public images

According to William Rhoden ( NYT Feb. 21), it is folly to believe in "manufactured images" based on sports marketing. Who could disagree? But not every public image is inauthentic. We sometimes believe, as millions did with Tiger, in a public figure as being genuine in his or her respect for a profession, even for politics, or for a sport. In this sense I still believe, for instance, in Rafa Nadal, in Kim Clijsters, in Paul Farmer, in Meryl Streep. I believe in golfers like Graeme McDowell (NYT March 6) who call penalties on themselves when they could almost certainly get away with a technical infraction. I believe in Derek Jeter even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. Tiger himself may well have lived up to that standard on the golf course.
We can also believe in such figures as adhering to normal if not elevated standards of good faith in private behavior as well as in their professional sphere. We can even hope that their private standards are higher than that: Roberto Clemente, Arthur Ashe. In this sense too I believe in Nadal, Clijsters, Farmer, Streep. "Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,/Yet grace must still look so."
Rhoden seems to say that since everyone is fallible, it is naive or hypocritical or both to believe in anyone in this sense. I may be as unwilling as Rhoden to believe again in Tiger (or in John Edwards and many others) in this sense. But to make that deep recoil a universal principle is a form of refusing to care because one may be hurt. That way lies the desert. It's not the only available habitat for people in general, nor for sports fans.