There are all sorts of people who say that they couldn’t care less about the Tiger Woods scandal. From their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, they announce this to the world, extolling it as if it was some sort of moral virtue. Wanting to appear as effortlessly sophisticated as Pierre Elliott Trudeau, they hover above as the rest of us trill and delight in the crumbling interiors of people who happen to have the misfortune of being designated celebrities.
There’s a type of arrogance—both implicit and explicit– in calling attention to your lack of interest in that which the vast majority of people are drawn toward. At the very least, this impulse lacks generosity, and it seems very conventional in thinking, to me, like a prude trying to fob of their lack of imagination as strength of character.
It’s obvious, but the inescapable reason that the Tiger Woods story is important is because people care about the saga, and what people care about matters.
To make a display of disengaging oneself from one of the dominant narratives of our culture is to disengage oneself from people. It’s like declaring to your elderly neighoubour that you’re no longer going to listen to her talk about the weather.
The marketing machinery that was Tiger Woods created a global empire. This was predicated not just upon his transcendent golf game, but also on his ability to cross boundaries of race and class, all the while maintaining a corporate gleam that suggested he was the very embodiment of rectitude, dignity and fidelity.
Team Tiger built monuments to his glory, and whatever was secret and good about him, was amplified and made public, while whatever was secret and bad, was buried. Tiger Woods is entirely responsible for the ridiculously heroic persona that was foisted upon the public.
We didn’t impose this belief on him, he imposed it on us.
And so now we find out that he is, in fact, an asshole.
There’s no way around this.
There are no excuses.
He traveled around the world fucking whomever he pleased, and for purely self-gratifying reasons, he lied to his wife, his family and his public. That the world at large is now thirsty to have the depths of this deception made public is neither surprising nor wrong.
What does strike me as wrong is the censorious tone of the people who imply an intellectual laziness in those of us who turn on TMZ for the latest on Tiger Woods, while they—who would give up their TV but for The Daily Show—live lives of authenticity.
In the end, I’m not sure that it matters which tribe you identify with, and which stories that tribe holds dear, but that you have the capacity to share in the pleasure of communicating with the people around you, through those stories.