THE DIGITAL POLITICAL

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AMERICA LOVES A FALL: FINALLY A WORD ABOUT TIGER WOODS

Oh how America loves a great fall. I’ve held back on the recent Tiger Woods watch, not because there was nothing to talk about but more so there was so much to talk about and astoundingly not about Woods himself.

What was there to talk about? How about, booty calls, ambien, the institution of marriage, how women feel about infidelity versus how men feel about it. There’s the difference between getting a little something something on the side when you’re rich vs. when you’re poor and have to pick your date up in a Ford Focus instead of a yacht called ‘Privacy’. Be honest, if Tiger’s name was Lamont, drove a Corolla and was the manager at Jack In The Box, there would be no scandal. There’s the guys who say how stupid Tiger was that with all that money he should have never gotten caught and women say how Elin should get half of that money after only five years of marriage.

There’s the tabloid, and digital media like US and OK and People Magazine (Yeah, I said their names and People Magazine, yes you are a tabloid.) whom have clearly taken sides with their female base. Online publications one would think would be above the fray like the Huffington Post, CNN, and others, eventually strayed from reporting and gave in to the sensationalism of it all and started their own girlfriend count and embraced anything that TMZ had to say, confirmed or not.

Politically, there’s been the vilification of Tiger from the Right and the Left with one talk radio host stating that Tiger did a disservice to the psyche and self esteem of the entire population of African Americans because Woods didn’t cheat with any black women (hint: He will always Rush to controversy). There are the Black commentators who seem to consider themselves the gate keepers and governing body of all things Black who said, African Americans shouldn’t care about a Woods downfall because Woods identified himself as ‘Cablinasian’ rather than black, even though Woods was making the point that his rejection of orthodox racial classifications points the way to a future where race will no longer define us. I thought that’s what the gatekeepers wanted. Oh wait, that would put them out of a job. Race is a cash cow in America, again ask Rush. On the other hand, why shouldn’t race continue to be a cash cow when there are those who suspect that Elin hit Tiger in a jealous rage and folks of color wondering why she isn’t getting the Chris Brown treatment. Saturday Night Live joked about this while Rihanna guest starred. But really… if it’s true that Elin hit Tiger, why isn’t she?

There’s also, how women claim that there is a sisterhood like relationship that exists among them that does not exist between men as brothers, yet the women who had extramarital relationships with Tiger Woods could not wait to sell every over sharing detail of that relationship to the world for a buck, no matter what it did to their ‘sister’ Elin. In fact, they even slept with him knowing there was an Elin, probably turned on by the fact that there was an Elin and still didn’t give a damn about Elin. Not one of the pro-Elin publications or should I say anti-Tiger behavior publications, or interviewers of Tiger Babes who were mostly women, ever made this fact a focus of their story.

Finally, there are those, the majority dare I say, who just like to see people fall. The higher they are the better. They ask who do these people think they are achieving mass success and influencing my low self esteem into thinking that these people are better than the rest of us? How dare successful people amass millions and sometimes billions of dollars when I’m cutting deals with the electric company to keep the lights on for another billing cycle.

At all costs, bring these suckers down and bring them down hard. Let me laugh and talk about them in the beauty or barber shop, in a Coffee Bean with friends or over beer at the bar. I don’t care if it’s Woods’ women, Spears’ haircut, Jackson’s skin color, Winfrey’s weight, Tyra’s weight, Lindsey’s weight, Olsen Twin’s weight, Kirstie Alley’s weight or Nicole Ritchie’s disappearing weight, if Demi is photoshopped, if it’s really John Edwards’ baby, bring them down. Bring down, Sanford for the Argentinean soul mate, Palin for… being Palin and Obama for winning. Bring down Jon and Kate because they have a ton of kids and appeared to be making it work, while knowing anybody with that many kids are always two good arguments away from it all crumbling. Take all these people down just because we need to feel better about ourselves.

It’s sad to say, but America loves a good hard fall. When we do witness a fall we pile on, a tactic that’s not even allowed in the NFL. Yes, America loves to see a fall, but we won’t go to the movies to see it without a happy ending because we don’t want to admit that watching someone fail is the entertainment of our actual everyday life, while standing in line at the check out or going online in the morning or watching Nancy Grace at night. The movies are for fantasies, and what we would like to be, not for what we are.

What we shamefully are, are Americans who will put our foot on your neck when you least need it because you dared to fly so high. Oh, I know that’s harsh, but would you hear this if it were not? Yes, I’ll do the obligatory, there is also a higher side of Americans, blah blah blah, and it’s not just Americans who watch people fall yeah, yeah, blah blah blah blah… but I’m not talking about that. You know what I’m talking about. So with that in mind, I hope our higher side comes out and comes out real quick, so we can see if that’s the side that will eventually allow us to forgive the fallen and be capable of cheering them at least as hard as we stomped them when they try to get back up.