When Golf Channel commentator Kelly Tilghman joked on-air during the second round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship that ambitious young players should "lynch (Tiger Woods) in a back alley," she set off yet another incidence of the stagecraft that passes for racial discourse in this country, with a tragic moment followed by the requisite scenes of accusation, remorse and demands for the protagonist's head, all backed by a chorus of conflicting voices echoing to the rafters.
There were plenty of soliloquies but distressingly little dialogue and no catharsis. For her part Tilghman was held accountable through a public scolding by the punditocracy and a two-week suspension by her employer; but for me, there's another, far more interesting character in this drama — Tiger Woods.
For Woods the controversy over the use of the word lynch has graver implications, and not for the reasons one might think (especially since the last year has brought a rash of incidents in which nooses were placed in buildings and schoolyards across America to reinforce campaigns of hate, fear and intimidation).
Whether Woods likes it or not, the episode serves to remind him, and everyone else, that regardless of how he attempts to transcend race with his accomplishments on the golf course, he can never fully escape his status as a person of color.
Much the way the fried-chicken-and-collard-greens joke Fuzzy Zoeller made at the 1997 Masters pushed Woods into the role of African-American Golfer, Tilghman's gaffe reinforces his heritage and its burdens, lumping Tiger in with the estimated 5,000 men who were lynched in America between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement of the '60s.
He can continue to call himself Cablinasian — a word he invented to represent his mixed racial makeup of Caucasian, black and Asian. But, significantly, when it came time to decide if and how Tilghman would be punished, it was a leader from black America, Al Sharpton, who took it upon himself to represent Woods and other blacks by calling for Tilghman's firing.
For his part Tiger was quick to forgive and forget, saying through his agent, Mark Steinberg, that the incident was a "nonissue" and later releasing a statement that said, "Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill intent in her comments."
No kidding.
It's obvious that Tilghman meant no offense — hers was a crime of terminal glibness, not racism.
The more pertinent question is: Why didn't Woods take offense?
Maybe it was because last week also brought news that Woods made an estimated $100 million in endorsements in 2007, an income derived from his stature as the brightest star in the largely white, corporate-friendly world of golf and not as a minority agitating for social justice.
That's why the implication of Tilghman's words, like that of Zoeller's before them, may be more alarming to Woods than her poor judgment.
In the end Tilghman was brought down by her failure to grasp or respect the undercurrent of meaning attached to the L word. But isn't Woods guilty of the same thing? By so blithely dismissing the incident, isn't he contributing to the offense?
Woods doesn't have to become a civil-rights spokesman, but he could have at least acknowledged that he understands the meaning of the word, and how powerful and hurtful it remains.
In other words, wouldn't it be nice if for once Woods saw himself as the heir not only to Jack Nicklaus but also to Jackie Robinson?
