Here’s your role model right here

"I am not a role model."

--Charles Barkley, in a famous

Nike TV commercial

I'd like to say a word to the children and young people out there, provided any read a newspaper.

It's this: If you don't know him or her, then he or she cannot possibly be a role model.

How could you possibly model your own behavior after that of a person you behold only in the usually manufactured universe of the mass media -- and then only because that person can put a club to a ball with more control than someone else, or sing a song you like, or pretend effectively to be something he's not in a movie or television show, or wear a certain kind of clothing in a thoroughly air-brushed photograph in a magazine?

You can't.

Maybe you admire him because he seems to be such a splendid person. After all, he has that foundation that does all that charitable work. Bear in mind that there are tax advantages to that and that his image managers have explained to him that he should not hoard his obscene wealth, but appear to do something benevolent with a little portion of it.

Image managers? Sure.

People become famous and rich because of sports skill or singing gifts or acting talent or good looks or, in a few cases, for nothing evident. Thus they become public property, possessed of a public persona they nurture so that they might remain rich and famous.

So they hire people to tell them how to negotiate the public arena to project the best image -- to seem to the world to be endearing or admirable, to appear to be genuine.

It perhaps has little at all to do with the way they really are, which is, if they're lucky, forever unknown to you as you spend your money on whatever products they produce or represent or endorse.

Tiger Woods got something right last week. This business about his late-night automotive mishap and these "transgressions" with the women for which he has made a profound apology -- he insisted in a public statement on his Web site that his further words and actions in that regard deserved to be kept private, within his family, behind the doors of his palace.

His public essence should be that of a man who can hit a golf ball uncommonly well. Our consideration of him ought to be kept in that compartment, unless, that is, something inadvertently gets revealed to us in the public projection of his profession, such as his throwing a club and uttering an extreme profanity, which, actually, our high-definition TV screens have shown.

We shouldn't buy a Buick because he pitched one on TV. Nor should we buy an Escalade because he wrecked one at 2:30 a.m. We ought to wear a Nike shoe only if it fits and performs well, not because Tiger wears the swoosh. A real role model arises only through true acquaintance and the test of time.

I finally may be getting one. He's an open-minded preacher who is related to me. I saw him over the summer. I saw him and his family over Thanksgiving. I found myself admiring more each hour the way he conducted himself and the way his wife and adult children conducted themselves.

They don't tell you of their morality. They merely live their lives. If you choose to observe them over time, you'll start to see something you'll want to apply to your own betterment.

If you're lucky, that is. A real role model just happens. It's not the guy on TV. It might be the guy watching TV with you.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.