[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of all the blogs.]
Another celebrity bites the moral dust. Is it me or does this seem to happen more frequently? Maybe it’s that the reporting predators are on high alert for fresh meat. Whatever the case, not a week goes by that we don’t read or hear about a celebrity who either kills dogs, has affairs with coworkers or interns, flirts with potential sex partners in bathrooms, or in the extreme, murders his girlfriend/lover/wife, or significant other.
Squeaky-clean Tiger Woods is a sad one for me. I’m not a golf fan but I’ve always liked the handsome young man. He seemed to stand out as one of the good guys with a lovely family and a fabulous career. Golf (on the surface) is a high-class sport. Crisp clean clothes, beautifully manicured lawns, gorgeous club houses, a genteel audience that carefully follows the famous players around the golf course, and strict behavior rules. I don’t care for sports and I don’t follow sports or celebrity athletes, but how can I not know about Tiger Woods? How can anyone not like him? What’s not to like?
When the news broke that he had a car accident at 2:30 in the morning my Spidey sense immediately made me tingle. I don’t watch “entertainment” gossip shows or read about celebrity gossip online or in any other form. I simply don’t care. But a celebrity of the caliber of a Tiger Woods hits every method of mass “news” dissemination so it was unavoidable. Because I’m a participating member of society and don’t have my head in a hole I heard about it. Even though I have tried to avoid follow-up details I have found that almost impossible. I know about the sex text(s) and the cocktail waitress and possible “others.” Yikes.
So now it’s all out there in the world and I am sad about it. Another hero folds under the pressure of his greatness. Now he’s plunged right back down to earth with us ordinary folk. Just another man who can’t keep his pants zipped. Another man with a lovely family. Another man who was too stupid to think he wouldn’t get caught. Another man with an over inflated sense of entitlement. Another man with a giant ego who thought he could do anything and get away with it. After all, it’s happened before and even worse things have happened than an affair with a cocktail waitress. How about a murderer (O.J.), a president who liked blue dresses (Clinton), a senator who tried to pick up a “date” in a public bathroom (Craig) and the list goes on. Those gentlemen DID get away with their bad behavior and for all intents and purposes, except for embarrassment, a pesky criminal trial, and a few days or months of public scrutiny, are happily living their lives much as before. And Tiger will too. This time next year it will be forgotten and replaced by breaking news that the Pope fathered a child who’s living in the San Fernando Valley with his mother, a stripper from Encino.
I had planned on posting a little piece on Rock Hudson and have been working on it for a couple of weeks. When the story about Tiger Woods broke I stopped and thought about it for a while. Rock Hudson also suffered a major hit to his fame and fortune when it was learned (a) he was gay, and (b) he was dying of AIDS. The fact that he announced he was gay was a surprise to most of his fans and at that time considered a fate worse than death. [Actually, he did have a fate worse than death, AIDS.] It took years for everyone to calm down and (a) accept the fact that gays walk among us and have from the beginning of time, and (b) AIDS is not a “gay” disease. AIDS is a worldwide disease that affects humans in a variety of ways. But the real issue was the fact that he was gay. It outraged our self-righteous world and filled the news for weeks.
To this day I don’t really know if Rock Hudson hid the illness (as speculated for years) to prevent the world from learning he was gay or he just preferred a little privacy while he decided what to do about dying. I do know that in the days of Rock Hudson and others of his fame and stature it was necessary to hide many things about their personal lives for their careers to remain strong. Celebrities, for all the glamour, are not allowed to be normal. I’m glad I’m not famous and can go to dinner and visit with my friends and be goofy and make mistakes and that it won’t appear on the evening news or in the newspaper or online.
It’s hard when the celebrities we love fall from grace. Rock Hudson’s news was heartbreaking because he was going to die, but everyone blamed it on the fact he was gay. The unenlightened among us decided to hate him. Just a quick Google turned up the following: More than an estimated 33.2 million people live with the disease worldwide, and it has killed over an estimated 2.1 million people, including more than 330,000 children. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, heterosexuals have the most cases of AIDS with homosexuals next and the remainder a combination of drug users, blood transfusion recipients, and miscellaneous transfers of the disease via accidental needle prick, etc. The biggest reason it spreads and spreads is because people continue to engage in promiscuous and unprotected sex and other unsafe behaviors (drug paraphernalia sharing) then often bring it home to their wives and/or husbands and/or significant others.
I wonder if anyone will hate Tiger? Having sex with a cocktail waitress when you are married with a family and a pristine career is just about as shocking as Rock’s news. I bet Tiger’s life will normalize and he will go on to be a hero once more. Casual sex for Rock was more deadly than Tiger’s. So far. People who play around often end up just like Rock. Or Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson’s wife was tested shortly after his doctor gave him the news and she was cleared. She punched him.
I don’t know if this is true but Magic was rumored to have had hundreds or even over a thousand sexual encounters before and during his marriage. It is also unknown but he has stated he became infected via sex with a woman. I looked around the Internet to see if there were any rumors he may have had sex with a man but I didn’t find any. So for all those who still believe you can only get HIV AIDS if you’re gay, good luck to you in your sexual behaviors.
It only takes one encounter to bring home death and destruction. So far, Tiger is lucky. So far. Wonder if he ever thought about that as he played. Do they ever?
[I’ll post my blog on Rock Hudson next week.]
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
