Assailed Daily by the Jawbone of An Ass

Three names in this week's news that prove you don't have to wise or smart or admirable to be famous:

Jay Leno got his way. The most self-promoting in show business has managed to undermine several careers and orchestrate several graceless exits on his way to the top, and his latest triumph is America's loss. NBC spent $35 million dollars to make Conan and his staff go away, and what they have now is Jay and his aging audience and tired old shtick.

The real problem is, Leno is not FUNNY. Most of his punch lines are the stuff of 7th-grade locker rooms and tittering from the boys in the band. He's not fresh, original or innovative. He may have shouldered out Johnny Carson and outmaneuvered David Letterman and kicked Conan O'Brien to the curb, but once he got the mike he had nothing to say. Tap it all you want, Jay Leno. This mike is on but you'll never get more than token applause. And everyone is rolling their eyes at you behind your back.

John Edwards denied his affair for years, denied he was the father of the child, went on Oprah and piously declared he had learned his lesson and was making amends for the damage he had done to his wife and family. He waits until he's out of the country on a relief mission to Haiti and the eve of the publication of a damaging tell-all book. He leaves his staff and advisors to answer the questions and issue the statements.

It's embarrassing and sad on many levels. Here is a man who once stood for something and campaigned to make a difference in the lives of people. He has wrecked his life and his legacy, and now he cannot stand up to what he has done.

Tiger Woods is reportedly in a sexual addiction clinic in Hattiesburg Mississippi. His stay there includes several special accommodations, including a $100,000 temporary makeover to his room and a agreement that he doesn't have to participate in group therapy or eat the common meals with the rest of the patients.

I have two problems with this. The first is that everyone nowadays claims their failures to be an illness and runs off for treatment. The second is, if he is going to a facility to address his "issues," he ought to subject himself to the discipline and regimen of that experience. Thinking he was above the rules is what got him into this situation in the first place.

In fact, thinking that way was central to the problems of all these men. We have to earn the trust and the affection of others. Once lost, it is a hard road to earn it back. Rehabilitation and real change are not easy, and have to begin with an authentic change of the heart. It's hard to think how any of these three could achieve that. They've shown themselves to be terminally selfish, hollow men addicted to appetite and getting what they want without regard of the cost to anyone.

We have to bear our human failings and the consequences of them, and take responsibility with grace and self-reflection. The true triumphs of the soul come in trial and defeat. It will be interesting to see where these men are five years from now. Will they rise from the rubble of the earthquakes that have shook their lives, or will they remain arrogant and unchanged, clinging to their privilege and celebrity, clinging to the image of themselves as victims of a voracious media, hungry for scandal or sorrow in the lives of public men?