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Consider three kinds of celebrities: politicians, athletes, and musicians. We clearly hold politicians to higher moral and social standards than we do musicians. This makes sense because we feel more vulnerable to bad behavior by politicians than by musicians. An out of control politician could kill us all, while an out of control musician would at worst just fail to make music we like.
What about athletes? While we may not hold athletes to the high of standards we hold politicians, we clearly hold them to higher standards than musicians. Tiger Woods was vilified for moral violations that wouldn’t be worth reporting about a musician. Yet the above explanation for politicians vs. musicians doesn’t work here. While we are no more vulnerable to athletes than to musicians, we still hold athletes to a higher standard.
For our distant ancestors, athletic skill was much closer to political power. Small forager bands feared that the few most physically powerful members would attempt to dominate the band by force. Foragers had much less reason to fear domination by the few most musical folks in the band. So it made sense for foragers to hold athletes to higher moral standards than musicians.
So I suspect our tendency to hold athletes to higher standards than musicians is a holdover from our forager days; I’d explain similarly the fact that it is easier for an athlete than a musician to covert into a politician.
We can understand why we treat different kinds of celebrities differently today in terms of reasons our distant forager ancestors had to treat them differently. Can this approach help us understand our differing treatments of other kinds of celebrities?
Added 7p: The fact that athletes are held up as role models seems less an explanation for them being held to higher standards, and more as a restatement of the question. I’m not saying athletes are actually more moral, just that they are punished more severely when caught. I think the fact that we tolerate far more subjectivity in judging musicians than athletes is also related, but I’m not sure how.
Athletes vs. Musicians
Gotta say, I know this post is two years old but I'm gonna attempt a new slant on this.
Athletes aren't given the commericial time that a musician/actor is given. They endorse things but over here in the UK they're usually sports related things (or in a rare case things marketed for men). Their lives in the general media's eyes for that matter or pretty boring and I dare say an athlete is more of a "normal" person than any of the other types listed. Athletes work hard and outside of soccer, I'd say pretty much every athlete could walk down a street and no-one would notice them.
Musicians lives however are on par with actors. How many actors or musicians have you seen capable of walking down a street and not get noticed? This is of course even with the aid of say a disguise. There's one rare case of a band over here called Snow Patrol who on many occasions have said they can walk around even their home town and no-one would know who they are and they're a pretty big band here (and to what I know branched out into the US but to what success, I don't know). Most bands don't have this liberty and often have to hide themselves although many take a great pride in wallacing about without disguise to be seen.
I think a musician doing something bad, isn't simply cared for because they're a celebrity and it's seen as a way to sell themselves. I don't think an athlete (again outside of soccer) is considered a celebrity over here and for that reason, despite their lives being regarded as dull in the media (in comparison to an actor or musician) to step out of line would give the media something to talk about. A good example is England rugby union player Mike Tindall. Until he got married to Zara Phillips, I don't think anyone outside of rugby would have known who he was and probably wouldn't have recognised him on the street but because of a situation on the World Cup tour, he became somewhat villified/a celeb.
Go figure but that's the UK point of view from my eyes.
Musicians.
Athletes are never really recognized or well respected when retired. Nobody really gives a shit about Babe Ruth no more than they do John Lennon.