POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Woods is a disaster of a husband indeed.
And, truth be told, something of a disaster as a human being, apart from his charming smile and sports talent.
The truly disturbing fact in all of this is his level of dishonesty and deception. Colossal.
In general, I agree about private lives of famous people.
But just who here has made things so public?
Woods himself.
His dishonest, shabby behavior has intimately affected the lives of dozens - at least fourteen women at last count plus his wife and children and other family members.
If you choose to share your intimate thoughts and privacy with a long series of cocktail waitresses, you can hardly claim privacy anymore. You’ve literally tossed it to the wind.
The cocktail waitresses do have the right to share what they know with others if they choose – it is now part of their lives - and they most certainly have done so, each enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame and possible book contract.
God, one of his bimbos even released comments of his that he wished he had met her before his wife.
How could you ever again enjoy a mate who talked that way to someone else?
The story does tend to confirm my longstanding belief that sports as a builder of character or sportspeople as heroes is simply ridiculous.
Sports figures do what they do because it is the only skill they have in which they may excel and prosper, not out of any set of principles. Many of them could only hold down jobs as clerks without the fantasy world of high level sports.
Single mothers working hard for their kids are in many cases greater genuine heroes than the often pretentious and over-paid people in sports.
Just think of all the thugs in professional football. The NFL is said to run a significant quiet operation just to hush up and cover the scores of assaults against women, both sexual and brutal physical, by its gang of privileged thugs.
And look at the violent temper tantrums, including threats to officials, of a Williams sister or a John McEnroe.
And professional boxing? Hard to tell most of the cast from inmates at a super-max prison.
Coaches? Countless angry, frustrated men who encourage violence and displays of violence and frequently even humiliate those in their charge.
Sport is about anything you like, but it is not the stuff of heroes.
And Woods has about the same claim to privacy as a drunk arrested on the highway.
_________________________________
"Your post smacks of a deep seated resentment and, for me, casts a dark shadow over anything else you might choose to opine upon."
Deep resentment?
No, I’m just tired of all the hoopla over swinging a stick or running fast. After all, in the scheme of things, they are pretty inconsequential activities.
Indeed, I don't recall ever hearing an interview with a sports figure who says much different to, "We're gonna give it everythin’ we got; we're goin' for gold."
Hardly worth printing or broadcasting.
“And your point is?” would actually be an appropriate response to such mush.
People should enjoy their games, but that is all there is to it, games. Hopscotch or Tiddlywinks for grown-ups.
Trying to make moral or ethical or philosophical points about games really is silly. Yet we still get the rubbish about heroic efforts, about going the last mile, about showing real character, about digging in deep, etc, etc., ad nauseum.
And just what else would someone do whose entire existence is wrapped up in swinging a stick or running fast or throwing a ball, someone who has spent much of their life earnestly training to swing a stick or run?
Opine?
I think that word was last seriously used by John Keats.
Sorry, but in all honesty, your approval or disapproval of my views means about as much as the hum of a fly ten miles away.
