Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay.
We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.
Contributors:
Joe Guidry
Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.
Jeff Stidham
Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.
William Yelverton
William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.
Jim Beamguard
Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.
Jackie Papandrew:
Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.
Camille Beredjick
Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.
Jim Harnish
Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.
Angela Hunt
Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.
Sheryl Young
Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.
Christie Gold
Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.
Natalie D. Preston
Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.
Fernando Figueroa
Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.
Gary Beemer
Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.
Nicole Yunger Halpern
Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.
Kris DiGiovanni
Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com
H. David Braswell Jr.
H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.
Sean Marcus
Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is
expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com
So Tiger Woods has been unfaithful. Just another case of a successful man who simply cannot find happiness with his supermodel wife.
The only thing that is shocking about this latest tabloid trifle is that we are shocked. There is scarcely an element of popular culture untouched my marital infidelity. Singers croon about it. Movies and television shows build plotlines around it. If art is a reflection of reality, then it is any wonder that nearly a quarter of married men admit to straying from their vows?
If I sound like another bitter woman who has been burned in a relationship, that’s okay. But I look at Tiger’s wife—a statuesque Swedish beauty—and wonder what that means for the rest of us women—mere mortals who weren’t blessed with physical perfection, who work 40-plus hours a week, who don’t have an au pair to help care for the children let alone unlimited access to a personal trainer or a Hollywood stylist.
I realize that women cheat, too (though only about half as many married women go astray as men), and that is no less disconcerting. Men, however, often land on their feet afterward. Society still says, “Boys will be boys.” This excuse gains them forgiveness for nearly every indiscretion from looking at pornography during the workday to tawdry affairs. From Hugh Grant’s solicitation of a prostitute to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s steamy emails to his Argentinian mistress to Kobe Bryant’s open admission of infidelity: A simple “I was weak,” and their lives move seamlessly forward.
Meanwhile, society looks at the woman and wonders what she did or didn’t do to prompt the man to seek greener pastures. Was she sexually inadequate? Had she “let herself go?” There is often this notion that she must have deserved such humiliation. Perhaps that explains why in press conference after press conference, we have watched the jilted woman stand faithfully by her man as he promises to “pray,” “seek help” or “do better.”
Post Lewinsky, I thought of Hillary Clinton, what a Catch-22. Had she left Bill, she would have been the scorned woman, incapable of forgiveness. Staying with him came with its own labels: She was either a fool or an opportunist concerned only with her own political ambitions.
What have we become? A Brave New World society where monogamy is downright laughable, where our need for instant gratification and our desire to constantly seek shiny new objects has extended from consumerism to our intimate relationships?
Sure, Tiger has lost his endorsements, but time will forgive him. A year or so off the links, a glorious return to golf, one major win and the sponsors will return. He will appear on a talk show, stoically answer a few tough questions, and we all will move on to the next celebrity scandal and talk about how “shocked” we are once again.
