Not by me. By an über liberal feminist blogger at HuffPo, Two Black Role Models Done In By Hubris:
In the past few weeks, the two most famous and arguably most successful black men in America have taken a huge fall. It has become clear that both pro golfer Tiger Woods, just named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, and the American president, Barack Obama, the first black person to lead the country, suffer from a surfeit of hubris which has finally caught up with them. If both men somehow thought they were untouchable, they have been put to right. Both have crashed to earth and it may well be true that they can never recover their earlier status again.
I’m on board for the “hubris” part, but not the focus on race. After all, Obama is not a Cablinasian, and Obama’s problem is ego not skin color. And the HuffPo blogger doesn’t salvage anything by playing the liberal racial pity card:
It is tragic when an icon falls. When a black icon stumbles the tragedy seems doubly problematic. Mike Tyson, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jackson were all at the tops of their fields before revelations that made them less palatable as heroes and less of a role model for young black men.
Drop the race aspect. It’s a distraction.
I’m content saying Tiger threw it all away because of personal demons he needs to address, and Obama is throwing it all away because he seems to believe his own BS. The only thing they have in common is …. nothing that has anything to do with their race.
Rightwingsparkle has some similar thoughts.
Now I’ll turn to reading the HuffPo blogger’s book, Desire:
If we never speak of our deepest desires, we still have them—we have always had them. Here, in this anthology, women who have agreed to reveal their desires are beginning a confession in general. But this beginning is just that. My hope is that you will read the essays here and some of them will resonate with your own desires, or at least inspire you to think about what some of your deeper desires are. I wish for these essays to encourage women everywhere to start speaking up about what they want.
I think the HuffPo blogger should stick to what she knows.
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Comments
Great post thanks for bringing it to my attention. Wow, it's amazing how telling one can be by what they say and how they think. I do not think President Obama thought health care reform, two wars, terrorism and oh yea the failing economy was going to be a walk in the park. So I am having trouble seeing the comparison between he and Tiger. What do these two men being black have to do with anything other then stereotyping?
Jhess: what, exactly, is the stereotype here?
I don't understand any of it. What does color have to do with anything? Are they supposed to be "self-loathing" because they're black? Two years ago she could have written an article about two white guys like George Bush and Ben Rothlesburger. What was the purpose of the article other than to remind us that we should be sensitive to their race and should give them some slack because of it? Talk about racist! Last time I checked they were two full grown accomplished men.
I would rather dig for clams (not in Connecticut though). I'm having trouble breathing the rarified air from Huff Post.
Such nonsense.
And we wonder why Feminism is rendered meaningless?
sigh
Race does have something to do with it, actually a lot. These two gentleman have the misfortune of being blacks who are attractive to influential whites. As a result they've been pushed to the front of the bus and into positions/roles they are unsuited for.
If whites were truly color-blind, Obama and Tiger would've had to work and earn their way into these positions. This experience would've affected their judgment and every action once (and if) the high position was attained.
The sad fact is that there are many blacks who have worked and earned their way into responsible, demanding positions. They have developed good judgment and effective work habits. But because they have a mind of their own and don't speak merely to please a white patron, they're not considered attractive enough to move ahead.
Even if race does indeed figure into it, we can't use either as an effective object lesson, as neither is particularly "black."
Tiger DID work and earn his way into his position–the PGA doesn't take strokes off his score because of his skin color, unlike the Columbia and Harvard admissions departments. That makes Obama and Tiger very different.
(Whether or not hitting a ball with a stick is worthy of fame and fortune…for another day.)
The lesson that should be learned from these two incidents (and OJ Simpson, Michael Jordan, etc) should be to look beyond the skin to the real man before enshrining a black athlete or politician as a role model. Sadly, I don't think the white tastemakers in America are willing to do that, for fear of being called racists.
Yes, Tiger earned it all on his own. Putting (getting the ball in the hole) doesn't lie. He needed to perform and he did. (Suddenly all kinds of possibilites for jokes have popped into my head.)
Obama, on the other hand, is in a completely different category. He's an example of a second order Peter Principle. Not only did he rise to a position for which he was not qualified, he rose at least one level above that. And it was mainly due to white guilt practiced by legions of white liberals. They find it impossible to live up to their professed creed, which is to judge people on their own merits, abilities, and accomplishments. Instead, way too often, they simply fall back on race and use that as the basis for supporting a person or a cause. I think that's what WJ might have been getting at in referring to the HuffPo'ers book – deep down in her innermost being she can't look at black people as simply people. They will always be black first. And from that guilt we get white liberals voting in an underqualified president.
"The only thing they have in common is …. nothing that has anything to do with their race."
I think you meant "the only thing they have in common is their race (or that fraction thereof they share), which has nothing to do with anything relevent to their respective problems."
That and they both play golf a lot.
Both suffer from an overabundance of ego not melanin, period.
When exactly did Tiger Woods become black?
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Dave B wrote:
"Last time I checked they were two full grown accomplished men."
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When exactly did Barack Obama become accomplished?
Tiger's not black – his mother is Thai and his father is 1/2 white and 1/2 black. Tiger is, at best, 1/4 black, but if anything he's "asian". He's been pointing this out for years now.
It's interesting to me, though, how badly some people want him to be black.
Tiger's an excellent golfer, no one can take that away. I'm sure it took plenty of hard work on his part. And, no, the PGA didn't shave points off his scores. This does distinguish him from Obama….to a point…
The really lucrative stuff, the thing that made Tiger really high profile were the endorsements. They were something influential whites pushed him into. For the endorsements to pay off and keep coming, Tiger had to become a whiter-than-white role model in the golfing world. Obviously he's unsuited to this role.
He'd have been better off seeking sponsorship from some prominent rappers, founding an all-black golf league, and endorsing Colt 45 rather than Buick. At least he could be the person he is rather than pretending to be something he isn't.
Of course, Tiger's ego may have led him to believe he could swing it and become something he's not.
Amongst the hypberbole and plain lousy writing, there are also numerous factual errors. One in particular caught my eye:
…the first black man to be famous for a sport other than basketball or football was really who he appeared he was.
Talk about your "unconscious" racial stereotyping!
Let's see: Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Joe Louis, Clay/Ali…all of whom were as "famous" as Woods, at least for awhile, even if they didn't get as many ad contracts. Besides being a poor writer, it seems she's not much of a sports fan or historian, either.
No response from JHess? Disappointing.
But since Tiger is only 1/4 black… shouldn't the polling drop be smoothed with a 25% fudge factor?
Call it… Golf-a-gate.
Warhight – It would be hard to quantify, but "all of whom were as "famous" as Woods, at least for awhile," is a highly debatable statement. Especially since the length of the fame is important in making someone truly iconic. Ali is probably the only one who is both the best at what he did and for a long time, in addition to having popular culture recognize him as such.