Figure of Speech
When a person overly idealizes someone (or something, an object or idea), it is often referred to as "putting them on a pedestal".
The pejorative phrase "put on a pedestal" is often used to critique celebrity culture, an elected official or position of authority, about someone who is looked up to, held in high regard or revered. To an extent that an accusation or crime may have been overlooked or disregarded, when an investigation or criminal prosecution was later found necessary, because an abuse of position or social standing was committed.
Read more about this topic: Pedestal
Famous quotes containing the words figure of, figure and/or speech:
“The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“But, alas, to make me
A fixèd figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)