tiger tiger burning bright / in the ladies of the night
When the story of Tiger Woods’ affair(s) broke last week, I posted a couple of thoughts on Twitter:
THIS JUST IN: cheating on your wife may have consequences.
If you want to keep your home life private, perhaps you shouldn’t expose your private parts outside your home.
And these, as the subject of celebrities cheating and same sex marriages both trended on Twitter on the same day:
One of MY values is married people shouldn’t cheat. Therefore, I hereby invalidate a fuck-load of marriages. Go get a civil union, cheaters.
…And if I was a cheater I’d still be allowed to be married but same-sex couples aren’t…
I found two fantastic Esquire articles about Tiger via Twitter as well, tweeted by @jonniker, which I think everyone should read. The first Is This the End of Tiger Woods? was written on December 3 regarding recent events. That article links to an earlier story written in 1997 which speaks to the highly constructed images of celebrities like Tiger’s, images that no person alive can live up to, which prompted this tweet from me:
even tiny smudges seem huge & glaring on shiny paint…notsomuch if you used eggshell in the 1st place, y’know?
Am I playing into the cult of media obsession by talking about this on Twitter and my blog? Perhaps. I don’t want to dwell on it, but I do think he has lost some right to privacy by breaching it his damn self (more on that later). However, I don’t believe we have the right to be informed of every step along the way to the ultimate resolution Tiger and his wife come to, whether that is a reconciliation or a divorce, and it is not up to the media to decide or speculate about that resolution.
What I do want to say is two fold. First: How would this have played out if Tiger’s image had been one of a human, flawed individual instead of the Second Coming? In a world where we are fascinated by reality television and peering into the homes of celebrities, why do PR folks and other handlers (I don’t know the correct terms) insist on spewing forth unrealistic images of celebrities? Why not be honest and present them as they are, warts and all? Tiger was a very young man when he emerged into the public eye. It is only to be expected he had some flaws, and maybe some serious ones. But hiding his flaws from the public only resulted in a fall from grace that has been that much more disastrous and fascinating to the general public.
I don’t want to know every detail of celebrities’ lives, I truly don’t. But I also don’t appreciate essentially being lied to by the false fronts we are so often presented with. Be honest. We know these people are human, give us some credit and stop trying to whitewash them if you don’t want the media salivating all over the place when they do mess up.
Lastly, with respect to his privacy being breached, please read this while I’m busy rolling my eyes clear out of my head:
“1) “Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means.”
It means you can’t misbehave without people finding out, stupid. Tiger Woods gets all huffy about privacy in his web message last week about his “transgressions,” perhaps forgetting that picking downmarket kiss-and-tell girlfriends might have an effect on his wife’s privacy. Just a thought.”(source).
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
