A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer puts things into the proper perspective about Tiger Woods:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08172/891347-136.stmÂÂ
"When the story broke Wednesday, less than 48 hours after Woods' dramatic U.S. Open victory over the worthy Rocco Mediate, these were the headlines on the TOP STORIES page at Yahoo.com:
ÂÂEBush to Congress: Embrace Energy Exploration.
ÂÂETiger To Have Season-ending Knee Surgery.
ÂÂEIsrael Confirms Cease Fire to Begin Thursday.
ÂÂEAfghan, NATO Troops Kill 36 Taliban Near Kandahar.
ÂÂEIllinois Levee Breaches, Small Town's Evacuation.
ÂÂEReport: Ex-Detainees from Iraq, Gitmo Still Suffer From Trauma.
As they used to ask on Sesame Street, which of these things is not like the other?
Well, you've got five national or global crises, and one wounded knee on a golfer.
To be sure, the news judgment of the Internet in general is hardly a legitimate topic in that Internet "news" is the result of millions of different sources of largely self-interest, and if Yahoo wants to slide breaking Tiger leg breakage in there between the oil crisis and Mideast violence, so what?
With the national and to some lesser extent the international sports media long since established as breathless subjects in Tiger's kingdom, the inevitable spillover of Woods' image into a space where he "transcends the sport," (even if he has meticulously avoided any topic that might provide evidence of same), it's a little less than shocking to see Tiger's status cast as a major news story.
All that said, I was hoping that by 7 o'clock an outlet such as the CBS Evening News might have at least readjusted the grip.
The Tiffany Network, the home of journalism icons Edward R. Murrow, William Paley, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, Bob Schieffer, Dan Rather, and now Whoever That Is Sitting In For Katie Couric, certainly would lead with the oil crisis, the looming Taliban offensive, the Baghdad car bomb that killed 63, the Iowa and downstream Mississippi flooding that's misplaced thousands and will soon wallop an already staggering economy, or at worst the perpetual presidential campaign, but no.
Tiger topped the CBS Evening News for five full minutes.
In literally a world full of issues, we're going with golf first, everything else being just, well, everything else, including, you know, life and death.
Perspectives are by nature eclectic and by some percentage extreme in the usual public discourse, but the temporary removal of Tiger from our weekend viewing is apparently the signal for mourning bordering on apoplexy. The AP's Tim Dahlberg, writing on our front sports page yesterday, lamented that "golf once again has been rendered meaningless."
What d'ya mean, again?
Golf is supposed to be meaningless, with Tiger or without, and the same goes for baseball, football, basketball, hockey and every other sports or entertainment entity that we've come to elevate to some cultural plateau that is beyond all reason. I like Tiger, but he's a golfer, not a nurse, not a firefighter, not a first responder, not a teacher. Dahlberg went on to refer to something he called "brutally tough U.S. Open Golf," which sounds like an oxymoron like "reality TV" and "Congressional ethics."
C'mon kids, there's a war on. It was 113 degrees in Baghdad yesterday. Then, the shooting started. Brutally tough U.S. Open golf? Please. It's not even a hockey game."
Edited by: Van_Slyke_CF