Tiger Woods: A Distraction from REAL News?

Eugene Kane, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, complains that the national obsession with Tigers Woods' "transgressions" are distracting from real news.

He writes:

In any event, it's clear Tiger Woods and a pair of publicity hounds (Tareq and Michaele Salahi) didn't deserve to take so much focus away from an ongoing war that, if things don't go well, will have grave consequences for the Obama administration - and America.

Apparently, the continuing fight against al-Qaida is still not enough to hold our attention. Perhaps Tiger could mention something about that in his next press release about his troubled marriage.

Now that Afghanistan is Obama's war and al Qaeda is Obama's problem, Kane is concerned about distractions and focusing on trivial, tabloid matters.

Others in the Leftist media echo that sentiment. Leave Tiger alone. Worry about Afghanistan. Worry about what really matters.

Of course, when a Republican politician or an evangelical pastor, like Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, were outed for "transgressions," that was a different story.

Why were those incidents considered real news rather than distractions?

The libs tried to turn Dick Cheney's hunting ACCIDENT into a full-blown scandal.

And of course there was the Anna Nicole Smith case. And the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. Did Kane complain about those cases receiving too much attention?

We were in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting al Qaeda when the media obsessed over those stories.

When it was reported that Tiger Woods was involved in a serious car accident, that certainly was real news. There was real shock and concern for him, a story hardly viewed as a distraction at the time it broke in spite of the happenings in Afghanistan.

The accident was a public, not a private matter. It was the event that triggered the discovery that Tiger Woods is a great golfer but not at all a great man.

Sure, people are following the sordid details of Woods' affairs. But that doesn't mean they aren't following other stories as well, like Obama's failure to provide the troops the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan had requested months ago and his declaration that U.S. forces will retreat in 18 months.