Recent events have only served to exacerbate the sometimes-precarious relationship Tiger Woods maintains with the international press corps. Not surprisingly, the tabloid print press (and even less surprisingly, tabloid television) has lost little time in excoriating Mr. Woods for indiscretions real and imagined. At this stage, it seems prudent to allow Tiger a modicum of benefit of the doubt.

It may seem to even the most casual of observers that Mr. Woods has indeed strayed outside the boundaries of what society in its infinite wisdom deems appropriate connubial behavior. While not all evidence is in, there certainly seems to be enough to label Tiger a casual womanizer at best and an inveterate Lothario at worst. The disturbing part of this entire matter is the seemingly higher plane at which the public views celebrities of Tiger’s station as opposed to your garden-variety sports figure.

Certain cliques of woman invariably fix their orbits around male sports stars. There comes a time when these females must answer for their behavior as much as the male objects of their obsession. Perhaps, gender skews my perspective but the reality remains; short the alluring enticement, there would be little (or less) departure from traditional alignments. This is not to say that sports figures are alone in this malfeasant conduct.

I was embroiled in two destroyed marriages, one by my own doing the other by my spouse. In the latter case, I was working in a band on the road quite a bit and my wife subsequently turned to another for company. In the former, I went astray taking up with a similarly married co-worker. I make no excuse; I simply broke my marriage vow in a momentary paroxysm of dissolute weakness - in truth, it was more than a moment as this affair de couer continued for nearly four years.

In the end, both instances of transgression (as present-day pundits would have it) begot divorce. Recent right-wing efforts to codify heterosexual marriage notwithstanding, there is little more the homosexual community can do to desecrate so-called traditional marriage; when it comes to assailing the sanctity of matrimony, heterosexuals are doing quite well on their own.

I digress; let us revisit Tiger’s tale. Why is it celebrities are held to an impossibly higher standard than the rest of us. I understand the price one pays for the Faustian bargain celebrity represents; even so, shouldn’t we allow these people the same degree of latitude we would wish for ourselves? Apparently, society is unable, indeed, unwilling to sanction any measure of leeway, as the recent media-fueled uproar over the Woods saga illustrates.

I sometimes think the public enjoys the downfall of its heroes, especially the more successful ones, such as Mr. Woods. For an excessively obsequious public, it seems the higher and faster a star ascends, its ultimate descent from nirvana to a more mundane plane is that much more pleasurable if it comes about precipitately.