If it didn't irritate me so much, I might find it amusing that people seem to be convinced they, and only they, know whether Tiger is sincere in his apology. I've heard every rationalization possible. 'He is only doing it because it must be one of the steps in his rehabilitation program'; 'he doesn't sound or look sincere',' he is just saying it because he knows the public wants to hear it', 'if he were really sincere he wouldn't have needed to read from a script' ad nauseum.
Why do people leap so quickly to condemn a man, whether he is sincere or not, who has so many people relying on him? The PGA is begging for him to be back in games because he gave so much pleasure to so many people watching him play (witness more spectators at tournaments; more money earned); he has a foundation with a large staff and a large personal staff; he has children and a marriage he and his wife may wish to work on to salvage. If you were to ask any of these busybodies if they would qualify as voyeurs, they probably would become irate at the inference. Yet, why do they allow the media blabbermouths to spend hours of high paid time guessing on this man's emotions, relationships and everything else that should remain between him and those closely involved in relationship to him.
The argument that when you are in public life, you abdicate your privacy belies common decency and the Golden Rule...'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. With or without belief in religion, the Golden Rule has a very important place as a guide to my life. I do not need to look into the keyholes of other people's lives unless they are requesting therapy. Perhaps people with no boundaries of their own have always been gossips. Magazines and gossip papers, as one finds in Supermarkets near the checkouts, clearly cause many to salivate when they hear things about VIPs that they must, in denying their own better judgment, realize cannot possibly be true.
These must be a variety of those who, despite media visual and servivor verbal evidence, believe there was no Holocaust under the Nazis; that man never reached the Moon but that the moon landing was staged on a Hollywood set; and they might follow self-appointed Reverend Jones and drink the KoolAid for a better life.
There are the Teabaggers, who are so lacking in trust of science and anyone in authority today, that they will believe the snake oil salesmen of past politics, radio hosts who insist they are only entertainers yet speak otherwise; or any fool who will find someone in government to blame. Leaders are not those who only to criticize but those who give profoundly thought-out advice and workable suggestions for putting it in place.
What makes people so certain that they can tell what someone is thinking just by looking at them? The best liars are sociopaths because they are so convincing. They can be so because they have no guilt about who they are harming, thus their only goal is to convince
Frankly, I do not support the public and media skewering of people for personal actions. For Tiger, I will allow that many of us feel disappointment when we look for a model for the young in this country and we see so few. From where I sit, Tiger did far less injury to his countrymen than the Bush administration did, yet seems to be getting equal media time When will people learn their own boundaries and realize they are being fed this gossip to make money off the foolish who foster it? Do they really want to make the billionaires who monopolized our media even richer and give them more control over the propaganda they feed us?
1 comment:
I marvel at the fact that anyone actually cares. I figure he just went out there and did what he had to do (if he wants a career). Then the media did what they do and reported it. Boring.
Post a Comment