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Tiger Woods is a magnificent golfer. Can't we still enjoy watching him swing a club without dragging his personal conduct onto the course?

I almost retched when the TV remote paused over a panel of talking heads dissecting the off-course Tiger. They were speculating over the possibility that the golfing superstar might be suicidal and were raising all kinds of questions that should be of no possible interest to anybody outside Tiger's immediate family and circle of friends.

So this is what the great institution of journalism has come to: endlessly pursuing a tawdry story about a man who made the Faustian bargain with celebrityhood on the false assumption that he would never have to live up to his end of the bargain.

You knew as soon as Tiger released the statement, "I'm not perfect," that the devil was demanding his due, and Tiger would have to pony up. Shades of Richard Nixon proclaiming, "I'm not a crook."

The vultures began circling. There was even a false report on the Internet claiming that Al Sharpton, notorious meddler in all matters racial, was chastising Tiger for hanging out with Aryan blondes instead of black mistresses.

Tiger's naive attempts at insulating himself from public prying collapsed. It was inevitable. Human nature has always had an appetite for the seamy, and technology has made it impossible to hide from public view. Wherever the famous go, paparazzi are swarming and hidden cameras are monitoring. Whatever they're doing, voyeurs are Twittering and Facebooking and You-Tubing, demanding to know what's going on and spreading rumors like manure.

Let me put it this way: Mankind's ancient proclivity for idolatry has seized today's society with a vengeance. We are drunk with adulation for celebrities: entertainers, athletes, the media elite -- anybody whose name and face are known to the mass public. We assume that they belong to us, and every intimate detail of their lives is open to our gaze.

The celebrities, on the other hand, assume that this mass adulation entitles them to partake, without penalty, of every aspect of the forbidden fruit.

Celebrity does not bestow maturity. He who has more money than he has things to spend it on will be tempted to seek his thrills at the gambling tables. The Las Vegas casinos will tempt him with every kind of allure, including beautiful young women willing to indulge his fantasies. It takes an iron will, I suppose, to resist this kind of temptation, and Tiger's iron is in his golf bag, not his conscience.

Now Tiger is paying the bill not only in the currency of personal humiliation but also in the real currency of lost revenue. Gillette and other companies that have paid for his endorsements are dropping him. The public whose adulation has fed his narcissism can't be trusted to follow his advice when it comes to the best blade for shaving.

His off-the-course cavorting has dulled the edge of the razors he endorses. The sports drink contemplated in his honor now may acquire a bad aftertaste. The spotlight has even focused on a doctor who is suspected of purveying performance-enhancing drugs, though Tiger has not yet been caught in the beam.

In a just world, Tiger would be admired for his skills with a golf club. The public that pays to see him perform on the links would not thereby be purchasing a peephole into his personal life. His fortunes would rise and fall in inverse proportion to his golf scores.

We need to remember that Tiger Woods did not achieve his exalted status because he was a moral person or a peerless evaluator of consumer products; he achieved it because he was a superb golfer. We often transfer admiration for a person's exploits in a narrow field to admiration for everything about that person.

Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were great athletes, but lousy human beings. I rooted for Reggie Jackson when he swatted home runs for the New York Yankees, but not when he egotistically put down his teammate, Thurman Munson.

Thomas Jefferson was a great statesman and scholar; his relationship with his slave woman, Sally Hemmings, does not detract from the luster of his language in the Declaration of Independence.

George Washington and Patrick Henry owned slaves. But their roles as slaveholders do not define their places in history.

Richard Nixon was paranoid and unscrupulous in his exercise of presidential power. But his opening to China was a genuine advance in foreign relations, and the environmental movement gained momentum on his watch.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an adulterer even as he preached from a Bible that condemns adultery; but his contribution to his and to future generations was not as a minister of the gospel but as a courageous opponent of racial injustice.

So let Tiger Woods return to the golf course as a chastened virtuoso, just as Michael Vick returned to the gridiron as a chastened quarterback. Vick won't get paid to endorse Kennel Ration and Tiger won't be paid to endorse Levitra. But he's still good at what he does on the fairways. I'm willing to leave the rest to Tiger and Elin and their lawyers.

Write to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625. E-mail: Swampscum2@aol.com