SYNDICATED COLUMN: Say It's So, Tiger
In Defense of Tiger Woods and Good Fun Sex
Why does Tiger Woods owe us an apology?
Let's assume that all the accusations of serial philandering are true. That no waitress was safe from his charms. What right do we, the public, have to be upset?
Woods never presented himself as a pillar of moral virtue. He marketed himself as a great golfer. His job was to knock balls into holes—which he did. He didn't cheat at golf.
Nowhere in America lives a kid who looked up to Tiger because he thought he was faithful to his wife.
Woods wasn't some right-wing hypocrite. He didn't preach. His church was the Chapel of Sports Excellence.
Apologize? What for?
I'm not even sure he owes his wife an apology. According to various reports (although I fathom not how said accounts were sourced), Woods' wife lost interest in sex after having kids. If she turned colder, oh well. Things happen. Tiger didn't have the right to demand that she put out. But he had every right—the duty, even, if there was to be any chance of his keeping his family intact from divorce—to have some fun on the side.
If Mrs. Woods wanted it ten times a day, on the other hand, he owes her an apology. Her. Not us.
Yet the media is tearing Tiger a new one. "The fact that he isn't allowing questions and is positioning his friends and handpicked reporters as props [at his tele-apology] is the height of arrogance," publicist Nick Ragone told The New York Post. "At some point, he'll be shamed into doing a true mea culpa." Another PR flack said: "He didn't think enough of his fans back then [three months ago, when the scandal broke] to do the right thing."
"Mea culpa"? What for? "Think enough of his fans"? How is Tiger's sex life the business of his fans? Although, personally, I was surprised to find out he was straight. But I digress.
More than 150 years ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne posited that America's original sin was its Puritan heritage. Isn't it time we grew up?
Several years ago a book appeared with a provocative title: Against Love. Who could be against love, I wondered, and why? Not the author, Laura Kipnis. "Clearly no one can be against love," she writes. It turned out that she was actually against monogamy. Monogamy, Kipnis argued, stifles passion.
"Adultery is basically a referendum on the sustainability of monogamy, which means a referendum on the basic premises of modern coupled life, namely that desire will persist throughout a decades-long relationship, " writes Kipnis. "If it doesn't apparently you're supposed to either give up sex, or 'work harder' at it. Adultery is the collective—if secretive—rebellion against these strictures, but also a backdoor way of experimenting with possibilities for more gratification than what we're officially allowed, a workshop for wanting "more" that what current social institutions provide."
So why did she choose that title? I don't know for sure, but I bet the fact that opposing love is less controversial than opposing monogamous relationships had something to do with it.
What's surprising is that people act so shocked when you speak out against monogamy. If a make of car failed as often as monogamy does, if it burst into flames half the time you took it out for a ride—that's the divorce rate—it would be recalled. Monogamous marriage is so widely recognized as a lemon that it has spawned countless pop culture parodies ("The Lockhorns" comic strip, the "Married with Children" TV show).
People talk about elderly married couples who are still happy and in love in the hushed, reverential tones used while standing in front of the "Mona Lisa" the first time or witnessing a UFO landing in front of the White House. If a car almost never worked, its manufacturers would be thrown in prison.
Tiger Woods, in other words, is merely the latest of billions of human beings who have been victimized by a crummy, worthless system that has only been around less than one percent of human history, one that everyone hates but is afraid to admit. He hates it, his wife hates it, most of us hate it. Yet we all pay it lip service.
Truth be told, the Tiger Woods "scandal" exists mainly in the minds of media gatekeepers. The topic was discussed in bars and break rooms and cafes, but nary a "what a pig!" has been heard. The reason is obvious: most Americans have cheated. Some have as many lovers as Tiger.
Against logic and reason, the fidelity hoax goes on. Tiger Woods isn't a sex addict—he's a human being who likes to have sex. Lots and lots of sex.
Tiger Woods shouldn't apologize—he should teach classes.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously.")
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
Why does Tiger Woods owe us an apology?
Let's assume that all the accusations of serial philandering are true. That no waitress was safe from his charms. What right do we, the public, have to be upset?
Woods never presented himself as a pillar of moral virtue. He marketed himself as a great golfer. His job was to knock balls into holes—which he did. He didn't cheat at golf.
Nowhere in America lives a kid who looked up to Tiger because he thought he was faithful to his wife.
Woods wasn't some right-wing hypocrite. He didn't preach. His church was the Chapel of Sports Excellence.
Apologize? What for?
I'm not even sure he owes his wife an apology. According to various reports (although I fathom not how said accounts were sourced), Woods' wife lost interest in sex after having kids. If she turned colder, oh well. Things happen. Tiger didn't have the right to demand that she put out. But he had every right—the duty, even, if there was to be any chance of his keeping his family intact from divorce—to have some fun on the side.
If Mrs. Woods wanted it ten times a day, on the other hand, he owes her an apology. Her. Not us.
Yet the media is tearing Tiger a new one. "The fact that he isn't allowing questions and is positioning his friends and handpicked reporters as props [at his tele-apology] is the height of arrogance," publicist Nick Ragone told The New York Post. "At some point, he'll be shamed into doing a true mea culpa." Another PR flack said: "He didn't think enough of his fans back then [three months ago, when the scandal broke] to do the right thing."
"Mea culpa"? What for? "Think enough of his fans"? How is Tiger's sex life the business of his fans? Although, personally, I was surprised to find out he was straight. But I digress.
More than 150 years ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne posited that America's original sin was its Puritan heritage. Isn't it time we grew up?
Several years ago a book appeared with a provocative title: Against Love. Who could be against love, I wondered, and why? Not the author, Laura Kipnis. "Clearly no one can be against love," she writes. It turned out that she was actually against monogamy. Monogamy, Kipnis argued, stifles passion.
"Adultery is basically a referendum on the sustainability of monogamy, which means a referendum on the basic premises of modern coupled life, namely that desire will persist throughout a decades-long relationship, " writes Kipnis. "If it doesn't apparently you're supposed to either give up sex, or 'work harder' at it. Adultery is the collective—if secretive—rebellion against these strictures, but also a backdoor way of experimenting with possibilities for more gratification than what we're officially allowed, a workshop for wanting "more" that what current social institutions provide."
So why did she choose that title? I don't know for sure, but I bet the fact that opposing love is less controversial than opposing monogamous relationships had something to do with it.
What's surprising is that people act so shocked when you speak out against monogamy. If a make of car failed as often as monogamy does, if it burst into flames half the time you took it out for a ride—that's the divorce rate—it would be recalled. Monogamous marriage is so widely recognized as a lemon that it has spawned countless pop culture parodies ("The Lockhorns" comic strip, the "Married with Children" TV show).
People talk about elderly married couples who are still happy and in love in the hushed, reverential tones used while standing in front of the "Mona Lisa" the first time or witnessing a UFO landing in front of the White House. If a car almost never worked, its manufacturers would be thrown in prison.
Tiger Woods, in other words, is merely the latest of billions of human beings who have been victimized by a crummy, worthless system that has only been around less than one percent of human history, one that everyone hates but is afraid to admit. He hates it, his wife hates it, most of us hate it. Yet we all pay it lip service.
Truth be told, the Tiger Woods "scandal" exists mainly in the minds of media gatekeepers. The topic was discussed in bars and break rooms and cafes, but nary a "what a pig!" has been heard. The reason is obvious: most Americans have cheated. Some have as many lovers as Tiger.
Against logic and reason, the fidelity hoax goes on. Tiger Woods isn't a sex addict—he's a human being who likes to have sex. Lots and lots of sex.
Tiger Woods shouldn't apologize—he should teach classes.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously.")
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
posted by Ted Rall at
12:01 AM
26 Comments:
If Mrs. Woods wanted it ten times a day, on the other hand, he owes her an apology.
Oh Ted, you're such a feminist hero...
Rall is right; marriage doesn't work well, but the system doesn't want to change because it would screw up the property rules for couples and there is a latent fear of bastardy. As for Woods I really don't give a rat's ass....he is famous, he f#@ked up, been there, done that. Why aren't we trying President Cheney for war crimes? Dealing with the 2001-09 fiasco is far more important than a pro-golfer's sex life.
- mr. mike
Thanks, Ted, this was great. Yeah, athletes shouldn't have to apologize for what they do outside of their jobs. I remember Michael Jordan getting his character assassinated in the media for his gambling binges in Vegas......like....he likes going to Vegas with his family, What the hell is wrong?
I agree, Tiger doesn't need to quit, doesn't need to apologize, and shouldn't lose sponsors over an affair. It's completely stupid.
On the other hand, neither should politicians. Who cares!? Ya know, Hitler was a vegetarian, didn't drink, didn't smoke and wasn't a womanizer.
So what!? He was EVIL!
We live in a stupid country.
Monogamy is for the most part a myth.
Only slowly is the truth about sexuality gradually, gradually coming out and being addressed. One recent development: according to one researcher doing DNA tests, about 20%, that's 20 per cent, one-fifth, of all children are not fathered by the man who thinks he is the father.
Put that in your cap, Puritans!
P.S. - Tiger's sex life is no-one's business other than the persons he had sex with; the only real failing I see is his refusal to use condoms while still having sex with so many different people -- that's a public health issue.
"Sex Addiction" is a crock, not a myth, but a moral club to beat people up with. Sex feels great and with a couple of simple precautions has almost no bad physical effects. Work that club, Tiger!
Yeah. All Tiger's "Worth" as far as the public goes truly was was "Golf". He was just a "Sports Hero" which sadly makes him richer and certainly more famous than almost any engineer, doctor, scientist... Then he'll burn out and another one will replace him.
I'm really sick of AmeriKKKa and all it's fake values. The only one he maybe owes an apology to is his wife. And, according to most old laws, if she was refusing him sex, it IS her fault.
Frankly, she looks vicious and evil. The perfect "Lipstick Soccer Mom".
Marry a guy who's going somewhere, then be the "Anchor" dragging him down, when you get really bored divorce him to live off the fruit of his labors and have a "Creep" for a boyfriend who'll never do a legal job you can flaunt in front of him. The laws are truly schizoid. The women can sleep through college then threaten to sue for harassment on the way up, but want it all, a husband and kids and stuff. BUT-despite all their advantages, the old laws still "Protect" them like they were "Helpless Victims".
When they break up, even when it's totally their fault (cheating, drugs, abuse) the court sides with them. Pre-Nups are a joke to all but the "Donald Trump" types.
That, btw, is what is killing the "Reproduction" among the "Middle Upper Class white producers". It's just not worth it as female culture tells them to hate and use men and the law helps them do it.
Nothing new here. If the brain-dead media types clamoring for the 'right kind' of apology from Tiger Woods were to have THEIR private lives scrutinized, imagine the shit that would turn up. Here's the James Carville-type answer to the question, "What's it all about?" It's the MONEY, stupid. Any woman who marries a wealthy professional athlete KNOWS there's a potential fortune waiting for her whether her marriage stays intact or ends in divorce. Deep pockets. Tiger Woods needs to kiss up to the corporate sponsors, another group of HYPOCRITES who do all their dirty work vicariously through pulling endorsements and requiring athletes to answer, over and over and over, the same, mind-numbing stupid questions after games. It's in their contracts. "Yeah, Marv, we're just gonna take it one game at a time." etc etc etc. Tiger Woods is practicing damage control. He needs to keep at least half his endorsements to pay for the life style his future ex-wife has become accustomed to. Like $20,000 per week lifestyle. We've seen it before, and it will happen again and again and again.
If your child looks up to a sports figure as role model, you've fucked up as a parent.
Why can't Tiger be more like Obama and bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan? That's the kind of "black" men and family values corporate America loves.
Seriously, though, it's just another example of making the WRONG things (i.e., sex) the subject of popular democratic supervision... instead of war and peace, healthcare, economics, and education, and executing bank executives. We have to vote on other people's same-sex relationships and have mass media campaigns about who's dating and screwing whom... but no single payer healthcare, no no no.
So, this vile Nike spokesbot - for whom I have nothing but contempt for being a capitalist shill and denier of white supremacism, is being shat on... oh boo hoo. Reminds me of another not-entirely-white disposable corpbot hireling in the White House.
"If your child looks up to a sports figure as role model, you've fucked up as a parent."
Nice line, I love it!!!!!
Those who crave the public spotlight are generally some of the worst role models, yet we live in a television culture, wasting most of our resources on crap.
Hey Dave,
Why don't you print this column out and give it Cathy, then tell her you agree with it.
Let me know how it goes.
In 1972, I shared a 2 BR flat with another young college junior in a small town in Texas. He usually had sex with three different desperate housewives a day, about 100 a year (lots of repeats). Back then, most husbands had to work all day and none of them ever suspected. (Rather like the Shah in 1001 Nights before his brother told him what was happening.)
That, of course, was almost 40 years ago, and the desperate housewives and my flatmate had to be very careful that no one else (except for me) ever knew what was going on, since it was normal for husbands to shoot correspondents and divorce cheating wives, and the primitive, barbaric judges of those palaeolithic times gave cheating wives absolutely nothing. (I only knew what was going on because there was no way they could keep me from knowing as long as the two of us had to share a flat, but I didn't know any of the housewives, so I wasn't considered a serious threat).
Today, as I learned to my detriment, a woman can easily get a divorce from a husband with whom she does not want to have sex, get all his money from any decent, progressive Family Law Court, and use her ex-husband's money to buy the services of a good gigolo.
And the Clinton Law means that the IRS will pursue her ex-husband across state lines to collect, and if he cannot pay, he goes to jail.
If your child looks up to a sports figure as role model, you've fucked up as a parent.
Well said!
Monogamy has been in decline since the invention of the plow. Just like everything else...
Who cares.
I'm surprised you would waste time on this crap Ted. A guy flies an airplane into an IRS building leaving behind a manifesto that validates your last piece (he espoused left and right grievances) and you pen an op-ed on Tiger Woods?
Someone on another site made what I thought was a very good point on the subject of Tiger Woods...that maybe, whether most people are consciously aware of this or not, some of the attention he's getting because of his infidelity actually caters to the old racist belief that African-American males are oversexed and lack self-control (and the fact that the "other women" were mostly white or Latina might not have helped him in that regard). The fact that golf is his chosen sport -- traditionally the domain of the (white) elite -- seems to amplify this possibility, if anything. Would there have been quite such a dust-up if Tiger had been a baseball, football, or basketball player? It's hard to know for certain...but my guess is that there wouldn't have.
You also raised a very good point -- where, exactly, did people get the impression that Tiger was some sort of Boy Scout? Not from Tiger himself -- as far as I know, he's never made any particular effort to present himself as representing moral values apart from those of good sportsmanship. What seems more likely is that most of this has been subconsciously projected onto him by people who chose to believe, despite the absence of actual evidence, that Tiger was "just like us" (despite the fact that even many of them aren't "just like us" when it comes to issues of moral conduct!) It's possible -- indeed, there is every indication -- that Tiger was always like this but kept it a secret because the world of golf is more conservative than that of many other sports and he might have found it difficult to obtain endorsements (especially from firms such as Accenture) if he'd been more frank about his personal life.
The plane flying into the IRS building is such an obnoxious, meaningless, red herring of a "story". . . it's completely meaningless, being twisted to serve the propaganda machine. I'm glad Ted disregarded it.
arrrghh
You did it.
You typed "but I digress" when you weren't actually digressing. At all. Why does it seem every person who writes something feel compelled to issue the exact same (incorrect) smug self-reference?
Otherwise your blog is one of my favorites, Ted.
worst...article...ever.
Re: one man flies small plane into IRS building, 2010
Bath School 'Disaster,' 1927, Bath Township, Michigan. School Board Member/Farmer kills 45 people in the school because he had a problem with taxes on his farm.
Not to minimize the tragedy to the perp's family and his victim(s) in the IRS offices, but what's new under the sun since we were introduced to gunpowder?
ted..
iu dont care who tigers woods f-ed.
i think that women are too often left alone to care for so many children.
i am not a breeding machine. monogamy is about caring for the brood.
are you single or something?
normally i love you. I agree with anonymour, wuold rather heard about irs plane guy. did you notice how little attnetion that got?
lol
I tried to post this one before, but it never appeared:
A friend and I were taking the other day, wondering how many miserable marriages stay together for health insurance benefits. We guess a lot.
I joked that the puritanical right is keeping us from getting universal coverage to deny us free love...
Aggie Dude said ... "The plane flying into the IRS building is such an obnoxious, meaningless, red herring of a "story". . . it's completely meaningless."
Right - it only lead to Glenn Beck calling for the eradication of Progressives at CPAC. Totally a non-story. An act of terrorism by a white American a non-story. Right. Good one. Glad to see you're on the ball mentally.
AGGIE DUDE IS A FREAKING GENIUS. I MEAN IT.
in the same mighty breath...
ALL OF YOU ARE AS PARANOID AS THE "RIGHT-WINGED" BOOGIEMEN YOU'RE ALWAYS PREACHING ABOUT.
"Right - it only lead to Glenn Beck calling for the eradication of Progressives at CPAC. Totally a non-story."
Glenn Beck is a non-story.
I think it's a great idea for Beck or anyone else who fancies it to publicly call for the eradication of entire groups of people they don't like. In fact, they should organize themselves and have rallies where they call for the eradication of the groups they don't like.
Maybe after they that they can form a political party who's platform is based around the eradication of groups they don't like.
I mean, when in the history of the world has that ever led to anything negative occurring?!?!
I repeat, Glenn Beck is a non-story, and some private pilot who was clearly low on his amino acids in Texas flying a plane into an IRS building is completely a non-story.
Did Glenn Beck really do that? That's awesome.
Glenn Beck did not call for the eradication of anyone. If you can't make your argument against Glenn Beck with the truth, dont bother.
Tiger apologized for only one reason: money. Sponsorship income. He admitted his faults n national TV with the hope sometime in the future that those millions of dollars from sponsors will comeback.
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