The Triple Standard Replaces the Double Standard: The Tiger Woods Example

Most people are familiar with the Double Standard concept. If you are not, then I suppose you are either one of the many successful products of our educational system, or you are oblivious to the world around you. [I won’t slip in the obvious Samuel Clemens’ reference here.] In consideration of the membership rolls that these two groups represent, I feel obligated to provide a scant illumination. A Double Standard is a set of principles establishing different provisions for one group than for another; for example: having different rules for men versus women, native-born versus foreign-born citizens, blacks (or other racial group) versus whites (or other racial group, no redundancy allowed), or the wealthy versus the not-wealthy.

Double Standards seem to be a constant phenomenon in societies. Even where the society espouses views or even laws of equality for individuals regardless of which group someone belongs in, there is often a dissonance between the views/laws and the practices. In our society, we have been struggling with Double Standard problems since even before the founding of our nation. One might say that the Declaration of Independence is the original statement of America’s principle against letting a people be treated by a Government as an under-privileged class in their own society. This is true whether the people constitute the bulk of the population or a smaller group within that population.

I suspect that everyone can recount any number of stories where they see someone(s) being treated differently than they think they would be treated in the same circumstances. Usually, you recall that the person(s) is receiving a significantly better form of treatment than you would receive. On rare occasions, there are a few people who are actually aware that they would have received the better treatment. Let’s think CEOs of Financial or Banking corporations during the current economic catastrophe. You know, where the CEOs got big bonuses after having failed spectacularly in the very arena that these CEOs are the ‘most talented and gifted’ individuals that cannot be easily replaced if we don’t give them big bundles of cash. Although we never seem to have a lack of qualified candidates when someone is replaced, but that is another story.

But it is no longer true that we have Double Standards in America. We have Triple Standards today. The third set of principles have evolved to apply to those individuals who are celebrities, media sensations, and well-known authority figures (think: politician, religious notables, the ‘well connected’, …). The most recent example is Tiger Woods. Tiger is the Bill Gates or Warren Buffet of sports’ celebrities. Anything that happens in Tiger’s life is instantly a media event. And oddly enough the more divorced from Golf the events are, the greater the public interest and media attention. If the incident is personal, and better yet if it is ‘scandalous’, and news and media services will focus on this story as if it is the most salient and vitally important item of the century. And here is where the Third Standard comes in.

Tiger is not engaged in a golf tournament or any related sporting event. He is not participating in any advertising or endorsement activity, nor is he helping in a charitable or public service campaign. Tiger is, well he is just living his life at home with his family. But because he is a celebrity, Tiger is treated to the insane and excessive scrutiny of the media, as if it is critical to everyone else’s life that we know everything about this inane event in lurid details. If we applied the same intensity of attention and interest to world, societal, or our own problems; many of these problems would be resolved or reduced in significance.

Compounding the dysfunctional attention we impart to Tiger’s life, we then fixate upon the really relevant issues of the day: Should Tiger’s sponsors terminate their business relationships with Tiger? The concern is evidently because Tiger has engaged in activities that some judge to be immoral, wrong, unacceptable, or detrimental to those who see him as a role-model. The public divides itself in groups that want Tiger to be treated according to some principle that is not only different than the principle that would be applied to us or to the principle for members of the other Double Standard group.

The Third Standard principles are created by the media, by the public, and by the interest groups that can profit in some manner from these distracting events. We obsess on whether we approve of the punishment the offender is or is not receiving. We compulsively place this issue ahead of our own needs and lives. But we do not choose to treat Tiger or any of the other celebrities du jour in the same way that we would treat others or they would treat us.

And where is the fault? We allow the special Third Standard treatment of such celebrities. We buy products and pay for tickets to support these celebrities. We accept the media’s coverage of these events on an equal basis with news items of greater relevance to our lives. If you don’t like the life-style of one of your celebrities, then you control the one thing that makes them a celebrity: the money you give them. Don’t be irate, don’t demand that others do something to address your issue; do it yourself.