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<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Tiger blackened by his all-white trophy cupboard</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">India Knight</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:9pt;"><font face="Verdana">At some point you notice that all the women Tiger Woods has slept with since marrying his Swedish wife in 2004 have been white. And why shouldn’t they be? If Woods fancies white women more than not-white women — well, that’s his thing, in the way that Rod Stewart’s is leggy blondes. And all my boyfriends have been Chinese — 20 boyfriends, two husbands. No, not really (only one). But what did you think when you read that sentence? Because if I read it, I’d think, “Chinese boyfriends are nice, but seriously? That’s more like a symptom than a sexual preference.” Woods does not consider himself African-American but “Cablinasian”, a mixture of Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian; he is none the less viewed by most people as “black”. Whether black people “should” or “shouldn’t” sleep with white people is a hot potato — I don’t mean just because of gun-toting, redneck loonies in the southern United States, but rather because of the views of intelligent, educated black people who have read their Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. Put reductively, the idea is that if you’re going to celebrate your heritage and be proud of who you are — slave ancestry, misery, centuries of oppression and all — then you might want to get together with someone like you. Some might — and do — argue that it is a question of duty.

Eugene Robinson, an African-American columnist for The Washington Post, wrote last week of “Tiger’s validation complex”.

“What’s with the whole Barbie thing?” he asked. “This may be the most interesting aspect of the whole Tiger Woods story — and one of the most disappointing. He seems to have been bent on proving to himself that he could have any woman he wanted. But from the evidence, his aim wasn’t variety but some kind of validation [. . .] “If adultery is really about the power and satisfaction of conquest, Woods’s self-esteem was apparently only boosted by bedding the kind of woman he thought other men lusted after — the ‘playmate of the month’ type that Hugh Hefner turned into the American gold standard. But the world is full of beautiful women of all colours, shapes and sizes — some with short hair or almond eyes, some with broad noses, some with yellow or brown skin. Woods appears to have bought into an ‘official’ standard of beauty that is so conventional as to be almost oppressive.”

I used to think that the only interesting thing about Woods was his studiedly dull personality, which has occasionally caused me to wonder whether he really was that boring or whether it was a necessity — the equivalent of changing your name from Rubenstein to Ruby so you can join the country club, the kind of ugly sacrifice often involved in the outsider’s stab at “acceptance”. Maybe he made himself boring on purpose, I’d think: it was only in 1955 that Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was murdered in Money, Mississippi, for whistling at a white woman, an event that played its part in the civil rights movement. The Professional Golf Association of America maintained its all-white status until 1961.

Woods is not only the world No 1 and the highest-earning sportsman but is also credited with drawing the largest television audiences in golf history and with bringing the game to a new audience (young, black). In the world of sport, his behaviour and his voluble, Janet-and-John style devotion to his family — his wife, Elin Nordegren, and their two young children, Sam and Charlie — marked him out as unusual: no drug-fuelled flip-outs or gang-bangs here. The whole thing seemed so American dream that it occasionally looked a bit unreal. Which it was.

Sportsmen cock up all the time and we generally go: “Oh dear.” What has made Woods’s story so compelling is the added frisson of race: to put it bluntly, he has stopped being viewed as a white man who happens to have black skin (“one of us”) and has hurled himself back into the pit of stereotypes so many people are still, alas, fond of: “one of them”, a black man with a varied and insatiable sexual appetite, coming into his nickname at last and making it a whole lot less cuddly.

And, as I was saying, the women are all white. I don’t wish to wade any deeper into that particular race pit but in October, Keith Bardwell, a Louisiana justice of the peace, refused to issue a mixed-race couple with a marriage licence out of “concern” for any children they might have. “I’m not a racist,” he said. “I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way.”

You can tell a lot about someone by looking at their archetypes. When I was in my teens, my father had a friend in Brussels who slept only with black women. They were inevitably Congolese, the Congo being a former Belgian colony. The first of these girlfriends that I met made me feel pleased that my dad’s friend wasn’t a bigot; the third was, “Ah, okay”; the 20th was, “Not terribly imaginative, is it?” This was followed by my wondering whether he felt he should personally atone for Leopold II’s atrocities, or whether he had weird colonial fantasies. I suspect the latter, though who knows: technically there ought to be nothing strange about only ever fancying one type. But as someone with mixed parentage myself I find it ... odd. It’s like having all the food in the world at your disposal and eating only crisps. Why?

It has been argued by people who think about this topic more than I do that a white girlfriend is the ultimate “trophy”, kind of (sorry about my cultural references) like in Shirley Conran’s novel Lace when Prince Abdullah, who is “foreign”, explains that the reason he sleeps with everyone’s white girlfriends is not because he especially desires them, but because he’s rich and powerful and therefore he can. Oh, and because it irritates the boys who were mean to him at school.

Woods was reared by his father to be a champion. There’s footage of him on YouTube playing golf aged two. His hard work got him everything: beautiful wife, beautiful kids, beautiful houses, world No 1, more money than anyone would know what to do with. And trophies. Lots and lots of trophies made of metal. It would be a terrible shame if he has thrown them all away in exchange for human ones.

+ Vision Express, the chain of opticians, is to start selling monocles following a surge in demand. They will cost £50 and come in a pouch, with a string to put around the wearer’s neck. “It’s one of those inexplicable fashion things,” Vision’s chief executive said last week. “We’ve had dozens of requests from customers in the past few months, so we thought we’d bring back the monocle on a trial basis. We’re as puzzled as anyone by the interest.” Presumably Vision Express wouldn’t start producing monocles on a whim, or for publicity purposes, so we must assume that there are young people out there absolutely dying to make like Bertie Wooster.

I was thinking how odd this was and then I remembered that the streets of fashionable Shoreditch, east London, are littered with young people wearing Barbours, strings of pearls and — spotted last week — those über-Sloane pie-crust collars. I find it too mind-boggling to analyse — let’s just say said young people weren’t on the way back from a weekend at the ancestral pile — but it rather cheers me up. Being a Hooray may be unhelpful if you’re a politician, but out there on the street it’s never been more fashionable.

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<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article6954553.ece</font></b></span></p>

Tiger Woods: I was unfaithful, I had affairs, I cheated

Tiger Woods today issued a humiliating apology for his serial infidelity after three months of silence.

"I was unfaithful, I had affairs, I cheated," the world's number 1 golfer said, "I'm the only person to blame."

"I convinced myself that normal rules did not apply. I thought only about myself... I was wrong."

Woods, 34, said that he may return to golf this year but has not set a date for his comeback.

He has been out of the public eye since crashing his car into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his Florida home in November last year and subsequent revelations about numerous affairs.

Surrounded by a small group of "friends, colleagues and close associates" among whom was Arnold Palmer, the golfer gave the statement at PGA Tour headquarters in Florida. It was broadcast on all major television networks in the US.

"I would ask for your help, I would ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again," he said.

Since the 14-time major champion was revealed to have been unfaithful speculation has raged over whether he would return to competition and renew his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus' record 18 major titles

"I do plan to return to golf one day I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out it will be this year but when I do return I need to make my behaviour more respectful of the game.... I look forward to seeing my fellow players on the course," he said.

"I'm deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behaviour."

Reading from a statement, an at times emotional Woods said: "Every one of you has good reason to be critical of me."

"I thought that I had worked hard my entire life... I felt that I was entitled to all the temptations... I was wrong, I was foolish, the same boundaries that apply to everyone else apply to me. I brought this shame upon myself, I hurt my wife, my kids my mother."

Fame and fortune had made "temptations" easy to come across he admitted in a repeated apology.

His wife Elin Nordegren had pointed out to him that his apology must be matched by a change in his behaviour, he said. "We have a lot to discuss however what we say to each other will remain between the two of us."

He dismissed reports that his wife had attacked him with a golf club on the night of the car crash that led to the discovery of his affairs, adding:

"There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage, ever."

He added: "It's up to me to start living a life of integrity.

"It's hard to admit that I need help but I do."

No questions were allowed and only a hand-picked group of journalists were allowed into the room.

The golf writers association of America refused their invitations saying the restrictions were not what they expected from a news conference.

Woods had initially denied infidelity and only said he was sorry for "indiscretions".

But a string of allegations from more than a dozen women who said they had slept with him, including a socialite, an escort, a pancake waitress and a porn star, forced the golfer to apologise to his wife and two children and admit he was addicted to sex with women other than his wife.

Lucrative contracts with sponsors, including Gillette and Accenture were terminated after the scandal which damaged the billionaire's carefully crafted squeaky clean image.

"My behaviour has caused considerable worry to my business partners," he said.

He is believed to have spent six weeks being treated for sex addiction in a clinic in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

"I've got a long way to go," he said but added that he was now taking the "first steps in the right direction". He will return to the clinic tomorrow after a week-long break from the clinic visiting his wife and children. The golfer's five-year marriage to the Swedish ex-model was put in jeopardy by the scandal and the golfer refused to say whether the couple would stay together.

"I understand people have questions... I understand people want to know whether Elin and I will remain together. As far as I'm concerned everyone of those questions is a matter between Elin and me, these are issues between a man and wife."

The golfer, who looked visibly moved as he hugged his mother Kultida Woods after the statement, said he had strayed from the path of Buddhism which she had brought him up to believe in and the belief was helping him in his recovery.

"I need to recover my balance, my centre, so I can save the things most important to me, my marriage and children," he said.

At the start of December Woods announced he would be taking an indefinite break from the golfing circuit. His decision to make his first public comments today was criticised by some in the golfing world because it has taken the spotlight off the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Arizona.

http://www.timesonli...icle7033719.ece

Edited February 19, 201015 yr by Sylph

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2010/08/elin-nordegren-tiger-woods-divorce-people/1