file

Stephen Collins

There was a time not so long ago when Stephen Collins and Kevin Sorbo used to be popular figures in Jamaican households. Collins played Reverend Eric Camden in the television series 7th Heaven that aired between 1996 and 2007. Sorbo played the legendary Hercules between 1995 and 1999.

I was never into 7th Heaven but I know a lot of kids watched and thought the world of Reverend Camden. I watched Hercules: The Legendary Journeys because I thought it was fun and also enjoyed Xena the Warrior Princess too, for several reasons. It was always interesting to note the growing sexual tension between Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle and I was curious to see how far the show's writers would take the relationship considering the show's target audience.

Camden and Sorbo transitioned from those shows to other acting roles with great success. People saw them as role models, people you would like your kids to emulate. However, in recent times these two gentlemen have, under different circumstances, been exposed as not being as nice as the characters they played on television.

Frustration built up

In August after police shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, there were days of protests by residents of the town appealing to the authorities for justice. Sorbo, who we now know to be a conservative, took to Facebook where, according to the Huffington Post, he wrote. "Ferguson riots have very little to do with the shooting of the young man. It's an excuse to be the losers these animals truly are. It is a tipping point to frustration built up over years of not trying, but blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures. It's always someone else's fault when you give up. Hopefully this is a reminder to the African Americans that their President they voted in has only made things worse for them, not better."

Darker skin

He later offered a lame apology but it did little to change opinions formed of him about his true feelings towards people of darker skin.

I have to be honest, those comments came as a bit of a surprise to me but in hindsight, it should not have. Hercules is a fictional character and he did not present a true reflection of what lurked in Sorbo's heart.

We are so easily fooled into believing that the characters we see people play in film are reflections of who they are when it reality they are completely different.

Reverend Camden was a divine man trying to raise his family in the right way. Collins however, was a man who, according to media reports, harboured nasty thoughts. The New York City police are now investigating the actor who revealed in an audio recording that he had exposed himself to underage girls. He has since lost movie roles and has been axed from the popular series Scandal. Re-runs of 7th Heaven have also been pulled from television.

Now we don't fully know the extent of his culpability especially since these revelations have come about because of nasty divorce proceedings between Collins and his wife Faye Grant, but the recording is apparently authentic.

I say all this to say it is often dangerous to find your heroes on television or the rest of the media, because you really don't know who these people truly are. As such, you might be choosing to emulate someone who in real life is everything you would not want to be.

Send comments to levyl1@hotmail.com