Why SHOULD Americans care about the Tiger Woods story?

  The biggest news of the week is not the news of Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan and it is not the news of Climategate– although those stories are much more important, the news of the week is the revelation that Tiger Woods is a lying, cheating scumbag and as the revelations keep on pouring in Americans can not get enough of the Tiger Woods story.

  The question that I have is not WHY do Americans care about the Tiger Woods story? The question that I have is why SHOULD Americans care about the Tiger Woods story.

  I know why many Americans care about the Tiger Woods story. It is because many Americans are celebrity obsessed. In today’s reality television, American Idol based, instant gratification world Americans care more about gossip and trivial issues than they do about issues that can affect not only us but our future generation. If two competing stations run different stories, with one station focusing on Tiger Woods and the other station focusing on Afghanistan or Climategate which station do you think will win the ratings war. The station running the Tiger Woods story, of course.

  So I will now attempt to answer my biggest question in the Tiger Woods story; why should Americans care about this story? The answer is simple; because the Tiger Woods story is a very high profile example of the lack of morals and social de-evolution in family values that is becoming more and more common in the younger generations in this country as time goes on.

  Tiger Woods, if he was so inclined to be this promiscuous should never have gotten married in the first place. But the fact that he did decide to choose a woman to marry and bear his children tells me that his only reason to marry in the first place was to have a baby momma to raise his offspring while he was out there gallivanting across the world.

  My point is that the family structure in the United States has been eroded over the years, and I think that Tiger Woods’s mindset is a pretty good illustration of the point that I am trying to make.

  Over the course of time family values in this country have eroded, welfare programs have replaced the father figure in many single parent homes and the government is gaining more control over the way a parent is allowed to raise their children.

  We have seen over and over again with the younger generation’s men who have accidentally impregnated their girlfriends, instead of marrying them and trying to be a provider and a father, abandon the woman who is then forced to look to the state to provide for her family as the father is absent. Be honest, most of us know somebody who has broken up with a girl once she became “in the family way.” There was a time when the man would marry the woman and raise the child together in a family setting.

  This is much more common than it was twenty or even ten years ago. There was a time when a man felt a responsibility and an obligation tot take care of and provide for his child but those times are gone forever.

  Tiger Woods may be able to provide financially for his children, that is not what I am talking about here. Being a father and a good husband is obviously not just contingent on providing financial security, it is being there for your children and setting the best example that you can for them. Being a father is about teaching your children morals and right from wrong. But Tiger Woods was too selfish to provide the basic teachings that a father has an obligation to provide. By this I do not mean that he did not want to teach his children right from wrong but rather that his actions speak louder than his words.

   He was more interested in instant gratification than in the gratification of being a good husband. In the long run a father will have the gratification of knowing that he raised good, decent children. That gratification may not be instant but it is much more gratifying and important than the selfish, instant gratification that he was seeking.

    I know that I haven’t said what I wanted to say as clearly as I would have liked but my basic point is that there is a moral decay and an erosion of family values in this country and Tiger Woods exemplifies it. And that is why Americans SHOULD care about the Tiger Woods Story.