Horgan on the Horn

My favorite memories as a kid are sitting on a nice Sunday afternoon in the spring and watching golf with my father and uncle. Growing up in this generation means I have watched Tiger Woods dominate the sport. Woods was, and still is everywhere as far as the PGA is concerned. Unfortunately, he is now also in American moral culture.

The media loves nothing more than a scandal and Woods has dominated the scene for weeks. It is always disappointing to see any marriage collapse because of unfaithful behavior and the abandonment of wedding vows. I believe that it is worse when the public feels the need to get involved and the media exploits it to their advantage.

I'm a firm believer that the private actions of people should be kept private. Certainly there are exceptions, such as elected officials and other extenuating circumstances, but a professional golfer cheating on his wife isn't something that I think I need to pay attention to. Of course it is upsetting that somebody who I idolized as a kid didn't live up to my expectations, but it ends there.

There have been a number of polls out recently asking people whether or not they accept Tiger's apology. My question is why does he owe anybody besides his family, friends and children an apology? Since when do we get to demand that people apologize to all of us for their actions?

The public and the media should be apologizing to him and his family for intervening in somebody else's personal business. Sure it was upsetting and I suppose any public figure takes on a small level of responsibility. Regardless, making a man go onto public television and apologize to people who were not affected by what he did is ridiculous. On top of that unreasonable request, people also want to reserve the right to judge the sincerity of the apology.

I frankly don't care. He accepted responsibility and we should all move on. Woods doesn't have a responsibility to me, for I am not the one who he has built a relationship with. Maybe in some peoples' minds he did, but if so, it was an illusionary relationship. Just because you follow an athlete's rise to fame doesn't mean they are responsible to you when their personal shortcomings are revealed.

Woods never got a chance to privately handle this matter or to decide how to handle it. Instead CNN and the other 24 hour cable news broadcasters brought in a litany of analysts saying how he can fix it and how Tiger should fix the way the American public perceives him.

Many analysts completely forgot the human factor. This is a man with a wife, children, friends and colleagues. Imagine the burden they placed upon him as he went through this ordeal. These are the people who can say what he needs to do and who he needs to apologize to, not gossip hungry Americans looking for water cooler talk. Woods has a responsibility to the ones he truly let down. They are the ones allowed to judge him and his actions. He is a golfer, nothing more and nothing less.

And in case anybody forgot: we're fighting two wars with a high unemployment rate and Congress is battling over healthcare reform. Unfortunately it feels as if those headlines fall just beneath the announcements for book signings by Woods' mistresses.