Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Private and Public Lives


Watching the Pitt game the other night (and congratulations to Bill Stewart, his staff, and the West Virginia Mountaineers for a tremendous victory), we couldn't help but to notice that every thirty seconds ESPN would feel the need to update its viewers on a mysterious car crash near Orlando.
By now most people know that the driver was legendary golfer Tiger Woods. His SUV careened off of a fire hydrant and hit a tree at 2 AM. Woods claimed that the accident caused injuries that required hospitalization and that his wife broke out the windows of his vehicle to free him. Woods offered to pay for the damage to city property and apologized for the mishap.
Obviously this story doesn't add up. On the other hand, why do we need all the facts here? Woods has no connection to the government and offered to repair the damage done to city property. CNN Hedline News's rabid group of pundits demand answers. Tiger Woods has the guts to stand up and say that his family remains none of their business.
The main loser in this whole scenario, besides the Woods family, is ESPN. Once again this network stooped to the lowest common denominator, even citing a National Enquirer story on their crawler. Yup, the same magazine that constantly has exposes on Obama's gay lovers and used to report incessantly that President Bush had an affair with Condoleeza Rice. ESPN ran out in front of a story that made you feel dirty for even reading about it on the bottom of the screen. It became obvious fairly quickly that we were seeing a domestic and private issue that all parties directly involved just wanted to forget.
Now what will happen? Probably photographers will follow Woods around until he beats one of them down with a golf club, then he looks like the bad guy. Tiger Woods' family life is no business of ours and has no greater impact on society. It is simply a story of gossip. The press wants to pry into their problems for the entertainment of those people who want to see a good and successful man and his family knocked down a peg.

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