Behavior: Personal and Professional

Australian man attacks
small plane with machete
to keep wife from leaving.

Tiger Woods is supposed to speak for the first time in months about his personal problems. This event, although it has not yet happened, is being treated by the press as roughly the equivalent of the discovery of gold in the streets of Atlanta. Not only that, some individuals are already suggesting what he will say, what he might say, why he is saying it at the wrong time and the wrong place, whether he is saying it to get revenge on a sponsor that dropped him, whether it should be said at all, whether it will be sincere or not, and on and on. If anyone has suggested he should stop playing golf because of this controversy I have not seen it, and if that is not a question why is there such a fuss being made about it.

This whole business over Tiger’s personal and professional behavior highlights what I think is an interesting question, is there any relationship between one’s personal behavior and their professional behavior? There is another question that might be raised, namely, why is it in a culture that has become progressively less and less prudish over time, there should now be such a concern over the personal behavior of others? This obviously has something to do with the Press which is always desperate for something to keep our minds off whatever is really important at the moment (war, torture, the economy, stuff like that). It is, I think, an interesting situation. Think, for example, of the many examples we have had in recent years of serious misbehaving and the consequences. There is the obvious example of President Clinton, impeached but continuing in office. The scandal over Monica, had it not become public, would have had no effect whatsoever on his professional conduct in office. But because it did become public it obviously interfered with the conduct of government. It was well known that President Kennedy was a notorious womanizer, but in the pre-Clinton days the Press was much less inclined to make it public, and so it seems it had little to do with his professionalism. Is there any reason the personal behavior of important people should become a topic for public consumption? I don’t think so, unless the personal does in fact infringe upon the professional. But this is not an easy question.

For example, how about the Roman Polanski case? Here there was an actual crime committed, a crime for which he should be held accountable. But does this mean we should boycott his movies, or they are any the less fine than they would otherwise have been? Even if he were to go to jail for a time it would not indicate there was any relationship between his personal problem and his talent as a director. What about other less dramatic or important problems. I once read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcock was a mean or sadistic practical joker. I despise practical jokes, especially mean ones. Should I therefore not attend Hitchcock movies? Frank Sinatra was described once as an “obnoxious bully.” I believe he was. Should I not enjoy his singing? It would seem obvious that in cases like this it would be simply up to the individual to decide whether to boycott or not. Wilt Chamberlin once boasted of having had sex with some 2000 women (granted a somewhat ridiculous claim), I don’t recall anyone saying he should not have played basketball. Similarly, Magic Johnston also made boasts about his sexual prowess, no one suggested he should not play basketball. There are cases where the decision to boycott or punish is quite clear. Tanya Harding, for example, had her henchmen try to break her rival, Nancy Kerrigan’s leg so she could not perform on the rink. Here again, there was an actual crime and an act so disgraceful no one would pardon it. Sometimes, especially in the past, even a hint of misbehavior was enough to ruin a person’s life and career, but not often nowadays. Take Governor Sanford, for example, caught up in a blatant scandal involving his adulterous behavior, still Governor. Eliot Spitzer was not so fortunate. John Ensign of Nevada has also eluded any serious penalty for his adulterous (and worse) affair. It seems to me there is seldom any real relationship between a person’s personal behavior and their professional competence, unless, that is, it becomes public. And even when it becomes public it doesn’t necessarily affect performance. You can be pretty sure that if it becomes public it has a much greater chance of affecting performance than otherwise.

Tiger Woods extracurricular sexual behavior seems not to have affected his performance, if you look at his record. If his scandal had not become public would anyone have been the wiser? I doubt it. Will this now significantly affect his performance? I think it might, if only because many, mostly the Press, will never let up on him about it. I do not condone his transgressions in any way. I think they were pretty despicable. But he committed no crime. As undoubtedly the greatest golfer of his generation (quite likely of all time) should he not be allowed to go on pursuing his goal of outdoing Jack Nicholas? Remember, if the Republicans had not established this precedent by attacking Clinton’s personal and private behavior for the first time, we might not have even become aware of these various scandals. Are we better off for knowing? If Tiger wins the Master’s will he be forgiven? As his absence from the tour has made a huge difference in the amount of money generated by the PGA you can rest assured he will reappear, but will he be the Tiger of old or will he have been tamed by the sensationalism of the Press? What used to be the provenience only of the tabloids, in this era of infotainment has become the common obsession of what used to be the mainstream news industry, and there is no longer any right to privacy, or, apparently even common sense or decency.


LKBIQ:
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.
Marlene Dietrich

TILT:
Lobsters exhibit negligible senescence, effectively living forever, barring accidents, capture, injury or disease.