Super Bowl Update

It's hard not to think about Tiger Woods these days.

If you're interested in professional sports (I am), there he is; if you're interested in business (I am), there he is; if you're at all attracted by scandal (I hope I'm not, but am afraid I might be, at least a little bit), there he is.

The man is incontrovertibly a great athlete who has incontrovertibly not been leading a conventional personal life.  And I think our outrage comes, in part, from the fact that he appeared to do just that. In this, he reminds me of Bill Clinton. Why the pretense of monogamy, I want to know?

But then, in Mr. Woods' case, maybe the pretense is mostly our own projection of pretense. Beyond the public fumblings of the last couple of weeks, I don't remember Mr. Woods talking much about his private life.

We Americans so want our heroes, our role models, our leaders, to be bound within conventional morality. In this country, founded by Puritans, fueled by Conservative Christianity, there's nothing that knocks a glitterati off his/her public pedestal faster than getting married and then playing around.

I feel great pity for all of us in regards to Tiger Woods. I feel sorry for myself, because I won't get to watch him play golf next year. I feel sorry for the sport, because its TV ratings will tank. I feel sorry for anyone who feels the right to judge another human being's behavior--even to waste energy being outraged about it, for Pete's sake! I feel sorry for Mr. Woods, because being the greatest golfer ever isn't enough. And I most of all feel sorry for most Americans in that we cannot seem to allow famous people any privacy, which means there's something sad going on among us.

As to what I feel about Tiger Woods as a husband and father? I feel sorry that any human being has to go through what he's going through--and by this I mean having your private life seen by the public as its property. But other than that I don't  feel anything about his behavior as a husband and father, because I don't know anything.

What I do know is that every marriage sets its own rules, and that just because someone's rules are different from mine does not automatically make them evil or even immoral. Marriages need to work for the people involved, not for me. I do not know, or care to know, anything at all about anyone else's marriage rules other than my own.

And that includes Tiger Woods.

Tomorrow, if nothing else crops up to write about, I'm going to write some thoughts on another great athlete: Ralph Sampson.