Rachel Uchitel, the Manhattan nightclub hostess linked to Tiger Woods, was none too happy when she first heard about other women whom the golf great may have been seeing. According to a friend, "Rachel was mad at Tiger when she found out about the other girls and did not speak to him for three days, but he texted her...She is telling friends that he doesn't blame her for this all getting out."
Man, you have to know that you're in some kind of BIG trouble when your mistress is pissed off at you for being unfaithful, eh? So how many guys would want to trade places with Tiger Woods now?? ;-)
I'll have to admit to having some decidedly mixed feelings about this tawdry tale of Tiger's defective zipper. Really, how is anything that Woods does in his private life the concern of anyone besides himself and his family (and his mistresses)? Then again, it's not as if el Tigre is an innocent victim here. Whether through ignorance, hubris, arrogance or combinations of all or some of the above, Tiger Woods is where he is for reasons of his own creation. No, I don't condone adultery and infidelity, but who knows what agreements and covenants hold a marriage together? To say that we know the whole story is simply not reasonable or credible.
I happen to agree with Woods that there's far too much focus on his private parts...er, life...but he certainly can't claim to be surprised at the uproar and the media feeding frenzy. Woods' dilemma (and it just keeps getting stranger and more embarrassing) is merely the latest chum in the water for the media sharks. In this day and age, when scandal sells and sex is the grease which lubricates the jaws of countless taking heads, public figures expecting privacy is more than mere anachronism. It's just simply out of the realm of possibility.
Personally, I wouldn't care if Tiger Woods buggers goats or vacuum cleaner hoses in his spare time. A public figure has every bit as much right to a private life as you or I do. Unfortunately, this seems to be a minority opinion, as everyone from ESPN to the East Bumfuck Tattler-Gazette seem to be weighing in on l'affair Woods. Hey, it's not like we need to be worrying about health care reform, or global climate change, or even the war in Afghanistan, right? Not when we can obsess over the exploits of Tiger Woods' johnson....
So another one of our heroes fell off the pedestal we placed him on. Yes, we certainly love seeing the rich and famous get their comeuppance, don't we? Lord knows it helps us feel better about our own miserable, pointless existence, eh? Yeah, Tiger Woods screwed up...and apparently in epic fashion. That Woods willingly participated in constructing a public image of himself as a squeaky-clean family man only serves to increase the hypocrisy inherent in this sorry saga. Still, that should be a matter for he and his family to sort out, not for the press and public to cluck disapprovingly over.
Don't we have bigger and better things to worry about than which ink well Tiger Woods is dipping his quill in? Or are we really so thoroughly hosed that we need this circus to distract us from our own travails and misery? The public demise and unraveling of one of our "heroes" is sad enough as it is. Greedily parsing every tawdry detail and embarrassing disclosure for meaning and titillation only serves to display our considerable lack of humanity and simple human decency.
Clearly, Tiger Woods is not who we allowed him to delude us into thinking he is. I can speak from personal experience when I say that spending your life trying to be something you're not is a recipe for disaster...and so Woods finds himself in a personal crisis of his own creation. Can we see his dilemma for what it is and allow him the time and space to become a more real and human version of his public self? Or are we going to wallow in the suffering and emotional carnage created by Woods' duplicity and hypocrisy as we tap-dance on the grave of his public image? Aren't we better than this? Don't make me answer that....
