatchy-Tribune
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Saturday, 24 February 2007 |
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Blogging the Babe. Now that would have been a barrel full of giggles. Or what if it had been possible to download risque pictures of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe? The entire Internet might've simultaneously exploded.
A professional athlete's life was easier back in the dark ages, before everyone and their brother fancied themselves armchair journalists. A guy could gad around with the ladies, maybe even get her in (shhhh) "the family way," and not many fans would care a whit, mostly because they'd never know.
Now it's only a matter of clicks before an ultrasound of Tom Brady's unborn child is posted on YouTube, or Gawker.com gets the dish on exactly where and when the baby was conceived. Such is the price of progress, if that's what we dare call it.
New England has long been infatuated with Brady, the Patriots' quarterback with the squeaky-clean image and pile of Super Bowl hardware. If he wasn't perfect, he surely was close, or so went the modern-day fairy tale. He made one mistake, that last-minute interception against the Indianapolis Colts that finished the Patriots' 2006 season, and that alone should've been heavy enough to digest until the Red Sox greeted April.
But oh, how the chatter has changed. It's darn near impossible to turn on the radio in Boston and not hear some caller or commentator opining about Brady's latest move. In case you've been buried under the avalanche of breathless leakage regarding Anna Nicole Smith, here's the latest scoop from the other side of the street: Bridget Moynahan, an actress whose three-year relationship with Brady ended in December, is three months pregnant and says he is the father. She's 36, and reportedly thrilled with the bump. He's 29, and currently romancing Gisele Bundchen, a Brazilian model. While Moynahan picks out maternity clothes, Brady and Bundchen are gallivanting around Europe, canoodling in Paris cafes and taking in the Milan fashion shows.
A few days ago, the Boston Globe ran the story on page A1, above the fold. Readers were encouraged to post their thoughts on the paper's Web site, and soon the hits about Tom Brady, baby daddy, were multiplying at a pace usually reserved for a Red Sox-Yankees series.
Easy3456 wrote: "You know, Bridget is the kind of girl you marry and spend the rest of your life with, on the other hand, Gisele is the kind of girl you have fun with for a period of time and then realize how insanely stupid she is . . ." and, well, you get the drift. Should Tom and Bridg make up and marry? Was she trying to trap their Tom? Would the golden boy's reputation be sullied by scandal?
"It's a stain only if we require superheroes to be celibate," said Dr. Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.
New Yorkers shouldn't chortle: We'd be equally salacious gossipers if Derek Jeter found himself in Brady's place. The two athletes are ripped from the same headlines: clutch performers, GQ cover-boy handsome, upstanding citizens, the sort of men parents want their daughters to date.
More than ever, the media culture, with its ever-changing forms and unguarded borders, builds legends and creates myths. If thousands of bloggers obsess over a person or an issue, and the Internet spreads their words quicker than a virus, when should the mainstream media join the conversation? Who decides when gossip is newsworthy? (That this column exists answers both questions.)
"We're seeing some of the collateral damage right now in our celebrity-obsessed culture," Clark said. "Instead of working hard to help people figure out what's really important in society or a community, instead of making more important things interesting to people, we spend a lot of time trying to create interesting things that aren't important.
"Winning three Super Bowls is an accomplishment. Knocking up your girlfriend is a problem that's ancient and universal. It doesn't require special attention."
And yet, as Clark noted, there is often a bright side to the dark moon.
Newsmongering, even when it begins in someone's basement, can still provide a public service and social relevance. In all the Brady hullabaloo, one thread sticks out: Black athletes often are chastised for having children out of wedlock, but the attention surrounding Brady seems more high-five, what-a-stud than Puritanical finger wagging.
"I do think it's interesting the way the public and the media judge white athletes (compared to) black athletes," Clark said. "When we're talking about, for instance, how many children are born outside of traditional marriages with only one parent, we sometimes focus in on that as a pathology or problem of one race or one corner of society, when in truth it's expressed everywhere."
Portals and search engines are the equivalent of a telescope aimed at the neighbors across the way. It's almost impossible not to look, no matter how creepy it feels. But never again can we turn around this telescope.
The gates have sprung open, allowing the public to storm its way past the old guards of truth, justice and the American way (defined by traditional media as whatever facts and myths we chose to set free). Joe D and the Babe ought to be glad they never had to tangle with "easy3456." It wouldn't have been a fair fight. | Only registered users can write comments.
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