There have been a few people who have asked me, "why haven't you written about Tiger Woods in the past month?" so I have to put out my official statement on the matter. There will be no postings on this site about Tiger Woods or any of his "transgressions". I do not believe that a rich, powerful, super famous athlete who sleeps around on his wife is news. That is just life. It will be news if a rich, powerful, super famous athlete lends their name and voice to something more meaningful than their wallet. When athletes like Michael Jordan leave the statement "republicans buy sneakers too" for their agents, and speak up for the folks that work in the Nike factories and shops, THAT will be news.
This is not an indictment against Nike or Tiger or Michael Jordan. This is an indictment on a society that is so easily distracted by a sports star or a sex scandal that we are missing the real "transgressions". There are two wars, that do not seem to be coming to an end any time soon. Poverty so horrific that you don't have to stay up late at night to see on an infomercial, just drive around your town a few times, take a good look at all of the foreclosure signs. There is genocide going on, I don't mean in Africa or some Third World crumbling nation, but right here 45,000 people die due to a lack in health insurance. That is preventable! We do not have to live and die this way. More men and women die due to insufficient health insurance each year than drunk driving and domestic homicide combined.
So that is why we must say no to the tabloids and stop reading about paper tigers. We should not allow ourselves to be so easily distracted to focus so much of our time and energy into the personal dealings with just another man. He is just another guy. Tiger Woods is not, nor has he ever been a god. He is just a regular man with an amazing amount of golfing talent and a very full social calendar.
1 comment:
I couldn't agree more. While standing in a very long line at the grocery checkout today, every single tabloid featured crying pictures of his wife, pictures of his "transgressions," headlines about prenups and divorce. There's really hardly any escape, and frankly, since the first day this all started coming out and Tiger said he wanted to deal with it privately, I've hoped privately would have been how it went down. Now, in the interest of playing devil's advocate:), is there value in the sports-figure-as-hero archetype? Who did you look up to when you were playing little league, and what did they mean to you in the long run? Would it have mattered in the least what he did in his private life to you or to your parents? I suppose that's the argument I'm hearing most often - that he's a role model and how dare he. I guess this could lead to a bigger debate over whether or not heroes exist or are created and why. Anyhow, back to the point. It is immensely frustrating that so much media, TV, print, etc is dominated by such things when the energy could be directed into so much more. I see the seeming legitimacy of people being "let down" by him, but that belief is based in something that's also fabricated by the media and so on. oh heroes...Personally, I don't know what people are so mad about. Seeing that seemingly superhumanly perfect people have some serious issues helps me feel a little less frustrated about mine.
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