The problem with most people’s view of the Tiger Woods apology is they view it as making an apology — not as making amends.
There have been no shortage of critics of the Tiger Woods’ televised apology.
George Will said of it on ABC News, “if your problem is that your behavior has revealed your public persona to be a fake, you shouldn’t stage this grotesquely fake press conference.” The folks at the industry publication “PR Junkie” had a field day.
It was awkward, and it felt like one of those hostage videos when someone is forced, at gunpoint, to read a statement damning his or her nation and culture.
Even gold medal skier Lindsay Von got into the act.
Not only do we have a plethora of experts on public apologies, it seems that a good portion of those experts have about as much compassion and forgiveness in them as Nurse Ratched.
Clearly there’s a good portion of the public out there who never think along the lines of “there but for the grace of God go I.”
Tiger Woods is a dog that is down and there sure seems to be a lot of kicking going on.
Good for him? Not really. Good for us? Absolutely not.
I look at it very differently and have my wife to thank for that. Yes, my wife feels bad for Tiger Woods. You might think that wives would be the first to cast a stone at Woods. But you see my wife is a social worker. She sees stuff like Tiger Woods all the time. Much worse, actually. She not only works with people that have addiction problems, she works with their victims as well. She’s no softie when it comes to this stuff but I’d argue that she has more real world experience — and perhaps even more moral standing — to comment on this type of behavior than do Mr. Will or Mrs. Von.
Her reaction to this video was (and I’m paraphrasing):
This is a man in therapy.
His apology is not an apology, it is an effort to make amends. Go read the twelve step process. He is on the middle steps. He went through each group of people that he hurt. One by one. Apologized to each. Said it would be actions not words. He’s doing exactly what he is supposed to do.
Let me tell you how awful the type of therapy is that he is going through. It is humiliating. It is degrading. You have to accept that you’re a pervert. A predator. A sicko. It isn’t pretty. He’s not apologizing in the sense that people know it. He’s trying to make amends to those he hurt. He’s doing what he’s supposed to do.
I Feel for him.
That, my friends, is the attitude of compassion.
Criticize the apology and Woods all you want. What was most interesting to me was that his focus WAS NOT golf, the Masters, getting back to the game. His timetable appeared to be in function of his ability to climb the twelve steps of recovery. And I saw Friday’s televised event as him working on steps 8 and 9:
“make a list of all persons we had harmed, and be willing to make amends them all; and make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
Can’t fault a man for that.
In fact, isn’t that something everyone should consider?
Have you updated your blog? Gotten any comments lately? Any trackbacks? And your Facebook page? What is your friend count? Who’s writing on your wall? How about your Twitter feed? Have you checked in with your Google account? Gone through your Google alerts? Charted your progress with Google Analytics? Have you checked in with Foursquare? Did you get a new badge? How are your Twitter client numbers? Is your following getting bigger? Are your “retweets” growing?
Now I’ll admit that I’m skeptical about all such research. One reason is that I do that for a living. I know how tricky it is to measure ANYTHING related to public opinion, much less values and beliefs. Measuring trust is right up there with predicting the path of nanoparticles. In fact — to carry the quantum physics analogy further — you can spend a lot of time just 
Our family had season tickets for the first years of Saints existence. My dad took me to the very first Saints game in 1967. I was 11 years old. Tulane Stadium. The Los Angeles Rams kicked off. Rookie wide receiver John Gilliam caught the ball and ran the kickoff back for a touchdown! A touchdown! Our very first play.
So now the rage in social media is “streaming.” That is not what I’m doing now. I’m blogging. And now I find out that blogging is passe. Twitter stream. Facebook stream. Posterous.