Photo: News Source
The comment pictured above, first heard on (click here:) NPR's Morning Edition, brought levity to my last day of the work week, Friday. Poor Tiger. I don't actually know how to feel about his return. But, I absolutely loved guest commentator and satirist Brian Unger's hilarious but point-packed take on it, delivered on NPR's All Things Considered, Friday afternoon: "Hey Tiger: Sell Me Shoes, Not Redemption." Says Unger, who helped launch The Daily Show:
"Mr. Woods, you're like Sarah Palin at a Tea Party rally. I can't turn
you off. I can't get you out my life. You don't need therapy. You
need government regulation, the FCC to limit your bandwidth, only after
fining news organizations for their laziness and malpractice."
And then there's my 87-year-old father. The man, whom a few short years ago, was vigorous and robust, but has now mentally and physically deteriorated drasticallly, spending his days in skilled nursing since my mother's death. My oldest sister–who once enjoyed a vibrant award-winning career as a public school teacher, now lives life revolved around taking care of my father and his daily demands. She telephoned me yesterday cackling. She said she had to tell me the latest on Daddy. And, there was a slew.
That morning, she had taken him to the doctor, where he proceeded to demand "a shot of Botox" in each shoulder. Yes, he demanded of the doctor. "I want a shot of Botox in each shoulder, like the ones you gave me in my knees." (He meant cortisone.)….He'd been calling my sister everyday to go up front and complain to those people running this place that the stations they put on his t.v. were just filthy, smutty trash! My sister assured him they were the same stations that were on his television when he lived at home. "No, they are not!" he insisted. My sister said that he watched a soap opera everyday and then proclaimed what filthy smut it was. (Soap operas were one of my parents' proclaimed deadly sins. But in their last years, they both watched them.)
And then, there's Tiger. My father was never a sportsman, except for fishing. He caught a record-sized fish in his later years that garnered him a snapshot in the local paper. I'm sorry I cannot recall the details. A bass–I guess. This big. (I'm holding my hands really far apart.) So, not the sports hound, my father has taken to liking Tiger Woods and is calling my sister everyday to remind her to not let him miss when Tiger plays the Masters. My sister added, that Daddy had decided he liked Tiger because he went on television and repented of his sins. Yes, that earned at least respect in Daddy's book.
I shared the latter with "The Fiance" and he burst out laughing. "That's what I LOVE about Southern religion. They LOVE redemption. Now, you've got to ask and be sincere! If the atonement is sincere, you're redeemed in the eyes of the Lord, and what good Southern Protestant Southern Christian can reject God's absolution of another?! Of course, that's all within the context of Tiger's being Buddhist!" he added, laughing.
