I mean, seriously: what is this, 1998? Are we all children? Who is ever surprised that professional athletes are tough dogs to keep on the porch? They’re celebrities who are (usually) in shape, they travel a lot, and they have lots and lots and lots of money. Like the kids used to say back in the 1990s: do the math.
I get it that a lot of middle-aged sports writers got to know Tiger Woods when he hit the scene 15 years ago as a teen-aged phenom, but he grew up, and they seem to be unable to deal with that fact. Why Woods’s extramarital activities are of compelling interest to anyone but his wife and other immediate family members is beyond me.
Historiann 
You’ve got this completely backwards. All of the insiders have known that Woods is a PLAYA for years. The expressions of outrage are completely insincere, and are just a show for the RUBES. It allows dumbshits sitting on their filthy couches to feel morally superior, and that–surprise, surprise–helps massive corporations sell PRODUCT.
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OK–call me a rube (although a jaded one). How exactly does this scandal move “product?” (Other than newspapers, magazines, and websites that want to gossip about TW, that is. And even then, we all know that ” news and “journalism” is a deeply troubled industry.) It all just seems like a prurient distraction, and a pointless indulgence in gossip. Who cares?
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Although, because golf is the world’s most boring sport to watch, I suppose the people who cover it are jonesing for something a tiny bit more interesting to talk about…
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I’ve got to agree with Comrade PhysioProf; the sports writers are not the ones giving this story legs. It’s everybody else who’s rushing to cover.
I don’t think the real surprise is that Tiger was unfaithful; at least that’s not what i think is driving the coverage into its third week. It’s that he too has built a reputation based on being a controlled, private, family man. It’s that he plays golf. It’s the sheer volume of reported paramours. It’s the carelessness with which he handled his affairs only to seem shellshocked that it all would come out. Frankly, I can’t think of a sports star who’s ruined his reputation and (possibly) career in such a short period of time without being accused of a serious crime. And there’s a whole slew of stuff about race that’s interesting to see play out with him. I’ve never liked the guy but I’ll cop to being fascinated by the whole thing.
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The only reason I think many people actually care about this is the “But he is married to a gorgeous model!” angle. “Why would anybody cheat if they had something like that!” And yes, I used the word “something.” I had this conversation with somebody right when the scandal broke, with me taking the other side and saying, “do you really think that choosing to have sex with a person who is not one’s spouse is about the physical attractiveness of either the spouse or those people outside of the marriage with whom a person would have sex? Really?”
Whatever. I’ve been bored with this “scandal” since I first heard about it.
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If Woods only collected his winnings from playing golf, then he may deserve to protect his privacy. Golf is his job. He just has a job that he does on national television. But Tiger also sells his personality, his image through his endorsements. Consumers are entitled to know who is endorsing the products they buy.
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PoliSci Prof wrote, “Consumers are entitled to know who is endorsing the products they buy.”
Really? I think buying something on the basis of a celeb endorsement is pretty shallow, but wev. Will his horndogging really matter to people who might want to buy something associated with Woods? I mean, if he suddenly stopped being able to play golf, then I’d get that, I suppose. But his celebrity was not founded on the notion that he is NOT a horndog.
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To all of you historians out there –
What is your understanding of the relationship between marriage, monogamy, and democracy?
I know that this is an absurdly grand inquiry, but I have to assume that there is something more behind this torrent of outrage than the simple failure of a very public figure to keep his wedding vows.
As a golf nut and Tiger Woods fan, I have been following this story closely. On the one hand, we can certainly ask “who cares”? But I am really hoping to tap into ther collective Historiann brain here and ask “What is the broader meaning/cost of infidelity?”
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The father of one of my friends loved Tiger Woods and now can’t stand him (and I don’t think he’s alone) so yeah, his behavior under the sheets matters. Tiger’s megacelebrity came from both his prowess and his version of perfecting the American dream. You don’t earn $1 billion from winning golf tourneys alone. There was an article about ten or so years ago in Esquire in which Tiger told the journalist some off-color jokes and otherwise was fairly candid. From what I can tell, the blowback from that made Tiger incredibly guarded in part because his image was founded on the combination of perfect on and off the green. I think the fact that he plays golf, not baseball or basketball, is key here.
Historiann says: if he suddenly stopped being able to play golf, then I’d get that, I suppose. Well he is on an indefinite break.
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I’m with you, Historiann. I see that there are probably “reasons” why the story is wildly popular, but I find it nearly impossible to comprehend why this is anybody’s business. I don’t think Tiger sold himself as a wholesome family man, just as a private one. To me, this “scandal” is news for one reason: he’s a celebrity, and Americans have insatiable appetites for celeb scandals. (It also reveals yet again that weird strain of American prudishness/ prurience. We judge other people’s sex lives! We can’t get enough of hearing about other people’s sex lives!) While I personally think that anybody who runs around on his wife and the mother of his children is a big douche, I also believe that people – even in the public eye – have a right to privacy. Celebs who make spectacles of themselves for publicity (a la Jon and Kate) are one thing, but people who seek privacy and do their job (ie playing golf well, living up to public appearance obligations, etc) should be accorded privacy. I mean, there are *honest to God* murders and rapists in the public eye, who are popular and respected. That seems like a bigger issue to me than some guy who can’t keep in his pants.
As for the cost of infidelity/ the big picture – there are many ways to go when addressing this aspect of the issue. Historically speaking it’s important to emphasize that monogamy for men has only *very recently* been an a truly expected part of male behavior (especially elite male behavior). In the period I work on, men were basically never faithful – the concept of male fidelity didn’t even exist. Seducing or raping a servant girl was par for the course in elite existence. While faithful men were praised, they were certainly in the minority. So levels of “true” monogamy have not shifted, only our expectations of monogamy – specifically, male monogamy. (Because obviously women were always expected to be faithful and could be killed if they were not.) An interesting question might be why and when did we start hinging our entire notion of marriage on the concept of mutual monogamy? Obviously the *roots* of this expectation are as old as Christianity (since Christian men were supposed to be monogamous, and nobody was supposed to enjoy sex anyway), but this expectation wasn’t what I would call socially realized (meaning absorbed by the majority of the population) until what – the 20th c?
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I’m with perpetua and, as historiann can attest about her own period of study, adultery did not even exist as a crime for men in colonial America: women only. Men (married or single) who had sex with someone other than their own wives were guilty of fornication, which came with far less severe punishments. Of course this was partially about regulating women and insuring proper inheritance, but it also clearly led to different standards for men and women.
But what I find most fascinating about this — and to get to Monocle Man’s point, at least partially — is the question about monogamy and marriage. Of course all the other reasons that people are obsessed with this story make sense — celebrity in general, wealth, his supposed squeaky clean image, her beauty, etc. — but what I find interesting is the degree to which he seems to be held up as some giant exception to the rule of marriage. When what we know is that large, large numbers of other people, far less interesting people, also cheat on their spouses regularly. Statistics are, for obvious reasons, notoriously unreliable on this count, but Kinsey found that about half of all men and one quarter of all women had had extramarital sex at least once. Other more recent American studies show that between 25-50% of men cheat and between 20-40% of women. So is the outrage really outrage or is it displacement? We make him seem like a big giant exception to the rule instead of proving it?
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Excepting Chevy Chase from Caddyshack, who knew that golfers were so virile?! 😉 But seriously, “do the math” is probably the best expression for those who were surprised. I do understand, somewhat, the he-was-married-to-a-gorgeous-model inquiry. There’s an element of don’t-you-have-enough? going on here that is slightly intriguing. I suppose it’s that spiritual angle that might pique the voyeur in me. – TL
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@ HA: I think you’re right about making an exception out of Woods when he’s really the rule. My opinion is that this reflects both an inherent American puritanism (if the Americanists will forgive the use of the term) and – more importantly – anxiety about the state of marriage that is commonly expressed culturally. Marriage isn’t *working* in this country (infidelity, high rates of divorce) and yet we spend more and more time and energy on celebrating it, sometimes by insisting that one must throw a $50k fantasy wedding to “prove” one’s love, and sometimes by insisting on the sacred and privileged nature of marriage (ie, no gays allowed!). Both these to me reflect a desperate awareness that marriage & monogamy don’t work, at least in their 21st incarnation. But this awareness provokes deep anxiety and hyper-counterreaction. Marriage must be saved! Marriage is so important! We must make an example out of cheaters!
I find the whole “beautiful wife” angle a little disturbing and depressing – it’s as though being happy and well-treated is the natural just desserts of beautiful women (everybody else is out of luck, I guess – if you’re fat or unattractive, you’re asking for it!) and the related concept that the relative attractiveness of one’s spouse is somehow connected to sexual boredom/ sexual interest in others. Beautiful women get cheated on all the time, in part because they are *objects* and not subjects. It’s super easy to cheat on someone who’s not a real human being. Just ask Betty Draper.
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Heh–excellent parting shot, perpetua.
I should say, as a good feminist, that the consumerist angle of serial adulterers bothers me, because it’s usually men turning women into “conquests” or “things” (as Dr. Crazy noted above). This is unattractive IMHO, and disturbing, but it’s ultimately the business of these men and their wives and girlfriends. Professional athletes have lots of women who are eager to bed them too, as status symbols/celebrities. It’s not my values, but it’s really not my business, either.
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Perpetua writes: “Obviously the *roots* of this expectation are as old as Christianity (since Christian men were supposed to be monogamous, and nobody was supposed to enjoy sex anyway), but this expectation wasn’t what I would call socially realized (meaning absorbed by the majority of the population) until what – the 20th c?”
Ok, I’m not a historian, but I’d put the transition in the 19th century (in terms of discourses on sex and marriage) with that transition only bearing fruit (as it were) in the 20th century. A book that comes to mind is Anthony Giddens’ _The Transformation of Intimacy_ and in particular his chapter “Romantic Love and Other Attachments.” (Giddens conclusion also takes up the issue of the relationship between intimacy and democracy.)
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@perpetua. Absolutely! Not only is marriage not working, but we don’t actually *need* it to work and that might be the scariest part of all for many. Marriage worked in the past, at least to the extent that marriages generally lasted for a lifetime, because the expectations were different: man supports woman. Woman supports man. Woman suffers through. Maybe they have some sort of affection for each other. They certainly have lots of kids. Divorce is seriously hard to attain. But, as historians have demonstrated for the US, the divorce rate has risen along with our expectations for marriage. If marriage is about love and companionship, and those things leave a marriage, then one can leave the marriage itself. And in today’s moment, where women can survive financially outside of marriage (or not, if they are poor, but then being married to a poor man doesn’t really solve that problem and marriage ceases to be the issue or the solution), marriage becomes even more about a continued state of affection between the two partners, with fewer coercive measures to keep people in marriages (though certainly not none). And so people divorce and those who continue to insist that marriage is the “bedrock of civilization,” or some such nonsense, fret even more.
That said, if one is actually going to promise not to sleep with any other people for the rest of one’s life (kind of a crazy promise, in my estimation), then one should still stick to one’s promise, *especially* if one knows that one’s spouse expects this. And I agree completely with Historiann: the acquisitive nature of some serial cheaters smacks of male privilege and a good deal of what Rubin called “the traffic in women.”
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Thank you Historiann, I’ve been wondering why everyone cares so much as well. How many white, male politicians have been caught in the last 10 years having extra-marital affairs or hitting on underage boys? Where was the outrage then? We actually elected those guys to office, and they used their power/our tax money/goverment’s time to act in a way which certainly the people who elected them would not support. If you don’t like Tiger anymore, then don’t buy the products he endorses or don’t watch him golf. I’m trying to figure out if the double standard he is being held to is because he is an athlete or some other more nefarious reason.
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Maybe I missed something, FrauTech, but there was certainly outrage over the politicians you mention for the reasons you mention. I think there’s a difference in how Tiger’s being treated but I chalk that up to the fact that he’s more widely and globally known than, say, the governor of South Carolina and the scale of the situation. I don’t think it’s a double standard, though, is it? (I read more of the reactions to Tiger as bemusement and shock rather than the outrage directed at, say, John Edwards.) I think a more interesting comparison would be to Kobe Bryant.
On the marriage issue, I’ve been meaning to get my hands on Andrew Cherlin’s The Marriage-Go-Round but I heard him make the point in an interview that in the US, marriage has become the way to show that you’ve achieved a respectable “first-class” personal life, which gives marriage, and maintaining an appearance of staying faithful, significantly more weight in this country than elsewhere.
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I agree with thefrogprincess that the big difference is probably the level of celebrity – like it or not, in our society leading athletes are bigger celebrities than senior politicians, with the exception of the President and maybe a very few others.
It’s also a reflection of two strong and often contradictory American attitudes toward celebrities. On the one hand, many people expect them to lead ideal, exemplary lives in areas completely unrelated to the skills that made them well-known in the first place. On the other hand, many people are most fascinated with celebrities when they do bad things and their lives fall apart.
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my couch is not more than usually filthy, and I care; in fact I find this kind of thing fascinating. It is terrible for the people directly involved, and is nobody’s business but theirs, but every time one of these scandals plays out what you really see on parade are public attitudes about sexuality, gender relations, inequality, I mean, all the juicy stuff! Obviously the amount of attention this gets means it’s not a topic for golf enthusiasts (or followers of the careers of South Carolina governors, or whatever) — people are working out their own notions of what’s fair, right, shocking, not shocking — how is that not one million percent fascinating to watch and participate in? It is a little tiresome that it always gets played as “concern” or “disapproval” when what it really is “rubber-neck nosiness and schadenfreudy delight”, but whatevs, even that phenomenon is grist for interesting conversation in its own right.
I don’t get why it should be compared to Kobe Bryant? Guy was apparently a rapist. Tiger Woods may be a bad husband and a cad, but that’s v. different from rapist.
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I say comparison to Kobe Bryant because if there’s a double standard playing out, I think it’s in this arena. Kobe Bryant’s career/reputation has barely suffered even though he was accused of a very serious crime; it’s too early to tell what’s going to happen to Tiger’s career but already I think more damage has been done to his reputation than Kobe’s even though he hasn’t committed a crime. Plus Tiger and Kobe have more in common than do Tiger and the slew of misbehaving politicians b/c they’re global sports celebrities and both are of African descent. So I wonder why, given their similarities, why Tiger is getting significantly more heat than Kobe? To me, part of it gets back to the sports they play but also the way that marriage gets put on a pedestal at the same time that rape and sexual assault are barely taken seriously.
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Ditto Kathleen Lowrey, and there’s also a racial thread. One of Tiger’s buddies told People magazine that our hero got married because he really wanted children. Putting aside the probability that this desire wasn’t well thought out (we don’t seem to be dealing with the examined life here), I think a successful African-American golfer who wants children without forfeiting his endorsement income HAS to have them matrimonially–and in a conventional, quasi-monogamous marriage to boot. A white Tiger Woods would enjoy more freedom to breed by his own rules; he could play the free spirit and omit the wife.
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thefrogrincess — huh, you’re right. It’s also interesting in terms of the non-double-standard applied to all the extra-matrimonial women involved: they are all equally pilloried as liar fame-chaser temptresses: no-one believed Kobe’s accuser, and it’s weird how many accounts of the whole situation pile blame on TW’s gfs for hurting his wife (there is kind of a missing link there….). But yeah, there was a kind of rallying-around Kobe (accused of doing something awful) and a piling-on Tiger (admits to doing lots of skeevy things, but hasn’t done anything awful) that is pretty illuminating about what we think about “illicit” sex (the rape kind? Not so bad! The cheating on holy matrimony kind? Terrible!).
anyhow, see? This stuff totally is interesting!
I don’t know if it’s true that a white Tiger Woods could do whatever he wanted & still get endorsements. There does seem to be a big role for what thefrogprincess pointed to above, just “married” as one of the attributes admirable people must possess. Michael Warner makes a lot of this in his book _The Trouble with Normal_, about how the push for gay marriage has meant gay + married = virtuous, which leaves gay + not married as still sinful and disreputable.
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Good points about the alleged criminality of Bryant versus the non-criminal promiscuity of Woods. I cared about Bryant because he was charged with a crime. (And I live in Colorado, and that summer of 2003 was the summer of rape in Colorado: there were rapes at the AFA and rape was revealed to be part of the entertainment package for many visiting athletes who were being recruited by the U. of Colorado.) I think thefrogprincess has hit on an interesting point–perhaps this has something to do with modern American masculinity, and the fact that Bryant became to many sports fans a “victim” of a scheming liar and they rallied to his cause and made her life a living hell. Whereas most fellas probably envy Woods–his money, and his access to women. (Although they may publicly say “tsk-tsk,” they may privately cheer him on.)
In both cases, men are on board when women are sexually available to high-status men (although in Woods’ case, the sheer numbers of women might make some think he was a bit greedy). When a woman who “should” have been sexually available to a high-status man says that he raped her, she broke the rules, and so a great deal of public sympathy went his way, not to her. That’s my best guess, anyway, as to why Bryant was let off the hook.
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I too think the Kobe Bryant contrast is instructive. Did other people here have the same experience with that story that I did–i.e. serious support of him by the men in one’s life? I couldn’t get any of my male friends to agree that KB had almost certainly raped the woman who accused him.
Just to clarify, I agree with the Michael Warner hypothesis that for the upwardly mobile, marriage is a ticket to privileges and non-marriage results in punishment. I just think there’s room for a rich white male athlete to roam a little from the conventional porch. A white golfer could have two children out of wedlock, opine that marriage is obsolete, and still keep the brand; Tiger Woods couldn’t. Dennis Rodman and Charles Barkley staked out the edge for African-American male athletes and it was not much. Similar (and even narrower) constraints on women of all races, of course.
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LadyProf: I didn’t notice a sharp divide of men v. women, but I can’t recall discussing the case with too many men. Since most of the people I would have discussed it with were academics–including many who taught at the uni the ACTUAL victim attended until she was hounded away by stalkers for fear of her life–most of us were just amazed at how young she was. Many of us felt protective towards her from the start, fearing the horrible $hitstorm of ugliness that took her normal life from her.
The idea that a teenager from Colorado was some kind of scheming temptress was pretty ridiculous in our view. I admired her courage in coming forward, and I still do.
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Beautiful women get cheated on all the time, in part because they are *objects* and not subjects. It’s super easy to cheat on someone who’s not a real human being. Just ask Betty Draper.
Great point and something I hadn’t thought of or about. You redefined the whole issue for me.
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I’m with Perpetua on this one. I think if you look at how much is invested in upholding the ‘ideal’ of marriage (and by that I mean heterosexual legal marriage, not any other form of union) in the United States, you may find some of the answers to why this has become such a big news story. I live in a country where civil unions and de facto partnerships are accorded the same legal status as marriage, regardless of the sex of the partners or whether there are children or not. Marriage is just not that big a deal, except to a few fringe Christian political parties. It’s interesting to me to see that while there has certainly been media coverage of the Tiger Woods situation in the local media, most of it seems more concerned with the future of his golf career than with the disintegration of his supposedly perfect marriage.
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I saw Anderson Cooper with a panel opining on TG last Friday, and he actually introduced the segment with “We have not covered this story, but now that Woods has admitted to infidelities….” We’re going seedy like everyone else!
These non-stories have traction because they are easier to consume than other news events such as buildup in Afghanistan, ongoing war in Iraq, health care, war president receives Nobel Peace Prize. AFter a long day of work (or being unemployed), what would you rather see on TV? Young men and women killed abroad or Tiger and yet another broad? (Apologies to all for the usage.)
Why it’s compelling? He used to look so clean cut. I mean, he matched the golf course (perfectly trimmed, shirt the perfect fit, always won). Now we’ve got him on a blog string with accused rapist Kobe Bryant.
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Rad–I think you’re exactly right. If Tiger hadn’t screwed up, we’d still be talking about the White House State Dinner party crashers. . . it’s not like we (the American people) would be involved in serious conversations about the totally predictable trainwreck that is health INSURANCE “reform,” let alone Iraq, Afghanistan, FISA, Guantanamo Bay, TARP, etc.
Echhhh. . . I give up.
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Just because Tiger Woods is a celebrity shouldn’t change our view of what happened. We are not upset if Mr blogger goes door to door in the neighborhood and does a tiger.
More importantly, having sex with other than your legal spouse is not illegal nor a universal travesty, Tiger must be allowed the freedom, as should Mr. Blogger, to have sex with properly aged men and women. It is a question of freedom though with a small F.
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Heh. A person I have known since jr. high is a heavy duty vlogger whose every post goes to Facebook multiple times because he tweets and posts and triple-links everything. The other day he posted on this, and asked for youtube responses to his assertion that this ws bad for golf and for America. I couldn’t be bothered to vlog, but did say that I thought that it wasn’t going to kill golf, just as the retirement of Sampras and Agassi hadn’t killed tennis. Moreover, I thought that the prurient interest in things like this was really unhealthy and soul-destroying, not only because it appealed to our baser instincts, but also because it distracted us from things that are truly important. I also said that I thought that it was sort of anti-liberal to care so much about people’s private lives.
The comment was deleted…
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I wonder if part of the racial issue is that Kobe’s behavior fulfilled certain stereotypes of African-American men, while Tiger, who is married to a white woman, was as one poster pointed out fulfilling a middle class ideal read white middle class ideal–he even plays golf!) and has betrayed it. So he is/was an African-American man that the fans could like, accept, and imagine a bit like themselves, and now has reminded “us” that he is really just like “them.” Look at how invested we’ve all become in Obama’s family. And yes, America has huge marriage issues, made also more complicated by the fact that we live longer, so monogamy is harder since we don’t loose spouses to death so frequently.
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Katherine–great points. Not only does America have a “marriage problem,” this is a racialized phenomenon, too. I still don’t get why TW’s non-criminal behavior (as KoshemBos notes) is so much more of a big deal than Bryant’s criminal acts, unless it’s really all about the bigger Benjamins TW stands to lose because he has more endorsements than Bryant had.
ADM–how dare you harsh their gossipy buzz over on your friend’s vlog!
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Rad made my point before I got a chance to! I agree it brings up all sorts of issues of race, gender, marriage, culture wars, etc. But it isn’t really news. I’d expect to see it on E! or Oprah or some equivalent gossip show, but the news? Really? Ugh.
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Henry Giroux has a great analysis of it on TruthOut. It’s all about consumerism and oh yeah, it’s relevant:
http://www.truthout.org/1215092
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Don’t know what the big deal is…I worked as a secretary for years and most of my bosses cheated and everyone knew it. They were wonderful fathers and their wives loved them for all the finanical pleasures they were able to have. Maybe Tiger should have hired a personal assistant to keep his “affairs” organized.
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Um, this court of public opinion has decided to judge Tiger on his manliness, instead of considering the proper victims here: His family.
Due to his loss of earning potential, (and, yeah, going from billions to millions is kinda harsh), their futures are changed. The only concern I have is that Mrs. Woods either gets empowered enough to say the magic word “HALF” or to secure expert counsel to make her renegotiated prenup a thing of beauty.
Since all y’all are cosmopolitan enough to let the liege lord get his rights-of-visitation on in any upscale club able to provide him with an attractive female pimp, you should be grownups enough to care whether this man exposed his wife to more than the hazards of public humiliation.
Everyone keeps score on the broads, but no one examines how his lack of care (through not having a smaller circle of mistresses, or screened and medically-monitored professional sex workers) was a sign of contempt toward his wife. Sure, he can step out on the side (AS CAN SHE — look how silent the room got), but if he’s in an environment where that’s expected of real he-men, you’d think his peers would have done a better job of teaching him how to minimize the damage.
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Hmmmm, I’m hesitant to bring this up, and not because I don’t think Tiger’s a douche (he is, and a moron at that to think this would never hit the fan), but I have to wonder, too, about the women as well. I mean, some whose affairs with Woods ended five years ago are getting press, money for interviews (I imagine) for their stories on the Today Show, etc. I mean, on the one hand I can see “oh, yeah, empowerment woman, get what you deserve out of this for being used as a sex toy or whatever,” but I think there’s something at least almost as equally as sleezy as coming out and cashing in on this five, six years after the fact. Again, not an apology for Woods, but when the women are getting celebrated and their moments of fame (what was up with the one woman–“I didn’t even get a birthday card!” Uh, yeah, you were sleeping with a married man! Married men always tell their mistresses they love them. Puhleeze!) for sleeping with a married man. I don’t feel bad for him at all. And I don’t really feel bad for the women either. I know I kind of took the conversation away from the intellectual track it was on, but I am really curious about people’s take on these women.
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