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| Tiger Woods |
Legendary golfer Tiger Woods recently reclaimed his top ranking in the Golf World and NIKE promptly put out a marketing ad titled "Winning Takes Care of Everything".
As expected, this has created some controversy as there are those who feel this sends the "wrong message" that Tiger cheating on his wife (leading to their divorce) was not such a bad thing after all.
Now, if you were someone that had been on Mars for the last 3-4 years, you would be inclined to ask what exactly Tiger did to warrant most of the venom being spewed his way and rather sadly, some of it virulently racially motivated (a visit to the Yahoo comments section of a Tiger Woods story will give credence to this assertion).
The fact of the matter is that Tiger has been a rather contentious personality to the two aisles of the historical racial spectrum in America - white and black. To many blacks, long before his fall from grace a couple of years ago, he was never accepted as one of them, mostly due to the fact that Tiger himself never identified with African-Americans as his famous Caublinasian rant a while back seemed to lay credence to the latter assertion.
To whites however, Tiger was never a "problem" or so they thought until he showed his true colors with his serial affairs while being married to his blonde Swedish wife, a former nanny of Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik.
While no one (including this writer) is condoning what Woods did to his family, it smacks of high-handed criticism that a broad American populace that is exposed to the rather frequent amoral forays of Hollywood and its elected officials (including one former president at least) feels this man has no right to pick up the pieces of his life and get a fresh start.
Tiger Woods had an affair on his wife, like probably 60% of men and women in this morally lax society where marriage vows actually mean nothing and to continually crucify him as if he committed high crimes and misdemeanors is really quite troubling and at best, befuddling.
President Clinton never apologized to the American people as Tiger did and I am actually one of the many reasonable folks that felt he owed nobody an apology except his former wife and immediate family members.
Tiger did make amends to his wife and his family, with the former more than well compensated for the hurt he caused her, although no amount of money really can make up for the humiliation she and her children were subjected to.
Having had the opportunity to watch Tiger since he burst onto the scene 16 odd years ago and captured the imagination of the world (not just the golfing world), it is quite heart-warming to see that he remains the same person he has always been - secure in his own skin and accepting of all God's children, regardless of race, creed or color.
As the highly respected Clarence Page stated in his PBS piece a while back, "Tiger Woods doesn't just play golf; he upsets the game. He upsets a lot of games; like the color game, an ancient American game, Tiger is a person of colors, all colors."
It is indeed time to leave Tiger alone and let him be.
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