So were you surprised by Tiger Woods? Mark Sanford? John Ensign? Bill Clinton? Do you have this idea that we can look to our celebrities (which politicians are in our modern culture) and find better ways to live our own lives? Do you wish it would all just go away?
Since I didn't follow Tiger Woods' career that much, had not realized he was considered such an icon, and hadn't seen the ads featuring him, his revealed affairs weren't the shock that they apparently were to some. I didn't know someone in Congress planned to give him a medal for exemplary something or other. I had no idea that his life was considered a role model for Obama's (let's hope not).
Now how it got revealed was a little surprising although we only hear suppositions about what went down that night between his wife and him. I have been a little more surprised by all the women eager to com
e forward and brag about their affairs with him. They either hope for their fifteen minutes of fame or a little revenge? I would have thought that, at the least, after the first three, the rest would be embarrassed to admit the I have written before about American expectations regarding marriage and the question of monogamy. Although from what I have read, the Tiger story isn't about monogamy as much as sexual mores, it did lead to this article:
Since I pretty much have said the same thing, I won't expand on that article. I do have a few thoughts on what is wrong with our culture that makes Tiger Woods' failings such a huge story. Americans love to set people up on pedestals and then see them knocked off. It's not enough to have someone good at anything. We want the nitty gritty of their private lives. Woods had enough money and power to protect that secret life-- for awhile.
People like Tiger have sold an image to make more money; and you could say he's reaping what he sowed except what is it doing to us as a culture that we let it happen to ourselves if not to him? What makes us need to have modern day heroes. It's risky enough to have historic ones. And worse why do we approach this need from such a shallow, perception level?
Some did the same thing with Obama and now are angry at him that their expectations were not met. Yes, he milked it also but it's because he could. The beauty of shallow perceptions is it makes it easy to turn on these icons when they let us down and they mostly all will-- one way or another.
One of my thoughts on the barrage going on right now was discussed by Debbie Ford in her newsletter.
"For all of us who are caught up in the Tiger drama, my hope is that we will take back all that we have projected on to him all these years. It is useful to remember the old Buddhist trick. Imagine Tiger standing in front of you and now point your finger out at him and say aloud "You are stupid" or "careless" or "an idiot" or "__________" -- whatever quality you are seeing iMy personal feeling is that this is a family's private business. We don't deserve all the details, and I wish Tiger Woods would not try to explain it on Oprah or any of the other weep and spill shows. It just makes the American people more voracious for the next scandal. The obsession with knowing it all is not helping our nation as we concentrate on something that doesn't matter while ignoring a lot that does.n him, fill in the blank. Now look down at your hand. One finger is pointing out at him. Where are the other three fingers pointing? That's right. Back at you. And as we were continually reminded by our friends growing up, "You spot it, you got it!'"
Tiger Woods' story can be made worse if we keep picking at it. The magazines that buy stories hoping for sleaze, tears or an arguing couple, need to see their sales drop into the basement whenever they use personal tragedies for their fodder. They will soon go back to catching shadows of suggested cellulite or a celeb picking their noses.
I think I saw Tiger Woods last spring. Farm Boss and I were in Tucson when Woods had been playing a tournament in our area. Out at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum we saw the man we both believed to be him with several other people, not sure I'd call it an entourage. He was young, strong looking, seemingly feeling good and why not as he had won that tournament. We didn't stare at him or comment to each other until his party has passed, and neither did anybody else that we saw. People let him be. That's what needs to happen now. Hopefully he will be able to get his game back and this time with a more honest persona. He won't have to pretend to be perfect anymore. He doesn't have to pretend to be a monster either. What he did isn't the first and won't be the last.
Photos are from Desert Museum this year and of a cougar, not a tiger. Close enough?
10 comments:
We have to remember that athletes are human beings. They are prone to mistakes just like the rest of us. That being said, if reports of Wood's womanizing are true the man is, at the least, a cad and at the most a libertine. I will not give him a moral pass just because he is Tiger Woods.
I am not suggesting that we give him a pass but that we ignore him and it. That like Debbie Ford said we recognize that if it bothers us a lot, it's saying something about us. Judging others is not in my category of needed behavior unless I am supporting them or they directly interact with me in some way.
My concern is that right now health care is a big issue. How to rebuild our job structure is a big issue. The questions about climate change are big issues. Afghanistan is a big issue, and yet the top story on many news headlines for three weeks has been whether another woman came out of the woodwork. Why should we care? Why is it our business? We didn't elect him and we don't have to buy products that advertise him. Why it's a news story right now when so many things matter more is because of a weakness in our culture.
From all I can tell, Americans and maybe humans in general work on perceptions, which are generally about image and in our case at least very shallow. We create these heroes for emotional highs that our own lives aren't delivering. Then we react with great emotion when we find out they have clay feet-- or worse. It's all about our emotions and we are feeding it on the wrong things (in my opinion).
There are probably a lot of men on his level of fame who are doing the same thing. Their divorces (if their wives got tired of it) would be quiet with a payoff and we'd never know. We know that rock stars are doing it all the time and probably a fair number of movie stars. Our culture constantly sells sex through products and entertainment; so it's a shock when people who can do it, overdo it?
The interesting thing about it is that women don't usually do the kind of massive overkill that Tiger was doing. I read an article on that about trying to guess why women haven't and wondering if it will change as women have more power. Women have affairs, maybe not as many as men, but they do; but not like he did with so many women and so little meaning to most.
What has irked me about these stories with Tiger and same with Mark Sanford is they constantly call these women his mistresses. Mistresses are paid for. They are kept in an apartment and given a stipend for living. These were just affairs, adulterous encounters and none that I have heard so far were mistresses. That might yet come out, of course...
Rain . . . When well known people stray from the normal sexual path society wags a finger at them. s you say, Tiger's no different than many.
....The bigger question in my mind is "why" do they do it? The sex drive is often considered the cause but there must be other reasons as well. A few people have a stronger libido than others and find it more difficult to satisfy. Actually, I don't know and I don't really care.
....What does bother me is that young people are no longer educated in subjects like moral behavior(the value of monogomy), to practice ethical behavior (honesty, integrity), and the benefits of individual responsibility (hard work and committment). Family pride has been diminished by the increasing number of divorces. Churches and Sunday Schools are not getting the job done. Our public and private schools no longer try. And most important, parenting no longer encourages disipline, a work ethic, respect for elders, or any kind of reverence for a responsible married life style. .....And we still wonder why young men and women stray?
I saw this at an airport newsstand last week. The January 2010 Golf Digest issue has an image of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama playing together with this text "10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger" With the article proclaiming Woods a "good role model". Talk about bad timing.
There are children still being taught those values, but our culture doesn't help the parents. When people love to watch shows like Survivor, where conniving helps someone win, what does that tell developing children? Our entertainment is full of such.
Even deciding what is a noble value is difficult in a culture such as ours where we are very diverse in backgrounds. Like the subject of lifetime monogamy. Is that really something ethical to live up to or unrealistic and something to endure for all but a lucky few?
But Woods' story isn't really about monogamy. He wasn't just unfaithful. He was promiscuous-- blatantly so. If he was a woman, he'd be labeled a slut. He was hitting on anything that moved, didn't have a lot of brains, and looked like Barbie. I see his story as more tragic than anything else and how he gets his mojo back after this, I don't know.
Farm Boss has had an opinion that men like Kennedy, Clinton and maybe Woods are getting their energy from those frequent and casual sexual encounters. That is what promiscuity is perhaps-- a vain attempt to get energy from another person-- sexual vampires.
There are so many issues and side issues involved in our thrill seeking culture that someone could write a book on it. Matter of fact, many someone's have done so. The psychology of why someone is unfaithful is studied constantly.
Infidelity is not new; powerful men attract shallow women like flies to honey. When did a tawdry affair start to become interesting to strangers? Are our lives so empty that we have to get our excitement from cheap gossip? When did we go from whispers behind closed doors to headlines in a paper? Are the people who make up the news media so lazy that they don't bother to delve into real news but take an easy sex story to fill up space?
Carl Jung said, "If 'A' tells me something about 'B' I still don't know anything about 'B', but I know a lot about 'A'." That's why gossip is so revealing.
Personally, I don't give a 'fig' about what goes on in any stranger's life. Only if it affects me personally does it matter.
And the women are getting their energy from sleeping with a "celebrity".
Some people seem to get all of their self esteem from being the center of attention of the latest fling.
I'm not sure why we care, or why we make such a big fuss over particular people. I always go back to blaming the media, but essentially it's our responsibility to think reasonably. The same kind of problem crops up for me teaching guitar and banjo... folks just "idolize" a particular someone, and just don't feel that they'll ever play as well as their "heroes"—those folks that we make out to be larger than life, even superhuman. But I'm constantly reminding my students that Keith Richards is just a poor, misguided bloke like the rest of us. Clapton is just a regular fella who spent a lot years in the Betty Ford clinic. Joplin and Hendrix are dead. The company that owns Brittany Spears knew full well how much money they would make by "showcasing" a tweak.
The media has us brainwashed... and we let them do it. The best thing my wife and I ever did for our daughter was to turn off the television fifteen years ago.
Funny thing, now that's she's 25 years old, she's and her fiancée are huge CSI fans.
What's a CSI?
People's egos want to be the voyeurs to other people's troubles. The bigger the trouble, the more people want to watch the stubble of their fellow traveler. If someone else is experiencing troubles, the voyeur's ego is validated by the failure of others... the ego is feed.
Rain . . Somewhere in your comments you question the value of monogamy and wonder if it's practice is superior to the alternative. Interesting question. Provokes and stirs. I don't really know where the notion comes from. In my case it is probably from observance (as a youngster) of my own family and/or a reflection of my early exposure to Christianity. I'm not certain where and what implanted monogamy in my mind as "the proper lifestyle" - but as an adult, and after considering many other lifestyles and finding none to be superior, I (for one) am sticking with it.
Dixon
P.S. Today 12-17-09 is Linda and my 49th wedding anniversary. So far so good.
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