Let's Forget about "Role Models"

Tiger Woods is a sports star, a golfer who has been "exposed" as a philanderer.

Do I feel outraged about Woods' behaviour? No, I don't.

It may come as a shock to some readers, although I doubt it, but men from the age of 14 to 84 do tend to seek the company of attractive women. For attractive, read alive. Not all men, no, some lack the means, the motive, or the opportunity. Some have genuine moral scruples.

In general, though, we men are quite commonly woman-hunting beasts, that's what our DNA programmes us to be.

Woods is one of a long line of public figures who have been caught in adultery, and have then cringed in the lurid light of the headlines. There is a standard script for a person in that situation, it begins with a ritual apology to the wronged wife, and ends with a plea for privacy "to rebuild my marriage."

Down the line a way, they always do split up. Expensively.

Is it right that a sports star should have to endure public humiliation over his marital transgressions? Tiger Woods gets dumped on, while unknown Mike Woods keeps his little secrets in the dark?

It can't be right.

But the media, staffed entirely by people of impeccable moral character, claim justification for the pillorying of Woods and other sports stars who have had their private lives splashed across the front pages. We are told that they are "role models" for the younger generation, who will emulate their behaviour on and off the field of play.

Rubbish.

Balderdash.

Piffle.

Tell me, sir or madam, when did you last copy the misbehaviour of a sports star? You never did, did you? I have never emulated the achievements or the failures of any of my sports heroes, and neither have you.

True, many youngsters who admire Tiger Woods will go on to become rampant dissolutes, they surely will. But they would do that anyway, they would follow their natures, they would revel in the fleshy pleasures if Woods had never existed.

For the future, then, please let's not hear too much about about the private lives of sports stars. Nothing at all would be good.