Monday, December 14, 2009

Tiger Woods' Legacy

There’s perhaps been the feeling on the part of the self-appointed social engineers, to whom political correctness is the new religion, that their “anything goes” concept vis-a-vis human behavior is now in the forefront among the enlightened and soon to be crammed down the throats of the yahoos who still believe that morality has its place. Oh yeah! Enter Tiger Woods.

This actually has little to do with Tiger’s admitted and probably soon to be ever so much more expanded upon sexual peccadilloes. He hasn’t done any more adulterous stuff than a lot of other folks, but he’s opened the way as a very-high-profile “role model” for people to take a hard look at what still matters in this country – family and fidelity – even if the sophisticated elites don’t get it or don’t like it. In this area, they’re just as dumb as they are regarding non-manmade climate change.

Sponsors such as Accenture and Gillette are canceling/mothballing the golfer not because he won’t be playing for a while but because he violated his marriage vows and turned out to be a two-bit cheat – a hugely wealthy one, of course – but a two-bit cheat all the same. Never mind what either the good ol’ boys or the uppity-ups in the country clubs say or swear in their groups. They still value family. Never mind what either the hanky-panky gals or the sophisticated ladies in the National Organization of Women gab and gossip. Most women still value family.

It’s no accident that the U.S government and most of the states have either statutes or constitutional mandates or both defining marriage as between one man and one woman – or at least one at a time – because this is the design of human nature...just leave God out of it, though God’s way is the key to the whole matter. Biologically, emotionally, and intellectually, the “one-man-one-woman-one-lifetime” pattern is set in concrete.

This pattern has been derailed significantly, especially since the 1950s, but it has remained the natural way and has always been reestablished when people have failed it. Irrefutably inherent to this pattern is fidelity and, while this concept has also been failed by many people, it still is held as the standard by those who consider themselves at least more capable than the animals of exercising mind-over-matter.

Massachusetts may have put its imprimatur on men marrying men and women marrying women but such is not the case virtually throughout the nation. This lurid approach to, and violation of, what is natural with regard to the acceptable coexistence of the genders and the perpetuation of the race is still considered by the vast majority to be THE way...the only way. Sexual perversion, while glorified in the movies and on the TV screens and actually approved in some public schools and especially in universities, is still recognized by the masses of people to be whacko (if not sordidly wicked) behavior and not to be countenanced.

Just so is the matter brought to the fore by Woods. He made a commitment and not only did not keep it but flaunted his violation of it. The fact that he and/or his agents/shills conducted a PR campaign falsely accentuating his fidelity is not the issue as much as is that of his unforgivable treatment of his wife and children. Hanging out with trollops and prostitutes and bedding them, whether for cash or anything else, meant that he could have been carrying all sorts of physical threats to his own family. This was unconscionable. Real men don’t do that.

The two sponsors mentioned above have broken the ice with regard to his high-paying benefactors advertising him and his goodness in the interest of gathering gobs of greenbacks. It’s likely that others, perhaps many, will quietly sever connections. This will cause Woods no undue hardship. His wealth will keep him up very well, thank you. But he will never escape his legacy of infidelity. There’s simply nothing he can do about that. An “indiscretion” might have been “overlooked” but the lurid tales that keep appearing that paint him as a habitual adulterer, as delivered by the girls-for-fame-or-money crowd, have marked him as both terribly flawed socially and a pathological liar.

This in no way denigrates the good things Woods has done. He’s to be commended for them. Nor does it excuse the tramps with whom he cavorted. It merely points to the fact that immorality, especially adultery, is in this supposedly postmodern, intellectually sophisticated society totally unacceptable. Most professional golfers work as hard as Woods or even harder, but he apparently was born with an innate superior ability that makes him probably the greatest golfer since the exercise was invented; yet, he has thrown away the most valuable part of his perceived persona – trust. His personal logo will forever be that Scarlet A. How sad!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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