RUSH: I just checked the e-mail during the break and I’m being castigated by a few people for telling jokes or making fun of Tiger Woods and his situation. People think I ought to be a little bit more sympathetic, given that I have been under this kind of scrutiny so much and understand it. Look, I’ve met Tiger Woods one time, it was way back at the AT&T Pro-Am, was on the putting green. I think it was Poppy Hills. It might have been Spyglass. But regardless, he was very nice, and I had a chance to tell him — it was 2000 or 2001 because I remember I told him how much I admired his focus during that incredible season he had of 2000, and other than I’ve never seen him again and I’ve never talked to him.
I know what happened here. I know what happened. I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I’m going to tell you what happened in a psychological sense. I don’t know the details of all this stuff, but it’s very hard — and a lot of professional athletes are this way — but the moment that they are discovered to have superior athletic talent with the possibility of getting a college scholarship or even moving on to professional sports, baseball, football, basketball, what have you, they are coddled, they are treated as special. When that starts happening to you at a young age, when you are perfect, when doors are opened for you, when obstacles are moved out of the way for you, it can’t help have a cumulative effect over the course of your life and it starts very young. You know, Tiger, the first time people saw Tiger Woods was when he was three with Bob Hope and his dad, or Johnny Carson, somebody, Mike Douglas, I forget who it was. But Tiger’s been known and thought to be special, and you can’t help but think that you are when that starts happening to you at that age. The world tells you from the time that you are discovered that you are perfect and wonderful and special.
And then you get married. And marriage is a whole different thing. That one special person finds the truth, you are not really perfect, and you are not really wonderful, and all that everybody else thinks about you is not true, and then you are not treated that way, because a spouse, you have a relationship with a spouse that is going to be different than the relationship with anybody else. So if you’re not getting that treatment from the person closest to you, you’re going to go out and find it. You’re going to go out and find it wherever you can because you become accustomed to it. What do you do when you expect to be treated as though you’re perfect and wonderful and you’re not, what do you do? You go seek it where you will.
And I’m trying to say something without saying it, I hope you can figure it out on your own, but can you say groupies here? You take it from there. I mean, he’s not prowling the halls at Harvard or MIT. He’s prowling the halls of nightclubs. So that’s what I think. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with professional athletes. We’re all a product of who we are and how we’re raised. I’m just speculating here, but, as I’ve always said, folks, don’t doubt me. Remember, I’m documented to be almost always right now 99.5% of the time.