Tiger: Polos Don't Equal Perfection

As my colleague here, Judy Howard Ellis pointed out, "We awarded his skill at golf. We did not award his skill as a faithful husband."

So then why all the public sniveling (or maybe salivating) over his whining voice mails to a Vegas vixen? Unfortunately I'd say that it's because Tiger doesn't really look like Mike, or Shaq or Kobe or... well you get the picture. He's picturesque. Or at least that's what we, the people who fell for a president that looks a lot like Mr. Woods -- biracial, and maybe bionic -- have decided.

Tiger wears khakis and white gloves to work the green so, ipso facto (abracadabra?), he's a cut above the athletes who get muddy when they hit the turf. Now this isn't to say that the pros have a pass when it comes to cheating, but, come on, there's obviously a higher probability. So why all the shock and awe? I wish I could agree with Lusita Lopez Torregrosa that Tiger's "squeaky clean" image wasn't his "big draw." But how else then can we explain not only his fall (who doesn't love the smell of sex scandal in the morning?) but also the heights from which he plummeted.

Remember when former presidential candidate-turned-VP Joe Biden called his now boss "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking ." Makes you kinda cringe now, huh? Biden's Freudian slip up was the national equivalent of the same joke educated black folk have been laughing and crying about for years--"Oh, he speaks so well!" A "compliment," many of us have been the butt of. And now Mr. Woods is on the business end of that assumption -- that good grammar and grooming make one a good guy.

Yes, Tiger speaks so well and plays so well (maybe a little too well with others) but that doesn't make him a god among lesser golfers, or ballers. Because in the end like many of the men who make their living manipulating balls of various sizes (hmmm...) Tiger got tempted and then tarnished. Maybe now with some of that "speaks so well" sheen rubbed off a bit we can start treating the pro like a regular person.