Idols are people!

A large number of people in the world ranging from the Dalai Lama to a number of celebrities are looked up to, admired and often revered. We, who idolize them usually defend anything they might say against those who tend to malign them. The entire process of maligning and defending can be seen prominently across Twitter (amongst the Twitterati) and television journalism on an everyday basis. However, every so often, one of our idols makes a statement that does not go down with us very well thus giving birth to feeling of betrayal since "How dare they say that?"

Most of us have to make conscious and rather failed attempts to put a filter between our minds and mouths. Thankfully we don't have people recording every statement of ours. If those statements came out in public, we would probably embarrass ourselves to isolation for the rest of our lives. But our hypocritical inner self wants to exempt our idols from the same.

The subjective approach worsens the number of such incidents when we fail to give leeway that said things may be spoken in jest or quoted out of context. I myself have been guilty of that recently when I came to know about the jovial tendencies of a certain man I admire by the people who had actually met him. None of us are naive enough to believe every word quoted or reported by the paparazzi. We know better. We know how they twist and turn and cut and quote in an attempt to create headlines. We are victims of it while being guilty of doing the same on platforms that are accessible to us.

It's increasingly necessary to understand and accept that those who have the power to reach out to a larger number of people than we do are humans. They eat and drink and poop and scratch themselves much the same way that we do. After putting them on a pedestal, we not just want to revere them, but we also expect them to voice that which goes on in our heads. Some of these may be elected officials while some may have been put up there owing to the nature of their career or by their very birth within a certain family. Some have chosen to be there. But whatever have been the method, it does not negate the fact that they are still regular humans like us. Some of them have fancy PRs and speeches written out for them which could curb the damage done by their 'out of line' statements but a large enough number does have the same perks.

They might be on a pedestal but nobody's perfect.