Thank you, Jaime Diaz, for your article on Tiger Woods entitled "What Happened?" It is very well written. Thought provoking and insightful. I don't condone his actions but I feel the man deserved a lot more respect than he got with all the jokes and ugly pictures. No one is perfect--he made a bad mistake but he did not deserve all the media and public ugliness. How does it go? "Ye without sin may cast the first stone." I just don't understand why the public thought it funny to destroy him that way. That's my side of the story. Sarah Brewster, Mariposa, CA
Jaime Diaz' analysis of Tiger Woods' mortification is insightful, even moving. Doesn't the public's rush to righteous anger and wicked glee also deserve a look? It seems as if imperfect knowledge, fantasy, gossip and hype nurture a sense of pseudo-intimacy with celebrities, an illusory familiarity whose flip side is contempt. Public personalities know this. Yet we want them grateful to us. When our illusion of someone like Mr. Woods is rudely interrupted, when our champions do something out of public character, we feel betrayed. But what do we know of them, really? All we see is their performance, the honed point of the pin. Superb performance is surpassing not because it comes from ubermensch but from otherwise frail, aging, conflicted humans, some charming, some appalling, most banal. It's easy to pronounce on Tiger Woods' transgressions. That way, he can make us feel good about ourselves even when he commits tragedy. Is our claim on him and others like him exploitive? Oh, no-- after all, we pay them, which makes it okay. Still, we don't own them. It's a game. Tiger may indeed need new boundaries. Another lesson: so do the rest of us. Jono Polansky, Fairfax, CAThe polls must be showing a similar shift in the public's views on Tiger, because the President chose this week to express his support. Be nice to think he was just doing it out of the goodness of his heart, but....
--Bob Carney
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