hardwoods

I am guessing the apology speech from Tiger Woods hasn't exactly been well received. I saw just a brief glimpse of Woods' press conference yesterday, Woods' stressing that any issues he may have are a family matter then requesting that the media leave his relatives, including the little children, alone. And I would agree that is about all, if anything, needs to be said --

Lawyer Calls Woods’s Remarks Counterproductive
Published in the New York Times
By STUART ELLIOTT

"One of the harshest critics of Tiger Woods’s remarks on Friday morning is L. Lin Wood, a lawyer with Bryan Cave Powell Goldstein...

Mr. Wood’s conclusion about Mr. Woods: “I am not sure what purpose was served by Tiger’s statement today. He would have been better off maintaining his silence.”

Mr. Wood, based in Atlanta, often represents people who, as Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, put it in an article in 2008, “were dragged through the news but never charged.” Among them were the parents of JonBenet Ramsey; Gary Condit, the former congressman; and Richard Jewell, wrongly accused of the Summer Olympics bombing in 1996."[...read more]

grayscale

An arrest in the Chandra Levy case blogger Ludlum Drive calls for the too-little-too-late media apology to Gary Condit that JonBenet's parents will never receive, either--

The Rush Into a Verdict
Ludlum Drive
March 4, 2009

"...I must admit, I was once young, oh please who am I kidding I am still young, and obsessed with white or black. I never knew what gray meant and never cared to acknowledge it or give an inch of possibility of it even existing. For me the world revolved around my sphere and as far as I was concerned, nothing else mattered.

Just like JonBenet’s parents long before the Congressman, in particular her mother Patsy Ramsey, endured scorn and were mercilessly accused for months (by smart people I may add) of having killed or being accomplices to their own daughter’s disappearance. They were later cleared of all charges yet to some the cloud still lingers; they must have done something. C’mon where there is smoke, there is fire, say the naysayers. Yeah, until it happens to you!...

Even knowing that Patsy Ramsey was dying of cancer, the pundits did not let up. They continued pounding to the point of her not taking pleasure of the partial good news (the offender has yet to be found and they were no longer under suspicion) before her passing. No one had the decency to write an apology of sorts for having been wrong. They were just doing their job, they stated...

We have proven over and over again that one is considered guilty until proven innocent is a standard in our society and there is nothing we can do to meliorate it; we are beings...

Then you have the pundits Nancy Grace, (yes you) and the so called experts who believe they have an answer before there is even an answer. The Gloria Albrights who believe that one way to combat and acquire empathy is to be one loud mouthpiece and the Al Sharptons who insert voice ahead of the facts. Although, it is frankly sometimes effective, too much of it can turn out to be a little too detrimental to those involved. These individuals make us drunk with their righteousness and rhetorics. They cast suspicion by reverberating venomous spiteful dialog and attempt to influence our ego as if we are not capable of making our own conclusions...

As one of my good friends said to me once, if he was an attorney (I am glad he is not), he would never want to have me sited as a member of the jury; there is because I am not so easily captivated by absurdities. It takes a while to have me bought. I am no longer into black or white; I deviated now to gray; I need the evidence and then some...

As for Gary Condit, nearly eight years after Chandra Levy disappearance on a warm day in March, DC police finally charged an illegal immigrant from El Salvador Ingmar Guandique, 27 (serving a 10-year prison sentence for attacking two other women at knifepoint in the park around the time of Chandra’s disappearance) with killing her near a remote hiking trail deep in Rock Creek Park. Go figure! Gary Condit does deserve an apology with matching colors, parade, marching bands and all."