Friday morning, at about 10 o’clock, the world came to a screeching halt. Every major television station interrupted scheduled programming for a “Breaking News Report”. When it happened, my first guesses were that there had been some new development in the story of the early morning shooting that had occurred at Northern Illinois University, or maybe another Al Qaeda operative had been discovered. But instead, the big emergency turned out to be Tiger Woods giving his apologies for sleeping around while married.
What bothers me about this sort of thing is that by interrupting the regular programming on multiple channels in order to let Tiger Woods give his speech, the television networks were basically just giving attention to someone who clearly doesn’t deserve it. Normally, press conferences that are shown live on T.V. are given by political leaders and executives of major corporations that employ millions of people. These things are shown on T.V. as they occur because they affect a large percentage of the population. Granted, Tiger Woods’ sex life seems to affect a large percentage of the population as well, considering how many mistresses he had, but you get my point here.
Tiger Woods isn’t the only one lately who’s been getting attention he doesn’t deserve. Rahm Emanuel managed to get himself a lot of extra publicity by being unprofessional and irresponsible when he referred to Democratic lawmakers as being “******* retarded”. And Sarah Palin, who all but demanded that Barack Obama fire Rahm Emanuel for having made this comment, also received additional publicity. While I think it’s best that voters know exactly how immature Rahm Emanuel is, I also think that a big part of the reason why Sarah Palin brought this issue to the attention of the public is because it made her look better than most of her other publicity stunts have, which could make people more likely to vote for her if she decides to run for President in the future.
Additionally, when John Mayer made comments that were not only racist but also condescendingly sexual about how he wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a Black woman, he was clearly just trying to get attention from the media. If the media had really thought that his comments were inappropriate, then his comments never should have been publicized. All that happened was that John Mayer got exactly what he wanted: attention. Of course this story quickly became old news, but it seems like now, there’s a constant discussion about whether or not it is racist to say that you would only date people of certain ethnicities. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve been told many times by White people that their “type” is people with blond hair and blue eyes, and I’ve never thought of it as being racist. Whether we realize it or not, by discussing issues related to the comments celebrities make in order to receive more publicity than they already get, we’re only encouraging them to continue to behave irresponsibly.
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I am very surprised that major television stations would direct so much attention to Tiger Woods. I am not sure if Tiger Woods deserves the attention or not but either way, why would this be characterized as a “Breaking News Report”? Tiger Woods’ sex life should definitely not be a topic of discussion in people’s homes. Families should be talking about important events in the news or personal issues not who had how many mistresses and what he did. I do also think it is sad that other famous individuals are spending their time and efforts trying to get attention from the media for stupid things they do and say. As mentioned, Rahm Emanuel is one very good example of this. Lastly about John Mayer, I also think his comments should not have been publicized but unfortunately that is the way of the media. I read a little bit about this and learned that he was drunk when he had that interview and he later apologized for his actions in the middle of one of his concerts. However, none of this would have been necessary if he had not been looking for attention. I agree with this posting and I also think that we are part of the cause celebrities seek to continue behaving irresponsibly in our society.
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