Tiger, Tiger, who once burned bright

The shattered life of a golfing idol

Michael Cook | May 30 2017 | comment

Somebody has to stand up for Tiger Woods. No one else has, so I will.

He was arrested last night and charged with driving under the influence. A mug shot of the golf legend appeared in newspapers and website across the globe: his eyes puffy, his hairline receding, his face unshaven, his expression glum. Sports journalists are eager to chip in with personal advice: “Tiger Woods needs to focus on his life, not golf” etc.

I’m not going to psychoanalyse Tiger. He wrecked his career with the revelation of serial infidelity and his marriage break-up in 2009. Then came ill-health, operations, prescription drugs, a dying career. But it’s not true that he has only himself to blame.

Celebrities like Tiger Woods hold up a mirror to society. Real investigative journalists would ask not only how to whip Tiger into shape, but how to heal the society in which he lives.

His life derailed when his marriage failed. But what chance did he have of combining the life of a happy husband and dad and a career as a celebrity if the culture around him is toxic to the very idea of traditional marriage? He had been taught how to be a celebrity, but not how to be a responsible family man.

Now that he is divorced and separated from his kids, Tiger is reprising the life of many divorced men: slovenly, miserable, unhappy and unhealthy. He just happens to have a lot more money than they could ever dream of.

We ought to feel sorry for this shattered idol. Sure, he is the captain of his fate, but he has been sailing with a faulty compass and falsified charts. No wonder his life is close to being shipwrecked.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet

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May 31, 2017

There is one fact about euthanasia which ought to be front and centre in debates, wherever they take place. Nearly everyone who requests it is not suffering from unbearable pain.

As one of the leading bioethicists in the United States, Ezekiel Emanuel, points out, existential angst is the main reason. “We should end the focus on the media frenzy about euthanasia and PAS [physician-assisted suicide] as if it were the panacea to improving end-of-life care,” he says. And Dr Emanuel, the brother of President Obama’s one-time chief-of-staff, is not in the pro-life camp.

This finding has been confirmed again and again. As Xavier Symons reports in today’s issue of MercatorNet, most of the victims of Canada’s new euthanasia legislation are affluent and educated and dread losing their autonomy.

If euthanasia is “needed” because people are lonely and dependent, surely the solution is solidarity and companionship, rather than a lethal injection.