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Why do we tear our favorite people-our stars--apart and eat their flesh? And why do we focus on their sexual transgressions? When we're searching the web or the newsstand for more "meaningful" things, why do we drop everything if we see a juicy new revelation on Tiger Woods' sex life?
Our fixation on sex makes sense. We are a genome's way of making a new genome. In a world of death we need to reproduce to help our genes survive. So we have Freud's id-his primal sex drive-and more. When we can't get the real thing, we gulp our sex vicariously. And we do it by following the gonads of superstars-especially those gonads' unacceptable acts. Why? Because the superstars' transgressions are acts we'd love to indulge in, too. But society says no. Those acts are taboo. And let's face it. You and I are not as good looking as Woods. Nor does the money and glamour we can offer come anywhere near Tiger's level. So the dozen or so girls with whom Tiger Woods may have had affairs are not available to you and me. But if we are men, we'd like to have Tiger's harem and more. Without Tiger's griefs.
There's a deep irony in Tiger Woods' extramarital affair with Rachel Uchitel, the woman Tiger was apparently texting when his wife discovered him the night of November 27th in flagrante cell-phone-o in the Woods mansion in Florida, the woman behind the battle that ended with Tiger backing out of his driveway and hitting a fire hydrant and a tree. No matter how far Tiger Woods is straying from his wife and his marriage, no matter how much he is operating like a Sultan with a choice of a hundred pampered and preened beauties from all over the world, no matter how polygamously he is behaving, Tiger Woods wants to be monogamous. He wants to find "the one." He wants to finally find a woman who has no interests of her own but who fills his desires totally, who fills even desires he can't express. Says Tiger in one of his text messages just after he began his relationship with Uchitel, "I get it. It f-----g kills me, too. I finally found someone I connect with. ...Why didn't we find each other years ago?" And "you want someone to witness your life." All that is what Woods felt he'd found in Uchitel, a 34 year old former Bloomberg News producer whose fiancée had been killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
But back to the real subject. You and me and why we obsess on Woods' sexual details. On phrases like this one from Tiger's text messages to Uchitel: ""I want you to lay next to me, lay on me or where ever you want to lay." Phrases you and I could easily have written in the manic early phases of a relationship.
What do our sexual obsessions-our sexual taboos--contribute to a society? And why do we emerge from the womb prepped to shake our fingers at others and excoriate their transgressions? Why do we come from the womb as potential conformity enforcers? Let's be more specific. We develop our enthusiasm for telling others they are doing inexcusable things at the age of 18 months. Genes push us into this moralizing transition. But when we go into our stage of pointing out others' booboos with glee, we've already sucked the taboos of our peculiar society deep into our being. In less than two years of life. A staggering act. And we've already unwrapped a gift or a curse with which evolution has endowed us-our absolute joy in finding others' faults. Then, by the age of five, we become sexual. And at some undetermined point, the two meet-our joy in burning others at the stake for their sins and our sexuality. And at some later point not very far down the line, we look for a Tiger Woods so we can open up his private life, pull out his sexuality, and lap up every delicious detail.
Yes, I do it too. That's why I'm writing this. I monitor the news every day to find things that seriously impact your life and mine. And when I see a headline with more morsels from Tiger's private life-and with a few photos of his women-I get utterly distracted. Instead of diving into the details of our relationships with China or extracting the implications of our technological past and future, I become obsessed with the latest tricks Woods' genes have played in their non-stop effort to replicate themselves in as many wombs as possible.
I don't feel an urge to tear Tiger down. But I can feel where that urge would come from. Envy. Your desire and mine to be in Tiger's place and to have his sexual opportunities. Your hatred and mine of the fact that the man who is sleeping with such gorgeous women is Tiger and not you or me. Yes, I am the sinner. I have within me the person who would tear another's life apart. And so do you.
Where does that urge to tear another down come from? When the head chimp in a troop sees a lower ranking chimp copulating with one of his harem, he breaks it up. And when chimp kids, adolescents, and occasionally adults see one of their tribe mating, they often do everything in their power to tear the copulating couple apart. Why? Are they chimpanzee ethicists, animal keepers of morality? Are they the troop's equivalent of a national society for the suppression of lewd behavior and the spread of decency? Yes. But there's more. The chimps try to block others from the carnal act because they, too, are tools of their genes. Every female another chimp impregnates will carry a variation on the lucky copulator's genome. Every female another impregnates will be removed from the sexual pool. Every female whose uterus another chimp monopolizes is a female no longer available to the chimpanzee equivalent of you and me.
Meaning every female chimp that another animal successfully impregnates cuts down the chances that the you and me's of chimpdom, the mid level chimps, will ever get to procreate, to have kids. And this sort of sexual interference has been seen in 30 different species of primate. So fixating on another chimp's sexuality serves three purposes. It cuts down on the targeted chimp's--the fornicator's--ability to get girls in the future. It cuts down on our fellow chimps' ability to monopolize every impregnable womb in sight. It gives us permission to spend our time slavering over something over we badly want but seldom get-sex. It gives us the opportunity to blame our sexual fixation not on our own hungers, but on the guy who is sinning. But in the end, the sinner's not just a Tiger Woods. It's us. When we tear a superstar down, we are destroying the life of a fellow human being.
The bottom line? Obsess on sex all you want. The pleasure of a fantasy doesn't hurt a soul. But give a superstar who contributes to your life and mine a bit of space. You and I would gladly go through the same temptation if we were in Tiger's place.
