The Tiger Woods Spectacle

For the most part, I don’t really keep up with celebrity gossip, and can’t remember the last time I paid any notice to any of those garbage magazines in the super markets. When I was down in Punta Cana, I caught something one day about Tiger Woods but didn’t really understand what had happened. Jump ahead a few days later, and the TV was full of information about his alleged affairs.

Nobody is perfect, and everyone slips up from time to time. That said, when two people step up to that alter and proclaim their love for each other, it really is something that I believe shouldn’t be taken lightly. That the average divorce rate is North America is over 50% is indicative of both how meaningless some of those vows really are, and also how quick people are to move on when things go sour in a marriage. A friend of mine once said that too many people these days want the wedding, and yet very few people want the actual marriage.

I don’t think I’m the type of person that could forgive someone for cheating on me, either in a committed relationship or a marriage. Some people can, and I respect them for it. I can also imagine loving someone enough that maybe that’s the type of an event that a marriage could recover from. And with that in mind, I could maybe understand someone having way too many beers at the bar, having a bunch of problems at home, and then going home with someone and making a rather monumental mistake. It obviously doesn’t make it right in that scenario, but at least I could understand how it possibly happened. What I don’t really understand, and can’t really imagine anyone forgiving, is when a partner vows “until death do us part” and then spends the next several years cheating on their spouse with multiple people. I read a quote the other day from Chris Rock where he said people are only as loyal as their options. Given the failure of the modern marriage, maybe there’s some truth in that.

I really have no idea if the allegations against Tiger are true. Truthfully, he should be afforded the privacy he needs to deal with everything and try to resolve his family issues, if they exist. If they end up being true though, I really have a hard time knowing that companies like Nike will continue to let him be a spokesperson for their products, knowing a good deal of their target demographic is young kids, many of which probably look up to him as a role-model. But that’s the sad state of consumerism these days unfortunately.