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)
“The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I’m not sure it’ll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else, maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself.”
—Daniel Mainwaring (1902–1977)
“Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
—Bible: New Testament Colossians 4:6.