Tiger Woops

Today, my favorite person is a guy who I don't think I even knew existed before today. Even though the guy is a pro athlete (well, he's a golfer, but that's the same, isn't it?) and even though I do follow sports, I don't think that I'd heard the guy's name before today. But today, after not only hearing the guy's name, but also having heard what he had to say, he's one of my favorite people. That guy is Jesper Parnevik.

Casper Parsnip? What? Who? No. Jesper Parnevik. He is, apparently, a golfer of sorts. He's a pro golfer. And he has a little connection to a one newly discovered adulterer, Tiger Woods. If you've been under a rock since Thanksgiving, it's come out not once, not twice, but three times now that Tiger Woods has cheated on his wife, Elin, with a variety of a lower class of women. Then again, I don't know how high class they're supposed to be when he's the one cheating on his wife. That ain't so high class right there. Let's just say they run in different social circles, shall we? OK, then.

Tiger Woods, up until now, was the epitome of squeaky clean. He's the world's best golfer, probably the world's most recognized athlete, will be the first sports billionaire, has a good looking wife, and the list goes on. But even if you're Tiger Woods all of that stuff doesn't matter so much when the National Enquirer runs a story that claims you have had an affair with some chick that you flew to Australia with you when you were there for the Australian Open and your wife was at home taking care of your two very, very small children. Yeah, it doesn't matter at all. You're just another cheatin' dirtbag.

But for some reason, people (not me) are hesitant to attach that "cheatin' dirtbag" label to Tiger Woods just yet. You know, it's kind of odd. Media sources are totally willing to print stuff that's complete crap, they're totally willing to engage in completely irresponsible journalism, but yet they completely stay away from being subjective or from getting a slew of subjective opinions. Then again, with stuff like this, a lot of folks who should be able to give a subjective opinions, who should be able to state their point of view often don't.

They come up with reasons like "It's none of our business" and....well....that's what you hear the most. Whether it is or isn't any of our business, if you're going to be a public figure, you can't have it both ways. You can't have your life be public when you're fine with it, but then when you're a cheating dirtbag say that you don't want it to be public. Here's an idea: If you're a public figure, what say you just don't cheat on your spouse? What say you just don't act like a dirtbag and then you don't have to worry about watching your image get torched even more than you've already torched it, all right? All right.

But back to my favorite person du jour. This Jesper Parnevik fellow, he is the one who set up Tiger and Tiger's wife, the lovely Elin Nordegren. Apparently, Elin used to be a nanny for the Parneviks and Tiger had wanted to go out with her. It seems that the Parneviks convinced Elin to give the guy a chance. So she did and they ended up getting married and having two children. They've only been married since 2004 and one of Tiger's mistresses claims to have had a 30 month affair with him, so that puts his cheating as starting somewhere around mid-2006. Wow. You couldn't even stay faithful to your wife for more than two-ish years, eh? That's weak. That is so weak. (Oh, and I should also mention that when Tiger was first doing some driving on this chick's course that his wife was only a couple of weeks away from giving birth to their first child. Nice. Good job. That's what every kid wants to know about the integrity of their Dad.)

So Access Hollywood caught up with Jesper and asked him for a comment on the whole Tiger-Woods-is-a-cheating-dirtbag. His reply was awesome. “I feel really sorry for Elin. I would be especially sad about it since I’m kind of — I really feel sorry for Elin — since me and my wife were at fault for hooking her up with him. We probably thought he was a better guy than he is." Do you see why I love that man? That is an awesome thing to say. "We probably thought he was a better guy than he is." Excellent. That's an excellent thing to say because it's pretty obvious that any guy who would cheat on his wife with whom he has two small children is clearly not the great guy that you thought he was when you set him up with your nanny.

What I also like about this Jesper guy is how he feels a slight twinge of responsibility for hooking the two of them up. What I really like about this guy is how he offers Elin a bit of advice. You know, just in case she made the mistake of signing a pre-nup and can't soak him for half of his bazillion dollars that he has. Jesper stated, "I would probably need to apologize to her and hope she uses a driver next time instead of the 3-iron." You, sir, are my hero.

He addressed the privacy thing in the context of the whole situation as well when he said, "It’s a private thing, of course. But when you are the guy he is, the world’s best athlete, you should think more before you do stuff. . . And maybe not just do it, like Nike says.”

You should think more before you do stuff. Those are words to live by, are they not? Well, for some people they are. For upstanding people who are faithful to their spouse and who take their marital vows seriously like Mr. Parnevik seems to, those words make sense. For people like Tiger Woods, who seem to think that they're just above stuff like fidelity and trust and honesty, those words never even enter their minds.

Side note: I need to credit my friend, Stacey, for the title of this post. I only wish I could have thought of it first, but I didn't. Thanks!

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