The Other Women Want Apologies

Now, I expected that there would be a little bit of talk from folks after Tiger Woods's apology. Mostly I figured that it would be people discussing whether or not he was sincere or not. What I wanted to hear was people explaining why he chose that particular moment to "apologize" or whatever you want to call it. I mean, he wasn't announcing that he was returning to golf. There hadn't been any public developments that anyone was aware of. It was just out of the blue. But of course, since that's a legitimate question, most of the mainstream media didn't address that. Shocking, I know. Aside from that, while I did expect to hear stuff like I described above, what I did not expect to hear were complaints....from the women that he was sleeping with.

That's right. Tiger Woods's whores (I call 'em whores, some call them mistresses) are upset that he did not publicly apologize to THEM during his little speech on Friday. Wait. What now?

Correct. At least two of the mistress-y whores wanted an apology. First up we have Jamie Jungers. She went on E! Online and talked to some dude who I had never seen before and said that she felt that he should have addressed not her in particular, but all of the women that he slept with (I guess that would include his wife, but it's hard to say). According to the article over at The Huffington Post, since she claims to have slept with Tiger on the night that his father died, she "...did not hesitate to reference Earl Woods' passing. "I've seen his face and his emotions when his father died and this was different.... I'm not going to call him a liar but...he's playing that card." Well, she might be right, but she's not right in the way that she thinks that she's right.

See, one's emotions are going to be different on the night that someone, say their father, dies than they are going to be when they are standing behind a podium and blathering on about how sorry they are for something. I'm sure his emotions were different. So I don't know what card he could possibly be playing. That one is definitely a head scratcher.

The other head scratcher is her acting as if she has somehow been victimized by all of this. She claims in the E! clip "If it were up to me, I never would have done it to begin with, but I was young and stupid." Young and stupid aside, I'm pretty sure that it was always up to her. I'm pretty sure that no one forced her to sleep with the world's best golfer. Pretty sure of that.

The other disgruntled mistress is Veronica Siwik Daniels, also known as Jocelyn James. She has to go by a different name for all of the porn that she films. (Oh, that's right. That Tiger hooked up with the classy ones.) Ms. James has managed to get herself hooked up with the most despicable person on the planet, attorney Gloria Allred. Gloria Allred is like the queen of the publicity chasers. If there is an incident that is even the slightest bit in the public eye, mark my words that you will find Gloria Allred trying to weasel her way into it somehow. She's just a horrible, horrible human being. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't have a human soul.

Gloria Allred held her own little press conference after Tiger's. Again, over at The Huffington Post, we learn that Gloria Allred said that "I just watched Tiger Woods' apology on television, and he said that many people believed in him. He also said he wanted to make amends. He did not apologize by name to my client, Veronica, and I ask, why no apology?"

If you really have to ask "Why no apology?", then you're dumber than I thought. What is he going to apologize to these women for exactly? For lying to them? I'm sorry but if you're having an affair with someone who is married, can you really believe anything that they say? After all, they have no problem lying to and cheating on their spouse. Why would anyone expect that it would be any different with the person who is the cheatee? You wouldn't. Well, they did, so I guess I should have wrote that they shouldn't.

I find it amazing that these women want an apology from Tiger Woods. An apology for what now? For not being the only person that he was cheating on his wife with? That sounds like an odd apology to demand. Do they expect an apology because he told them that he loved them and only wanted to be with them? Please. What else was he going to say? "You're just one in a very long line of sluts."? I don't think that would have gone over very well.

People are amazing. So many people just expect that they should have people feel sorry for them when they're the ones who got themselves into whatever mess they're in. In the case of these women, the only difference between them and other women that sleep with married men is that the other women don't have a public platform to stand behind and cry about how hurt they are. Other than that, other than these women being able to let the whole world know that they feel that they were wronged, there's no difference.

Say, ladies? How do you think Tiger's wife would have felt about him apologizing to y'all? I'm guessing that wouldn't have gone over very well. And on top of that, he's never going to apologize to y'all because he never cared about you in the first place. Why apologize for something you don't care about? Harsh? Perhaps. But it seems like the truth. Get over it ladies. Go find some NBA player to sleep with.

Some Apology

And the Tiger Woods apology has happened! It was pretty much like I expected it would be. (Did I call it that there would be a podium in front of a curtain or what?!) The man yammered on for about 12 minutes. That is, if you can call talking in a robotic voice and reading from a script "yammering".

Naturally, there were several things about this that bothered me. Bothered. Annoyed. Tomato. Tomahto. Whatever. First of all, he wasn't taking any questions. I understand that. But I also understand that I don't like a "press conference" when the "press" can't actually do what their name implies, namely "press" the individual to elaborate. Well, according to the folks over at 10Connect.com the PGA Tour commissioner, a one Tim Finchem said that Tiger "...had interacted with reporters some 1,100 times during his pro golf career. When Tiger is ready to return to golf, he will return to the habit of talking with journalists." Um, yeah. That's not the same as talking to journalists who want to know more about your duping the public into believing that you were some squeaky clean family guy who could do no wrong. If you're not going to be taking any questions, then why have the reporters there in the first place? The whole thing was streamed live to the world as it was. It's not like the reporters were getting anything that we, the gawking public, were not.

That leads into my second annoyance with this process. Why did all major networks break into this event and use their "something terrible has happened" voice as if this was a serious matter? Sure, we're interested. I won't deny that. But did they really need to use the "Breaking News" screen and act as if we're all waiting for President Barry to step out and announce that we just annihilated Iran? I don't think we need to do that for a scumbag golfer who cheated on his wife with every cocktail waitress within arms length. (I'm assuming it was arms length. It could have been something else.)

Third, I can't stand things that are scripted. I mean, really scripted. Not only was he reading from two separate sheets of paper, he was moving his hand down the paper as he talked, presumedly as to not lose his place. I don't know that it takes two pages of fluff to say "I'm a dirtbag and I'm sorry I got caught."

I don't think that he was sincere. He was way too robotic and he used way too many scripted phrases that are supposed to indicate being sorry. If he had stood up there and just said, "I suck", that would have been better. The video is below. Judge for yourself.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Sorry, Sorry Tiger Woods

Rumor has it that Tiger Woods is set to come out of his self imposed exile from the world (and from all cocktail waitresses, apparently) and issue a "public apology". This won't be a statement read by someone else, though I have to believe that it will be a statement which has been crafted by someone else. My assumption is that Tiger wants to return to playing golf and there is no way that he is going to be able to do so without saying something more about his "transgressions" (ie, screwing everything in a Waffle House with two legs and a skirt, though the two legs didn't seem like a requirement that was set in stone or anything).

There are very few things that I like about the public apology. First of all, we all know that you didn't write it. We all know that you're just reading words that someone else crafted. Expecting us to believe that those are real words from deep within whatever amount of a heart that you actually possess is rather insulting. We're not idiots. Granted, overall, there aren't a whole lot of shining bulbs on the tree. But we're far from dim.

Second, I don't like how these public apologies are always one way. The wrongdoer comes out, blathers on about something, doesn't take questions, and then departs, usually through some large curtain. (Where do they get those apology curtains anyway? I'm guessing the same place they get the apology podiums and the apology lecterns.) I don't know that public apologies, if they're intended to be sincere, should be any different than private apologies.

Let's really use our imaginations here and assume that I am married to some guy. (I realize that is quite a stretch, but making crap up is half of the fun here, so stick with me!) And let's say that I find out that the guy I married has a seemingly insatiable thirst for dalliances with cocktail waitresses and porn stars (Internet or otherwise). After I crack him in the face with a 9-iron and cause him to attempt to flee from our Florida compound in his SUV, we separate to let things cool off for a while. Then he wants to apologize. Now, I realize that any sane person would tell this guy to go do to himself what he has been doing to all of those bimbos. But, let's say that I decide I'll listen to his apology. He apologizes and then right as I'm getting ready to ask him some questions about what he's just said, he stands up and says, "Sorry, babe. No questions." And then he walks off.

Um, no. That's not how it works. And that is why I hate the public apology. I am a firm believer that an apology is not on the terms of the one who is apologizing. The apology is on the terms of the one who has been screwed over. And for this particular sort of apology, the one who has been screwed over is the public. Granted, the public was rather gullible and allowed itself to be screwed over, but that doesn't really give someone else the go ahead to start the screwing.

See, this whole thing wouldn't be that big of a deal if Tiger hadn't promoted himself as being someone completely different than he was. That's why the Charlie Sheen ordeal isn't getting a lot of press like this Tiger thing is. I mean, seriously, Charlie Sheen gets arrested on Christmas Day for allegedly holding a knife to his wife's throat and then she subsequently checks herself into a rehab clinic for a crack addiction. Holy crap. That makes the fracas over at Tiger Woods's place seem like Thanksgiving at my place (during which no one was arrested, on drugs, holding others at knifepoint or cracked over the head with a 3-wood). But Charlie Sheen has never (to my knowledge) promoted himself as a squeaky clean guy with a squeaky clean image. That's why there is the uproar (pardon the pun) with Tiger. He made us all believe that he was squeaky clean. And now we're supposed to accept his apology, no questions asked? Screw you. Oh, wait. Someone already did. Never mind. Poor choice of words. You know what I meant.

I'd really like it if one of these public apologies would be on the same terms as private apologies are. You know, with all of the questions by the apolgizee for the apologizer at the end of said apology, because I'd really appreciate someone being asked "Why are you apologizing?" Frankly, I'd rather have someone be sorry than say sorry. I also wouldn't mind hearing the answer to "Why did you lie to us? Couldn't you have just done the right thing instead?" But I'd also really like to have them be asked, "Why should we believe that you're sorry?" Because I'm guessing that the majority of the time, if not every time, they're not sorry for what they did. They're sorry that they got caught. They're sorry that their carefully crafted life which they had previously enjoyed so much is no more. They're sorry that they have to deal with stuff. But I think that they're rarely sorry they did what they did.

If someone comes out on their own before being outed by a tabloid or a newspaper (that is, provided that there's a newspaper out there that still does reporting and stuff like that) and admits their own screwups before anyone had ever found out about them, that might indicate sorry. Then again, I don't foresee that happening because why admit something that no one knows about? Well, if you're sorry about what you've done, you do. I guess.

If Tiger doesn't like the public scrutiny, you know what? He doesn't have to deal with it. There is not one thing in this entire world that is making him be a pro golfer. I'd hazard a guess that he has more money than he can spend in this lifetime. (And he's going to have a heck of a lot more money now that he isn't paying off Perkins waitresses to keep quiet about their torrid affairs.) If he doesn't like it, if any of these public figures don't like it, there's a very simple solution. Stop being a public figure. Then you'll have all of the privacy you want and you can be as big of a pig and as big of an a-hole as you want. Enjoy.