Unless you’ve been on a trip to Mars, or holed up in a cave in the Kanuku, you are aware of what Tiger Woods has been up to – off the golf course, that is – so I’m not going to waste your time reprising the National Enquirer details. My take on the debacle is simply that I don’t get it.
Understand I’m not referring to the incidents themselves. They have been spelled out repeatedly in every possible forum. They have been analysed to death and speculated back to life. We know, as the CIA boys would say, more than we need to know.
What I don’t get is this eruption of fury and vitriol that has been aimed at the man. In a matter, literally, of a few hours Tiger Woods went from one of the most admired, even revered, people on the planet to this slimy piece of trash.
Suddenly, and quite apart from his sexual sins, we are now being told that Woods is a self-centred individual, arrogant, refusing to help other young black golfers, and even forsaking principle in his quest to grab every dollar in sight. Commentators across the media have been castigating the man’s character at every turn, and buried in many of those assaults is sometimes even the suggestion of glee that the high-plumed bird has fallen off his perch.
Several things about this are puzzling.
It is noticeable that none of this carping was being heard when he was winning and was such a wonderful black image. Everybody was proud of him, and understandably so. I didn’t hear any black people calling him to task publicly on anything. We were standing around the TV exulting when he was tearing up the sport. Nobody accused him of turning his back on his people. Whatever reservations we had, we didn’t voice. This was our boy, case closed.
The man has been a global figure for a decade; were all the transgressions invisible until last month? Certainly there have been instances in the past where the press chose to keep personal behaviours secret – US President John Kennedy’s White House liaisons with lady friends, for example – but in today’s high frenzy media that’s not going to happen. So how come Tiger was such a sleaze, and we didn’t know?
Secondly, we need to step back from the media melee and look at the transgression. He didn’t beat up anybody, shoot anybody, or malign any person or race. He wasn’t caught using drugs, or selling drugs, or carrying a gun through an airport. He didn’t slip anybody’s daughter a drug and violate her. Nobody died because he was driving intoxicated. He didn’t test positive for cocaine. He didn’t bribe anybody, or commit fraud. Okay, he was unfaithful to his wife, okay, several times, but the public outrage at his behaviour seems way out of proportion to the crime. US President Bill Clinton was guilty of similar dalliance, in the Oval Office holy-of-holies and, after his actions became known, life for him continued on presidential platforms and in his hobnobbing with world leaders. Kobe Bryant was caught in a similar cheating episode and he’s still flying high in the NBA.
The other aspect of this is the hypocrisy involved. Sex, in all its ramifications, is constantly propagated in every aspect of modern life in North America and around the world. General Motors introduces a new car and uses models in bikinis to promote it. Almost every magazine cover you look at these days has a busty woman, scantily clad, on the cover and on several pages inside. The cover of Mechanix Illustrated, for heaven’s sake, often has a bikini babe holding the latest piece of high tech machinery. We have songs and videos and movies glorifying sex and even multi-partner sex. The Viagra revolution; the porno magazines and movies; the billion dollar trade in sex toys; all sex. And we’re aghast when, as my Trini friend put it, “de man running down two ‘ooman, padna?”
The general outcry has been astonishing considering the reality which is that sexual dalliance is practically a way of life in sports leagues and show business circuits. There have been repeated disclosures about it, we have read of many of them in the press, but life goes on in almost all of those cases. It is treated largely as a matter for the man and his family. The story blazes for a while, then it dies down and life goes on.
In this case, for some reason, there was a firestorm.
Were all these animosities regarding Tiger Woods sitting there like lava waiting to erupt? Below the surface, away from public knowledge, did he so alienate the media that they were lying in the bushes waiting to pounce? It is puzzling. The extent of the vitriol is puzzling.
Also, who among us, man or woman, has the credentials to dismantle Tiger Woods for infidelity? If you know anything about modern sport and entertainment circles at the top level, you know that many of the pundits who are slamming Woods’ behaviour are certainly not qualified to be throwing stones. This is one of those examples of the ever present tendency in mankind to enjoy the scenario of our leading citizens turning out to be less than perfect.
Tiger Woods cheating on his wife, with compliant women, should be between him and his wife, and perhaps the women. Certainly the sponsors who pay him millions have a right to pull back if the image is sullied, but the scale of the public outcry against him is odd.
Considering the offence, the reaction seems extreme.
No argument; the Tiger has feet of clay. But throwing him under the bus like this?
In my book, we should perhaps be cutting the guy some slack. Maybe that’s how it will turn out in the end. I hope so. But I have my doubts. The pattern is usually that when we turn on our heroes, it’s lasting. So it go.
