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Saturday, February 20, 2010

How to Kill a Tiger

It is DISGUSTING how the very people who brought this young man to all this fame - those who coached him and nurtured him and encouraged the high level of competitiveness required for him to achieve what he has - have abandoned him now. None among them is willing to admit, "I too."

How many of them have similar skeletons in their own closets? How many of them were with Tiger on his escapades? How many helped procure? Do people REALLY think Tiger's caddy is a eunuch? His trainers are eunuchs? Other high-profile golfers are eunuchs? Seriously??? Do people really really believe that there isn't any other pro who's done exactly the same?

Tiger is a man. He is human. He has been made a commodity by his trainers and his fans; by the media that relies on him to bring them eyes and ears; by the golf courses that rely on his celebrity for their marketing campaigns and yes, even by his parents, who fostered his rise to fame and greatness. Yet, when he does the most human of all things, the entourage that has gained so much on Tiger's back runs and hides.

Anyone who thinks Tiger is unique in the world of sports is deluded and ridiculous. There are HUNDREDS of men at all levels of sport - and music and enterprise - who do exactly as Tiger has done but who haven't been caught or whose behaviour has been ignored - or encouraged if you're Gene Simmons or Steven Tyler or Wilf Chamberlain.

Frankly, if Tiger had been free to speak - and he most assuredly was NOT free; he was coached in this event, as he is in all others - he could - and should - have pointed fingers towards all those around him who are complicit and who are equally 'guilty' and who are, in their little minds, heaving a sigh of relief that they have escaped scrutiny themselves.

It is an incomprehensible quality of humans that we build up these people and adore them only until the point they reflect our own fallibilities. The second we see ourselves reflected, we're after them like packs of starving wolves.

The wolves howling at Tiger now are those who are desperate for the spotlight to fall as far from them as possible because, up until the 'accident,' every one of those wolves was jealous as hell.

Tiger hasn't failed in any way. He is exactly what he was trained and made to be. A highly successful, handsome, wealthy professional golfer. He is still all of those things. Except for the part where YOU, Joe Public, with all your own skeletons, have sacrificed him.

Makes me sick.