I thought it was his business. He's a golfer. I don't know him or his wife. I don't drive a Buick. He wasn't messing around with anyone in my family. His problem is with his wife and children, and a dozen other women, not me.

I do find him quite the wuss for saying anything in public.

Tiger woods is a complete scumbag who gives all me a bad name. What an outright joke that this contrived BS was carried live to a national audience. It just proves that this country's priorities are completely f'd up.

I don't care who he sleeps with. I don't care if his wife hates him. I don't care about any of this. The fact that he has to give a public apology to save endorsements shows what a hypocritical society we live in. We have soldiers that are heroes over seas. Where are their press conferences? Where is their attention? Instead Tiger Woods is the front page for months all because he doesn't know how to keep it in his pants. Some priorities we have.

> It just proves that this country's priorities
> are completely f'd up.

You didn't have to watch. Lots of us moved through our Friday without giving it any attention... And everyone who did pay attention seems to have been annoyed by the show or skit or conference or whatever-it-was. Mostly, it's creepy... I'm reminded of Dan Crane's theatrically heartfelt acceptance of a reprimand for the 1983 sex-with-pages scandal... At least the gay guy had the dignity to no be so abject.

Anyway, this proves that Tiger Woods is completely fucked up, not that our country's priorities are completely fucked up.

NOT be so abject.

It would be interesting how much this had to do with his father dying. It seems like his father controlled his life, and when that control was gone, he let loose. It's just amazing to me the choice of women he chose. Like Bill Clinton, he needed to elevate his taste in trolls.

I dunno, Eric... Remember how much Hillary used to look like Gennifer Flowers? I'd find a comparison pic but I gotta gota work.

Guys want what they want.

I remember about half of America was so disspointed in Clinton because Monica was chubby. I always thought she was attractive. Not Marilyn Monroe attractive...

I gotta work today too Crid!

Who cares???

What is Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he should give a crap whom Hecuba sleeps with?

People need to tend to their own lives, sheesh!

Celebrities (sports or others) often cheat, it goes with the territory. Usually the agreement is that the wife accepts it as long as the husband keeps a lid on it. It looks like the shit hit the fan when the wife found out that one of the mistresses was going public. So my guess...the wife turned a blind eye until the story was going to hit the papers.

I for one am totally not surprised at this. The fact that he cheats when thousands of women throw themselves at him makes him part of the rule, rather than the exception.

Lots of people repent after being caught. They redeem their reputations not by giving tearful apologies but by showing over the course of years and decades that they've changed.

If Tiger Woods never has another sex scandal, then his legacy in 20 or more years will be his golfing. Time will tell.

Has any of this affected TW's ability to golf, and get the win? If it has, it's his own guilty conscience and he's the one who has to live with it, not us. I don't think he owed a public aplogy. To his own family, yes. To his business partners and the people who work for him, I don't think so. It's a private matter. If he wants to apologize to them to prove he's trying to change, yeah, okay. To the skanks, maybe yes, maybe no. They're just as guilty as he is, ya know. They knew he was married. I don't see any of them coming forward to apologize to his wife for sleeping with him while knowing he was married. F'n homewreckers! (Tongue firmly in cheek, here.) Personally I don't care one way or the other. I wasn't there.

"Anyway, this proves that Tiger Woods is completely fucked up, not that our country's priorities are completely fucked up."

You're in the business, sorta. Would this have an audience if the audience wasn't demanding it?

This sort of story is exactly what a worried American wants: a simple story of somebody else's mistakes, confirmation that hundreds of millions of dollars do not make you happy - and it requires no actual concern or action on the viewer's part.

We watch sports because somebody can win without somebody dying. We are fans because we are vicariously rewarded by the achievements of the team or person we've assigned our own bonds. Now, we can marvel that some guy with everything can cast aside the captain of the Swedish Bikini Team by simply putting himself first.

Now we can read the speech and claim it was rehearsed, thus dumping more dirt on the guy.

It's nowhere near as good a story as Roger Ebert's. But that one has some seriously sad moments...

Raddy, that has got to be one of the saddest things I've ever read. I need to shut up and quit my bitchin'!

In other news, Al Haig is no longer in control here.

I don't really know what to think. Yeah, he was an idiot who should have known better.

But, it looks like a high percentage of men AND WOMEN who find themselves highly desirable to the other sex on that scale do tend to fall.

Even Edwards who should have known people could tell by body language with his gf what he was doing, fell.

I have always considered myself, well, not a saint, but somehow above and beyond this sort of messing around, and I have been faithful to my wife of almost 35 years. Of course, this may be because while I have been called many names, the words "attractive or handsome or good looking" have never been uttered in reference to me.

But, I have been somewhat shaken by several incidents in the last 4 years since I started living most of my time here in rural Mexico.

Four years ago, I discovered a 14 year old friend had fallen in love with me. And, yes, I am sure, so I don't need backup opinions, I already got that from my best friend. It was scary as heck, though there really was no way I was going to do anything to end up in jail, but it was also a tremendous boost to my male ego. I sort of had 'hot flashes' for a week or so. She has outgrown it now, and she had her 18th birthday three days ago, a good kid, but I will never forget. The only difference from her sisters now when we meet we hold both hands and chat face to face. My encouragement when she was young has motivated her to set the goal of becoming an M.D. but of course at the time it also prompted her to fall in love with me.

And, two years ago, a mutual friend asked me if I wanted another rather attractive 20ish girl as my mistress.I simply played dumb and pretended I did not understand her Spanish. I also had 'hot flashes' for a week or two, and it also did strange things to my male ego.

A few months ago, my wife was gone north, and there is only one female I let in the house alone. It is my wife's niece whom I am sending to college. She is the only one I completely trusted.

When she comes home, she brings down her little netbook, and uses my Internet to check her mail.

One day she came down and we sat at my large table I use for my computers. We chatted and both worked away for an hour or so. All was cool.

When it was time to leave, she acted strange. I kept wondering what is her problem?

About two days later, it hit me. OH, CRUD!!!!

I finally decided to ask my best friend, a very intelligent woman in her 50's, who is more like a sister than a friend, in case there was another explanation for her behavior.

She agreed my interpretation was correct. And, she was furious. She said, "HER OWN UNCLE!"

I told her, "In my opinion, when there is a hormone attack there are no uncles and nieces."

The scary part for me was when I finally realized if that attractive young woman had been aggressive enough to go into the bathroom and come out topless, I would have fallen, even if it meant I had to leave town and lost my wife of 35 years and risked violent neutering by her dad.

Would that have been stupid? Yep, but that's how hormones and female attention are for a man -- and in my opinion to a similar degree for women, too.

I think the girl also well realized she almost did something stupid, because she did not ask to use the Internet for many months.

So, as I said, I am not sure what to think about Wood.

My lifetime solution to temptation has been to simply avoid circumstances and places that are connected with temptations. Or, so I thought until I moved here.

> Pretty face, pretty smile, nice dark, shiny hair.

As Salon once put it, "great Willendorfian titties and a high-water booty"...

...With an eagerness to please.

What's the difference between a golf ball and an Escalade?

Tiger can drive a golf ball 400 yards.

I didn't mean this to be funny, but this is what I sent to my best friend of 30 years, a gal I grew up with that is married to a hall of fame baseball player:

What Tiger should have said
Fuck you judgmental assherders. When you can beat me at golf we’ll talk. Otherwise, I’m screwing slutty pretty blonde white women. I hate to sound like an ass here, but ‘sex addiction’? I have an addiction to oxygen in the air I breathe. Do I need to go to a clinic for this? We live in a society of MORONS. You are all fucking morons.

My friend said when she read this to her husband from her blackberry, he laughed so hard he had to pull off the freeway.

Try and change thousands (millions?) of years of evolution/intelligent design/creation/whatever. Not going to happen. Men like sex the same as women like shoes. No matter how many cool shoes you already have, you want different shoes. Now maybe you understand a guys dilemma. Deal with it accordingly. He owes his wife a nice pair of Gucci boots or Manolo's for each indiscretion, then case closed. Tiger can get back to golfing, his wife can get back to her Gucci boots (and decide whether they were made for walking), and we can move on to something else to snark about.

> we can move on to something else to snark about.

Don't be so bitter. There are things to see in this... Nobody get's the final word on ANYTHING, especially a free circus.

More tonight- this computer doesn't run flash.

Estas Botas Son Para Caminar. Something tells me the blonde wife will walk away with more than a pair of sassy boots...

Ah, Nancy! She was sassy way back when. Whatever happened to/with her? Haven't seen her in ages, it seems...

Flynne, I can't even thing about Nancy Sinatra without thinking that Amy is the Nancy Sinatra of the advice columnists. I like the little short boots that Amy wears better. But new boots, especially vintage new boots are cool.

http://nancysinatra.com

Decide you like lots of skanky women

What, exactly, makes them "skanky"? Just their willingness to sleep with a married man?

"Try and change thousands (millions?) of years of evolution/intelligent design/creation/whatever. Not going to happen. Men like sex the same as women like shoes. No matter how many cool shoes you already have, you want different shoes. Now maybe you understand a guys dilemma. Deal with it accordingly."

Let's extend this a little further. Men like sex with lots of women the way that women like marrying a guy for his money, tricking him into getting pregnant, and/or committing fraud for child support. After all, they're hard-wired to procreate and protect their kids, and there's no way to change that. Guys can just deal with it.

Sound fair?

Seriously though, try explaining to Tiger's baby sons why their father is entitled to break up the family by cheating on their mother with lots of skanky women. Sterling, you have a son, right? Wouldn't you say that your son is entitled to a father whose first priority is being a father as opposed to getting ass with a bunch of skanks?

"What, exactly, makes them "skanky"? Just their willingness to sleep with a married man?"

Well, yes.

Anyone who would knowingly have sex with a married father has to be pretty morally depraved. It's not as though he's a random guy who they met at a bar then later found out he was married-he's TIGER WOODS. It's not exactly a secret that he has a wife and kids.

And I doubt any of these women actually thought that Tiger would leave his supermodel wife for them. I'm willing to bet that most of them are professional star-fuckers who are ready to hop on any opportunity to fuck a celebrity for money and public attention.

So yes, regardless of how they dress/act/look, these women are an embarrassment in my book.

Shannon, excellent point.

I stopped my life and career to take care of my son. As much as I miss the world travel and the 7 figures I made, I chose to take responsibility of raising him. Pretty smart and healthy kid, considering the drugs his mother consumed. But I don't hide that from him.

Does that make me a bad father?

On another point: I think Amy needs this pair:

map of the enchanted forest

The phrase 'map of the enchanted forest' is serendipitous.

WHY?!

Seriously?

Not to use the word to death but the answer is duh.

He's a man.
He's a man with untold MILLIONS.
He's a famous pro athlete.
He's got women throwing themselves at him.
He's a famous male pro athlete with untold millions with women throwing themselves at him.

Do we see a pattern here?

Its the same thing that has happened with every single rich, powerful, and famous man since before David sought to unite Israel.

How could ANYONE not have seen this coming from a thousand miles away?

A sex scandal? No way, not from a pro athlete on the road all the time earning ridiculous amounts of money?

Come now Miss Alkon, you're a clever girl, one of the smartest women I've ever read if truth be told, and you've written about the differences between male behavior and drives, and women's, many times before.

What about this particular instance breaks pattern in such a way that you find it even unusual, much less surprising?

---------------------------------

Frankly, if I were Tiger Woods, I'd have said in lui of apology:

"This is a matter between myself and my wife, its not your business, I'll answer no questions about it, for the things I've done wrong in my marriage, I apologize only to her. Get back to your lives."

But then...I'm not a nice person when it comes to matters of a private nature.

As a side note, I'm not saying he's a hero for flat backing with who knows how many women, and I'm not saying it was cool for him to lie to his wife.

But seriously? How surprised could she have realistically been?

> Anyone who would knowingly have
> sex with a married father has to
> be pretty morally depraved.

That's maybe a titch overheated. I think it's a bad thing, and I wish it didn't happen so much... But this misconduct is, for all its tragedy, a typical, easily foreseen street crime. Trying to prevent it by talking as if it's rarer –or maybe even worse– than it really is won't make things go better for anyone. And "morally depraved" is important language. What are you going to say when –and you'll never have to wait too long– some genuine monster shows up? At that hour you'll reach for "morally depraved", and you'll hope you've kept your powder dry.

So that's one thing. And consider this link offered by Amy (though not certified by her!) several years ago (the topic is a perennial):

> Halakha defines adultery as a
> sexual encounter between a
> married woman and a man not her
> husband. An affair between a
> married man and a single woman
> is not considered adultery.

That's Judaica... The old guys, OK?... The really sharp, literate ones, the guys with beards who'd been watching human nature closely for a very long time. They didn't come up with that definition just because their Jewish little brothers were especially horn-doggy and it was a patrilineal society... They were on to something.

Two favorite showbiz progenitors from the preceding generation are Quincy Jones and Clint Eastwood. These men were indisputably rulers of pop culture in the generations when pop culture itself was regnant in every nook and cranny (and demographic) of this planet. Both of them had seven kids by five women... Under cover of the inexcusably pussyfooting language of "serial monogamy."

But that's the planet we're on, OK? Really successful men, whether they're physicists or doctors or captains of industry or warriors or even golfers want the tail that they want when they want it. It's hard to argue that denial of this poontang is a cosmic/universal norm when so VERY many women seek urgently to provide it to them.

It is good to be Sinatra, it is good to be a Jonas Brother. It was good to be Kubla Khan (17 children and a fifth of the known world for his Kingdom).

Nordigren knew that in her bones. Or she should have. (Where's Juanita Jordan while all this is going on?) Is there any, ANY stage of fame and success at which a young wife might expect a young husband, globally famous & beloved & rewarded, to face irresistible temptations? Isn't that why she loved him?

Props to Melinda Gates... She waited until The Fucking Years were over, chose wisely, and now she's got a shot at eradicating Goddamn malaria. Isn't that how celebrity marriage is supposed to work?

I forgot to add something that goes like—

...and so this is why Tiger's sentiments ring hollow: He's apologizing abjectly to people who couldn't care less, and in defiance of the feelings and insight of every member of our species that's ever had a throbbing crotch.

I didn't see Tiger Woods the husband apologize. I didn't see Tiger Woods the golfer apologize. I saw Tiger Woods the "Brand", the corporate spokesman apologize. It was a necessary step to repair the brand. When a company has an individual that damages the brand, they fire that person to protect the brand image. In this case, Tiger Woods IS the brand and cannot be fired. They cannot protect the brand so they must rehabilitate it.

This is the first step of many. I suspect the next steps will be Tiger attending many charity events. Whatever happens between him and his wife will be controlled. Personally, I think she is going to leave him but not now. She will "officialy" leave him at a time that minimizes damage to the brand and she will be well compensated for it.

I don't care why he did what he did. He did it. He is paying consequences for what he did. I hope there is a lesson learned in there somewhere for him. But we all fail one way or another as we journey through life. SOme fail more often or more spectacularly, but we all fail sometime. Don't look at Tiger Woods and focus on how he failed or how good or bad he deals with consequences. Look at yourself and at how well you acknowledge where in your life you have failed to live up to your own standards. Look at what you are doing to try to improve yourself. You learn from your own mistakes, not Tiger Wood's mistakes. The only person who will learn from Tiger Wood's mistakes is himself.

Good luck Tiger. Good luck everybody.

Enough with the public castration, already.

Here's hoping he tees it up IN THIS YEAR'S MASTERS.

I want to see if he is going to breaks Nicklaus' record for majors.

His personal life is his personal life.

Golf is in his blood.

He cannot stay away long.

> Why do you think he did it?

The sex.

I think he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. Maybe he can save his marriage, but I think it's going to take his reputation a LONG time to recover from this.

Personally, I think he's been incredibly selfish and forgiveness is more than he deserves. I wish them the best though.

Anyone looking to professional atheletes for pillars of moral rectitude is going to be in for a dissapointment.

Yeah, he's a ho. Anyone surprised?

"Tiger woods is a complete scumbag who gives all me[n] a bad name"
-Yeah, he got beat up by a girl.

I have been lurking through Amy's blog and advise column for years, though I rarely post, mostly because I'm from Mexico and English is not my first language, I hope you don't mind my bad grammar.

As most of the bloggers here, I think Tiger's 'indiscretions' are nobody's but his and his wife's (probably soon-to-be-ex) business.

"I didn't see Tiger Woods the husband apologize. I didn't see Tiger Woods the golfer apologize. I saw Tiger Woods the "Brand", the corporate spokesman apologize."

I am not so sure about that. Sure, promoters are desperately trying to do damage control, but you can see that Tiger is in a lousy shape and is having a really hard time (he looks much dimmer than O.J. during the whole murder trial!). But I think that Tiger's big concern may not be that he cheated on his wife, but as Amy says, the fact that he got caught. This damaged and possibly destroyed for good the clean, but clearly false image he and his father had been so carefully creating throughout all these years. Maybe the public opinion wouldn't be that harsh on him if he had not sold himself as the cute boy next door, and for that matter, if he had simply kept his private life just for himself. Why do 'celebrities' keep preaching about lifestyles they hardly follow or even believe in, only to put themselves in the most embarrassing situations?

As for why he did it, well yes, it is the sex. But why that way? Well, for all we know, the Swedish wife may be just a gold-digger who couldn't care less for her husband's flings, or maybe she stipulated a once-a-month-sex-clause in the prenup and he wasn't getting enough, or maybe she is also a serial cheater, or maybe she thinks of sex only for conceiving purposes... I mean I'm not implying that she's to blame for what he did: maybe he IS a sex addict who can't control his sexual impulses, or maybe he's just a cheating jerk trying to justify himself. What I mean is 1) there's always two sides on every story and we're only listening to one, and 2) too many times the lives of the 'celebrities' are just a big fat lie, a fake fairytale-ish image in which even themselves get trapped and lost on it. I think the higher they put themselves above us, regular mortals, the harder they fall (and the more it hurts them).