I don’t know why there is such a fuss down south over an imaginary girlfriend.
The Notre Dame football player being hounded by the media – because his girlfriend, whom he said had died of a leukemia, turned out to be a figment of his imagination – should be praised not blamed.
Cultivating rich imaginations is what every educational institution is supposed to do and the University of Notre Dame, being a fine institution of higher learning, should be congratulated for doing such an excellent job with young Manti Te’o.
He apparently strung everyone along for years, with his tale of a beautiful woman who never existed. He may have even convinced himself that she was real.
And so what? Why do the media think that is strange? After all, how unusual is it for a strong, athletic, attractive young man, a star of the nation’s most storied college football team, to not be able to attract a real girlfriend from the thousands of beautiful women on campus?
Why, there are probably hundreds of college boys who have imaginary girlfriends. True, they may be on the chess team, tune pianos for a hobby and collect superhero action figures, but that doesn’t make their imaginations any less fertile.
On the contrary, they likely exercise their imaginations even more frequently than Manti.
The young man shouldn’t even be in the media limelight at all. There are so many other, better-known individuals who have exercised their imaginations in a manner far more creatively than Te’o.
Look at the prime minister. Mr. Harper imagines himself to be both popular and co-ordinated; characteristics that are constantly shown to be untrue whenever there is a national or political poll or he is filmed walking beside foreign dignitaries, without swinging his arms.
And what about Conrad Black?
Is there anyone currently living in Canada with a greater imagination than his? He even imagines he is entitled to the rights of a Canadian citizen, as though his Order of Canada somehow perpetuates his citizenship even though he renounced it.
Of course he hasn’t imagined a girlfriend. His wife Barbara is all too real. But he has outdone Te’o in so many other imaginary realms. For example, he thinks he is a powerful lord and that the parliamentary House in which he sits, serves an invaluable purpose.
He believes he is not and never was a felon, despite having been convicted of a felony in a court of law. He imagines that he is a visionary, a builder of empires, an intellectual colossus, even though over the last five years, his visions have proved to be ephemeral, his empire insubstantial and his intellect insufficient.
We can only hope that Te’o’s flights of fancy, occurring at the beginning of his career, will be overlooked as he makes a legacy for himself on the football field.
That is certainly better than having one’s legacy turned to dust by uncontrolled flights of fancy at the end of one’s career.
– Jim Holtz is a current Grand Forks Gazette reporter and WEEKENDER columnist