One of the most compelling editorials resonating in both sports and politics today is Lisa Schiffren’s American Thinker article of December 8, “Tiger, Barack, and the Law of Transitivity.”
Her review of sex, golf, and politics, that examines celebrity worship and the cost of betrayal, is well worth a close read if not serious contemplation.
Schiffren begins, “As a rule, the revelation that a married athlete (or actor, or rock star, or politician) has conducted extramarital affairs with a bevy of "party girls" may titillate, but rarely has the power to shock.
"In those realms, these things happen. Entitled men. Willing women. Deceived wives. What's new?
“We are interested because Tiger Woods, who may legitimately be the best golfer ever, had been turned into an all-purpose icon: a man of personal rectitude, a lovely smile, apparent openness; a family man, with a lovely wife and two adorable babies. And of course, he was our first living embodiment of the collective hope for racial reconciliation. Who knew that the early reports of his betrayed wife Elin swinging at him with a golf club constituted literal icon-smashing?”
“We are staring because we've been had. Betrayed. We see now that the image was all a fraud. The talent was real. But the things that made the public like Tiger personally -- the low-key demeanor, manners, and sweet smile of countless sports-page photos, magazine covers, political analogies, and most important, product endorsements, was an act. That would be betrayal enough. But it wasn't just Woods' act. The larger lesson here is about how much artifice -- sustained, deliberate deception -- goes into the construction of a public persona when there is profit to be made or power to be had,” Schiffren wrote.
It is well worth the time to read the entire article (click here) and while the story brings sadness, the disgust comes “Because anyone with four functioning braincells gets that if this comprehensive charade can be sustained for a decade as Woods and those around him amassed billions, it can happen elsewhere. It can happen right in front of our eyes.”
Conspiracy– what conspiracy? Consider that in practical application conspiracy is no more than the coalescing of common interests purposed for profit or power.
“If I were watching the public's disgust with the newly revealed Tiger Woods from an office in the West Wing,” Schiffren writes. “I'd be concerned. Because Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record or accomplishments, and the public's willing suspension of critical evaluation of his résumé allowed his handlers and the media to project whatever they wanted to on his unfurrowed brow.
“Ironically, the parallels have nothing to do with race. The Obama campaign did explicitly attempt to borrow from the then-universal Tiger Woods appeal to allay any discomfort voters might have had with a mixed-race politician. They constructed a persona that would make the American electorate comfortable with a barely-known, first-term senator with a left wing voting record, a deliberately obscured personal and professional past, and no traditional qualifications for high office.
“And while it doesn't matter if another athlete is an adulterer, it matters a lot if the president is revealed to be an inexperienced, excessively ideological, and weak man who is naïve about the world and uncomfortable exercising American power during a time of war. It matters if nothing in his training would have equipped the president to understand what it takes to stimulate job growth, or ameliorate a recession, or to end an overseas conflict successfully. It matters that he is uninterested in the science behind global warming -- and wishes to use the issue to amass power and reorder society. It matters that he has no interest in the construction of policy,” She wrote.
Schiffren closes with a reference to a Jack Shafer (Slate media columnist) observation on Woods that “the impulse of the betrayed is to tear their fallen deities to shreds.”
It is happening in Tulsa, the Cosmopolitan Capital of Indian Territory where we know more about mixed race than Barack Hussein Obama ever learned in Hawaii or Indonesia or any Russian class his parents attended. People are waking. Many are angry at the hard Left turn to what they consider Marxism or Communism.
At a hobby group Christmas party Friday night in the Blue Dome District of Downtown Tulsa,one dedicated Liberal defended his man saying, “Nixon used deficit spending and the country survived it.”
The Conservative replied, “Not at this level and if Obama destroys the currency and America becomes the second Weimer Republic, we’ll hunt Liberals like we do rabbits.”
Hollywood or real – Capone-like corruption or the second coming of Christ: at some point there is accountability if an icon is found to be false. Said more crassly, paybacks are a (female animal in heat every male within distance seeks to penetrate).
Edit Note: The hyperinflation episode in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s was not the first hyperinflation or the only one in Europe or even the most extreme, but it was the most prominent case. The photo above shows children playing with Weimar Republic currency - paper of no value.