I’m really tired of it all.  Media continue to ask “Do you think Tiger Woods’ apology was sincere?” as if it were a make or break issue for the days it was posted at various locations.

First of all, folks need to take responsibility for their actions in choosing their heroes.  That term “hero” is so much overused we’ve become ignorant of its original meaning.   If people choose to hold athletes, who live largely in another social universe, as role models, or worse, the next step, as heroes, that’s their business. 

But those people need to take responsibility for their selection.  Did they actually research anything about the individual?  Can they elucidate those specific actions that merit such a lofty position?

Have they forgotten that no matter who it is, there is always fault, past, present, or future, even in role models and heroes?  Do they really expect perfection, as if they’d discovered the perfect human being?

Tiger Woods owes me no apology because I have always taken him for what he is — he’s an athlete.  Just an athlete, as in, “athlete” is a job. 

Yes, he’s a darned god technician at what he does, but so are a hell of a lot of others in this world, including teachers, pharmacists, plumbers, truck drivers, clerks, carpenters, and any other line of work you care to name.  There are outstandingly talented and skilled people in all walks of life and there isn’t a job in the world that can’t be done with a finer touch or a little more efficiently by them.

Perhaps it’s the fast-rising sense of entitlement that causes such hero search and worship.  Is it because more people feel they are owed a hero, someone to whom they can point rather than doing the hard work themselves?  It is a lot easier to point one’s children, after all, to someone far away as a role model, rather than providing that role modeling oneself.  Life would sure be easier that way — a parent can be lazier and more free if they can be absolved of the responsibility for providing the right picture and deferring that responsibility to someone else, an athlete, for instance. 

But having that sense of entitlement to abandon their responsibility, when the hero suddenly turns out to be human, folks are offended.  Their sense of entitlement hasn’t been fulfilled and they have to get off their collective asses and either be responsible themselves or hope another likely and equally worthy hero pops up quickly.

Mr. Woods, Tiger, if I may, I resent your skipping golf tournaments year after year that are held on local-to-you PGA certified courses, have your picture emblazoned on the premises, and are for a most worthy charitable cause.  Just because you’ve made enough money by that point in the season is no reason in my mind not to support both the cause and the fans who would like to see you play.  I happen to not be one of them because I don’t care for golf, but that is totally beside the point.  That annual tournament is held less than an hour’s drive from your home, but you repeatedly choose to ignore it.

However, regarding the choices you’ve made in your personal life, you owe me no apology.  I have never held you to a standard above anyone else other than expecting I’d see you at the top of the leader board in golf, a technical exercise, and it was an expectation, not a desire.  It was simply a fact based on past technical performance.  Your personal life is of no concern to me – you are simply an excellent technician at what you do and I congratulate you for it, but no more so than I congratulate the roofer and the plumber who did an outstanding job here at my house when I needed them.