I've only played golf once in my life, and very badly. I'm not a golf fan nor much of a sports fan at all, but I must admit to some satisfaction at seeing Tiger Woods roar back into golf with one of his best games ever the other day.
I'm puzzled by the hand-wringing melodramatic public outrage over his marital problems. All this amazed horror over a womanizing athlete, like that's something new. There were athletes who did things far more outrageous than Tiger ever did. Anyone remember Ty Cobb? I'm especially disturbed at the pious bigotry over his Buddhism, a religion he inherited from his mother. I think that says far more about his detractors than it does about him. I'm getting really tired of all the smug schadenfreude around this story.
Tiger Woods has already made history 10 times over. He completely reinvented the game of golf, and popularized it way beyond the imaginations of the white old boy duffers who used to dominate the game. None of his pious detractors can claim anything remotely similar.
I think what really pisses people off is that a guy of mixed race now dominates a sport once notorious for WASP male privilege. Golf was to plutocrats what polo was to princes. Now, an everyman completely dominates the sport, shows the old duffers how it's supposed to be played, and throws the country club gates wide open.
4 comments:
Exactly...no more forced membership at Hillcrest, Los Angeles for Jews who want to T-off! The whole past of Golf is drenched with White privilege (trust me, I played Golf with starter/children clubs on a private course as a child and later took lessons from Betty Hicks as a young adult)...I loathed Golf because of the spoken and unspoken purity code (and I´m not even from the South)!
Agreed: Leave the TIGER ALONE (one need only look around them in everyday life to see sexual antics in play...that includes Church, School, Politics and Home Sweet Home).
You're right, Counterlight. Tiger made history. I feel no schadenfreude about Tiger's falls from grace. I cheered him on in golf, insofar as I follow sports at all, which is very little. I feel sorrow for his wife and children, and I believe firmly in fidelity, but we are all sinners. I hope Tiger makes a comeback in golf and in his personal life.
Last night I had a good laugh with Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson as the two good-naturedly laughed and joked about the many golf words that are double entendres. Think about it.
All tangled up in race and religious bigotry. "They" can't stand it any more than they can stand that Harvard-educated smart dude who sits in the White House. I wish they'd give it up but it's slow to go.
Agree mostly, but the guy does have an abuse problem. And abuse is never about substances, it's about realtionships: People.
What is being abused is Life. The precious and holy gift from God.
It's really the societal structures around Heterosexism which make up the scandal. Everything contained in that little word: womanizer!
My threps ;=)
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