morford on agassi

mark morford, (a columnist at the san francisco chronicle,) wrote about andre agassi's interview with katie couric this week. here's a snippet.



morford is a terrific writer whom i have read for several years purely for enjoyment. his perspective is always refreshing. his primary feeling after watching this interview, (specifically regarding agassi's admission of using crystal methamphetamine for about a year during the darkest period in his career,) is to wonder why agassi doesn't just laugh it off and remark on the strangely wonderful journey that is life.

it's not disingenuous on morford's part, either. his column tends to present fresh perspectives. however, agassi remains a businessman. he takes katie couric's questions with utter seriousness because there are millions of people in our society who would view agassi's revelation as base, dark, criminal, poor of judgment and a horrible example for a role model. agassi needs to be somber in this discussion with couric so as not to insult her viewers.

is morford right in suggesting that it's unfortunate but not necessarily the height of shamefulness? yes, it would be best to see it for what it truly is, a bad decision that may have resulted in some temporary artificial joy but probably represented, as drugs so often do, a dark time of sadness. sometimes it seems like those who want these public figures to splay themselves before the masses as objects to be pitied, ridiculed and derided push for that not from a sense of wanting children to learn from them and avoid similar paths of bad choices but from wanting to promote temperance by vilifying drugs so dramatically as to frighten the impressionable with nightmarish outcomes and the possibility of being ostracized.

in spite of that, agassi, and any public figure, would be best served to respond as agassi does, humbly and seriously, recognizing that couric and those she represents are good and decent people who may fear parts of the spectrum of human experience or may be driven by religious convictions that teach them to hate the sin, (at which many may also hate the sinner if only subconsciously,) or who may simply believe that people will be better if they can avoid such experiences by hook or by crook.

for my part i enjoyed the fact that agassi wrote the kind of book he wrote. he talked about how he made a conscious decision to tell the truth in his autobiography in order to write a compelling book and also to get the most from the experience himself. this, of course, exemplifies a behavior i have always admired, (and commented on before,) in agassi.