Of all the foolish and speculative things said over the weekend about Tiger Woods, the worst was something I caught out of the corner of my eye on some cable network (Fox News? MSNBC? When it comes to the tabloid-type stories, all the cable networks seem about the same). Some pert nag of an image consultant was on as a guest, and essentially said this (I’m paraphrasing, because it was Spanksgiving weekend, dammit, not a good time to lurk around the TV with a notebook):
This whole episode is so contrary to Tiger’s image. He’s a father of a young girl… unless he was going on a diaper run, he doesn’t have any business leaving that house at that time in the morning.
I know better than to let talking heads get me out of sorts. I’ve contributed to the babble enough myself. But there’s something about the supposition that because Woods has a kid he shouldn’t have been going out late except to get diapers that really pissed me off.
Okay, so maybe I was just angry because I was sleep deprived (my 3-year-old was like a Harvard speedball monkey most of the weekend).
But here’s the deal: judge Woods, for whatever you think he did, based on him being a man, not a father. Spare us the pieties about what dads should or should not be doing in the middle of the night.
Of course, parents should aspire NOT to be smashing in the windows of each others’ Escalades in the middle of the night. But so should anyone. And holding Woods to a higher standard because he’s a father is about as nonsensical as expecting him to be a great guy because he can hit a ball into a tiny hole real good (Rich Lerner has a succinct debunking of that reasoning at GolfChannel.com).
I’ve been fortunate to avoid Woods’ kind of marital drama (unlike Woods, I’ve also avoided becoming a billionaire superstar). But should some crazy shit go down, and I’m getting thrashed by my wife with a nine iron in the middle of Columbus Avenue, rest assured that it will have nothing to do with whether or not I have kids.