How little we know of the secret lives of stars

If the death of Steve McNair reinforces what we should've already long deciphered it's that we don't truly know the athletes, movie stars and politicians we worship. We never have. We never will.

Many of the sports and pop culture figures we admire are just as freaky, naughty and attracted to the darker side of human nature as the rest of us.

We do our best to block this fact out. We move through the world with a sort of fake naiveté. McNair's life shouldn't be judged solely on what turns out to be -- at best -- a strange relationship with a woman who wasn't his wife. I'll still remember McNair as being one of the best people I've ever met, a beacon in many ways for a generation of black quarterbacks who followed.

Nevertheless, the strangeness of the McNair situation, admittedly, has caught many by surprise. In having conversations with friends of McNair's this week, they're all expressing great shock over the recent revelations.

No one should be stunned an athlete had a secret life, least of all other athletes.

Or that a pop star or politician did. Or a television pitchman. That's what many of them do.

Michael Jackson was the greatest musical performer ever. He may have also molested children. Elvis Presley was addicted to prescription drugs. Frank Sinatra had alleged mob ties. John F. Kennedy was an alleged womanizer. So was Martin Luther King. Humphrey Bogart was a heavy drinker.

Stars big and small have secret weaknesses. Who knew the ShamWow guy was an alleged freak? Or Rush Limbaugh was popping so many pills his liver could've doubled as an Internet pharmacy? Or Eliot Spitzer carefully crafted his image as a crime fighter while carrying on with a prostitute? Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich have a combined six marriages between them, but continue to lecture about the importance of family.

Bill Clinton got Monica Lewinsky'd in the White House. The governor of South Carolina preached family values in campaign ads while cheating on his wife, later temporarily abandoning his post to have a cross-continent affair. Senator David Vitter from Louisiana railed against how same-sex marriage destroyed the American family while he was carrying on with prostitutes.

Sports figures aren't much better. Ty Cobb was a crass villain. Rae Carruth plotted to kill his pregnant girlfriend. Roger Clemens may have lied before Congress. Don King served time for manslaughter. Tonya Harding plotted to kneecap an opponent. Michael Vick electrocuted dogs. Eugene Robinson sniffed out prostitutes the night before the Super Bowl. Lawrence Phillips beat up women and Jim Brown, the best NFL player of all time, is alleged to have done the same. Ron Artest was part of starting a riot. Pete Rose was a gambling creep.

Coach Jeff Fisher and Jaire George, son of former Titans teammate Eddie George, mourn the Steve McNair they knew. (AP)

On and on it goes. Yet we buy their records, vote for them and cheer for them on various fields and courts. We wear their jerseys and ask them to sign our T-shirts and footballs.

The same people who loudly decry Michael Jackson as a pervert and nothing else are probably trying to sell something Jackson-related on eBay.

We think (and thought) we knew them. We didn't. We never did.

Here's the irony: Following the misstep of a star, many in the public are just as quick to turn on them as they were to spend their time and money admiring them. We turn our noses at their foibles when just a moment earlier we wanted their autographs.

Sometimes people are just insanely naïve and hypocritically Puritan. Some of the same people thumbing their nose at the married McNair's relationship with a girlfriend are same ones who have their own mistresses or spend chunks of their paycheck for a stripper -- er, exotic dancer -- to sit in their laps.

Or enjoy hours and hours of Internet porn. If every man on the planet who ever cheated on his wife was removed from the Earth, the only male left would be a transgendered gardener in Ohio. Just about the only male athletes who haven't cheated on their wives are Little Leaguers.

This isn't to condone in any way what McNair is alleged to have done (so please lower the voltage of your fake outrage generators) but allow someone who has covered all manner of professional sports to let you in on a secret: Numerous athletes cheat on their wives. Shocking, right?

Not all, by any means, but many. There's a reason why some 80 percent of NFL players either file for divorce or bankruptcy within two years of their retirement, according to several different studies. Part of that high percentage of divorce is due to mismanaged finances and part of it is because of infidelity (or multiple infidelities). My guess is the numbers in other major sports aren't dissimilar.

Professional journalists have known this forever. The lack of monogamy is as common to professional sports as fat salaries. Just like men cheating on wives in the general population is as American as mom and apple pie.

This is the truth I'm telling. If you want sugar-coated nonsense, go rent a Meg Ryan movie.

Proof of what I'm saying came in a tweet from Holly Robinson Peete, the wife of former NFL quarterback Rodney Peete: "Will the Steve McNair tragedy scare married men straight like the '87 film Fatal Attraction did for a while?"

She knows what many of us in the media know: Married athletes constantly mess around.

Men constantly mess around.

Actors are no different. Politicians might be the worst hypocrites of all and yes, journalists are full of frailties and faults, too.

No, we don't know these people at all. None of them.

We never will.