Last week, the proprietors of the adultery-promoting Web site Ashley Madison offered $1 million to anyone who can “prove” she’s had sex with Tim Tebow.
Sure, it’s a stunt by a site that caters to married people seeking affairs, snarking at a famous virgin. But it also tells us something about the modern quest for “authenticity.”
We supposedly prize “realness.” You see a contestant on a food-competition TV show told he’s not being “authentic” enough in his cooking. We hear that Mitt Romney suffers from not “being himself” — we don’t feel like we know the true Mitt Romney.
Being called “fake” is one of the more devastating modern put-downs.
What, then, are we to make of the animosity toward Tebow — one of the most genuine people in public life?
It can’t just be that people dislike overt religiosity. Sports players come off the field all the time, look into the cameras and thank Jesus Christ for a win.
We don’t blink when they do it — maybe because it usually sounds so automated. I suspect we shrug off that in-your-face religiousness because some part of us doesn’t believe they truly mean it.
In other words, it seems fake, so we’re OK with it.
With Tebow, there’s no such skepticism. By now, his every word about his faith has been parsed and repeated; “Tebowing” is a phenomenon.
And it’s his earnestness — the quality we claim to want in our celebrities — that rubs some the wrong way.
They want “real,” sure — but they don’t want Tebow’s faith to be real.
In fact, even the Ashley Madison folks know it is genuine. The size of their offered prize tells you they don’t actually think they’ll find anyone. (After all, no one was offering $1 million to prove Britney Spears was not that innocent, back when she was proclaiming her virginity.)
And it bothers them that Tebow is Tebow.
Ashley Madison founder Noel Biderman says, “If Mr. Tebow is indeed abstaining from adult relationships, I would encourage him to find a nice lady or two and enjoy his youth and fame as much as possible.”
Here we have a site that encourages people to do their own thing, to be true to their wants and needs even at the expense of their marriage or family — and that wants Tebow to stop being himself.
That’s what the push for “authenticity” so often comes down to: Everyone should be himself, as long as it doesn’t threaten our preconceived notions.
It might not be for everyone, but Tim Tebow’s refreshing, unpretentious, uncool personality seems to be the real, true him.
Maybe the real fear is that New York won’t change Tebow and that he’ll stay his true, virginal self. An outbreak of that kind of Tebowing might be bad for Ashley Madison’s business.
Karol Markowicz blogs at alarmingnews.