I know this has been done before, but let me give it a shot:
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I'm here to apologize. I made a huge mistake in my life. Getting married. Or, to be clear, getting married with the stipulation that I'd never offer physical affection to another human for the remainder of my life. What a crock!
Some of you may have heard that mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosome Adam were separated by almost 100,000 years. Now why is that? Without going into the math, it's because men have gotten around over the millenia. Historically, breeding males impregnate about 1.5 women. I've brought copies of Wilder, Mobasher, and Hammer's Genetic Evidence for Unequal Effective Population Sizes of Human Females and Males on the subject, for your perusal. Thoroughly peer-reviewed.
We needn't get all mathematical to see the unnaturallness of marriage, though. You might get wistful looking at the bonding that goes on between a few species of birds. I've got news for you...we're primates. Have some fun and type key words like "bonobo, chimpanzee, sex, mating" on YouTube after the press conference.
Yes, I'm aware of the naturalistic fallacy; being natural doesn't make it right. But quit the pearl-clutching. Some of you doth protest too much, I'd say.
Much has been made of my Buddhist practice. Well folks, the typical Thai Buddhist marriage ceremony says absolutely nothing about lifelong fidelity. And, of course, Thai men are world-famous as philanderers. Thai women are the world's greatest penis decapitators (about 100 per year...can you believe that?), by the way, so let's not pretend that Thai women are particularly tolerant of this behavior. The world is complex. And my wife is Swedish. Anyway, people need to quit projecting their Abrahamic values onto me. That's not my trip.
Come to think of it, doesn't the legal enforcement of monogamy violate the establishment clause? Gotta make a note of that.
Yes, Buddhism teaches balance and honesty, and I've veered off in the direction of an extreme. But it also teaches that jealousy and attachment are to be avoided. It's fair to say I'm a success in those departments. Clearly, my wife has failed here, but with 15 minutes of additional meditation per day, she can work it out.
Greed is also a failing that my wife and I are guilty of. Hey...if I'd conquered that, I wouldn't be speaking to you at this moment, now would I?
Some folks call for me to undergo therapy. Folks, I need therapy the same way you need therapy for not believing in Santa Claus.
Hopefully, I can use my celebrity status to inspire folks to reevaluate the sham that is marriage. 50% of the audience here are, or will be, divorced. Some of you have gotten divorced multiple times, and with each new marriage you felt that this was the last. Are you totally fucking unconscious? Of the remainder, a large portion will find themselves sleeping in separate beds. Or, at least, with one of those long pillow things delineating territories on the bed. Whatever. Let's not be ashamed to greet the new day with arms that are not numb, with fluid shoulder joints, as individuals, unafraid to see a movie alone.
Thank you!
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After writing the above, I googled "What Tiger Should Have Said." Wow...so many tracts with that title! Plenty of good humor, mostly from the "I'm Tiger Woods, and you wish you were" camp. Some racism too...white racism, black racism, nothing unexpected.
But there's also an army of condescending, judgemental Christians bloggers out there, evaluating Tiger's sincerity. He didn't go far enough, of course. His voice was too monotone. Blah, blah, blah. One blogger, an admitted ex-sex-addict minister, tallies up 10 positives and 3 negatives in Tiger's outpouring. For others, the speech didn't dwell enough on all the folks he has hurt, apparently. As far as I'm concerned, there wouldn't be nearly the hurt if Americans would loosen up their expectations of marriage.
Then there's a number of disgusting attempts to degrade Buddhism along the way. As usual, the Christian detractors begin with a straw man and proceed to disassemble it. In this case, it's the Buddhist attitude toward desire. See, us Christians are taught to desire God, but Buddhists are taught to desire nothing. This comes as a surprise to those who are taught that Buddha desired the enlightenment of all sentient beings, or who have taken the Boddhisattva vow.
