Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the newsstands, I hear Vanity Fair will be featuring a shirtless, Tiger Woods on it’s next magazine cover, along with (I’m guessing) a tawdry expose on his recently revealed transgressions. I don’t know about you, but I am so over the Tiger bashing. It’s 2010 and I’m ready to move on and focus on more important things than dissecting a celebrity who has fallen from grace. Don’t get me wrong – what Tiger did was pretty bad – maybe even unforgivable. But my point is, we’re not the ones he needs to be seeking forgiveness from. What he did is really between him and his wife. Somehow, we’ve got it twisted that Tiger’s behavior is a direct affront to each and every one of us. It’s not. Right now, Tiger is being used as a green screen to project the world’s moral and ethical shortcomings on. As long as we can keep pointing the finger at him, we won’t have to deal with the three fingers pointing right back at us. How about in 2010 we stop judging and denigrating Tiger (and anyone else for that matter) and start looking at our own foibles, and working on how each of us can become better or more moral individuals.
The way I see it, the biggest problem the Tiger Woods fiasco has exposed is our need to elevate mortal man to God-like status and then knock him off the altar and rip him to shreds. What is with that? It’s a sickness we need to address in our culture. Stop looking to celebrities and sports figures to be anything but what they all are: talented, but flawed human beings, just like the rest of us. With all the psycho-analyzing and evaluating of Tiger’s character that’s been going on in the media, I haven’t heard one person clearsighted enough to understand that Elin isn’t the only one suffering…Tiger is suffering, too. Sex addiction, like any other addiction, is an emotional illness that points to a broken spirit - a person who is trying to fill a very deep hole (no pun intended) with everything but what he really needs- to fill himself with self. So how about a little compassion for the man who single-handedly integrated and elevated a sport that used to put ninety percent of America to sleep! A man whose charity foundation has helped needy children across the country. A man who we were once all proud to claim a piece of. Remember him?
This sad and unfortunate undoing of Tiger should serve as a cautionary tale for would-be Adulterers. There’s a new breed of woman out there. Taking a page from the Monica Lewinsky handbook, they not only come to the party with a bag of sex tricks, but a specimen kit as well. So while you’re sleeping off your wild night, beware because she’s probably taking hair samples, cell photos, toenail clippings and anything else she can save up to substantiate her claims and make out like a bandit when she calls Gloria Allred and comes forward with her story.
My hope for Tiger (wherever he is holed up) is that he finds a path to nurture and heal his spirit and that he emerges from this dungeon of despair, stronger, wiser and shining more brightly than ever.
