Thought Picnic: A sportsman cast as a sinning saint

No saints around

It is hard enough that because of golf certain established television programmes on the BBC have been rescheduled.

Apparently, Tiger Woods, the young but very successful golf “legend” is returning to play a major at Augusta and it seems everyone is agog about it.

Surely, in some places Tiger Woods has sinned, in others he had a sex-addiction and the matter of marrying supposed American values with personal lasciviousness and his untypical religious adherence has become a powder keg of the utmost irritation.

The wrong role models

I have retweeted with comments a few things about this issue mostly from a pragmatic perspective rather than from some moralistic mountain-top, the man is a sportsman not a clergyman – I doubt any in the clergy with similar lapses has seen such a media feeding frenzy.

Why we would choose a mere mortal whose ability is less philosophical as is physical as a role model is definitely interesting but rather sad – celebrity is now of more essence than intellectual rigour and character amongst those who are supposedly leaders.

Frogs leap over the tiger

I was amused when Accenture withdrew their sponsorship of Tiger Woods in the wake of the scandals, a firm that was part of the once global Arthur Andersen accounting empire before it became Andersen Consulting and now Accenture – as Wikipedia put it, they luckily avoided the taint that engulfed the original firm in the wake of the Enron debacle.

When I opened my Economist last weekend, I was presented with an Accenture advertisement and with mirth I tweeted about how they had gone from a tiger to frogs – as for the significance, well, I would rather not comment.

A woman NOT a girl

Now, on the eve of seeing Tiger Woods get back to the physical and manual job of playing golf which without doubt pays so well because he plays so well some other woman appears. Another of those infuriating tweets.

Huffingtonpost SHOCK: Tiger Woods reportedly slept with neighbor's 21-year-old daughter! http://huff.to/cDXOXH (via @HuffPostSports)

Now, it is obviously beneath contempt that a married man would for whatever reason sleep with his neighbour’s daughter, I read that with a bit of disgust, then I realised this “daughter” is a 21-year-old woman – the daughter is NOT a girl.

Digging deeper into the tale it appears she told her story because she felt she was one of his conquests – wake up and smell the coffee, “girl” – even you as a neighbour would have known he was married and regardless of his celebrity and influence; taking a moral stance is not the exclusive preserve of the powerful or the rich – it speaks much of Mr. Woods’ lapse in judgement as it does of the lady’s corruptible mien - surely, they were all conquests.

Blinded by celebrity

It would be easy to apportion blame to Mr. Woods who seems to have brought all this disgrace and calumny upon himself but everyone else who succumbed to his whims has not been proven incapable of knowing right from wrong along with the very glaring fact that they all really did know who Tiger Woods was.

I am in no way justifying any of the activities of Tiger Woods but his considerable celebrity is making great careers for all those who have decided to kiss-and-tell – a good long list of those have given or taken pleasure appears below that story – all feeling so much more hurt because in the heat of the pillow-talk and consequent activity they had been promised something that faded after the orgasm.

If anyone would dare spare a thought for the wife, the children, the mother, the relations and maybe the friends beyond sating the hunger for more celebrity exposés.

Hardly an aggrieved party

None of all the people can be exculpated from this morass of undignified conduct which at one time would have been conducted with discretion, maybe some dignity if ever and never aired in public because we all just knew how to behave – or something like that.

It goes without saying that if there was no market for gossip and tittle-tattle all this philandering would not find a column in the village rag – it is the way of the world today and really I am just interested in golf, I have never looked at Tiger Woods as a moral compass or expected much of him apart from choosing the right club, hitting the golf ball and in the process winning the tournament.

As for the issues, before long someone might even appear with a love child and so? What is really so new under the sun from time immemorial?