Zo Knows: Who Says Cheaters Never Prosper?

In a poll taken by Sports Illustrated, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant shared the #1 spot as the most popular men in sports. That’s right, somebody took a poll (yes, recently) and American people came out and said that their favorite players were Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods.

That might surprise you. After all, Tiger Woods isn’t only in the middle of a divorce that is all his doing, but he also isn’t winning golf tournaments right now. As for Kobe, he may be the King of basketball now, but this was one of the most hated persons in all of sports at one point, and he could barely get a commercial a few years ago. Now he’s the guy everybody deems his or her favorite athlete?

I always hesitate to compare athletes to people with real jobs. People with real jobs have real monetary concerns, real problems and work really hard. Athletes, on the other hand, have fantasy jobs, play a game for a living, make monopoly-like money and don’t have the financial issues that most Americans have to confront on a regular basis.

That being said, some people with real jobs can be compared to the likes of an athlete. Take our first black President—no, not Barack Obama, but Bill Clinton.

There’s no doubt that Clinton had a real job. Sure, he mad a lot of money then, and he makes a hell of a lot more money now. However, there’s no getting around the fact that being President of the United States is one of the toughest jobs in the United States.

Outside of the money, there are plenty of ways to compare Clinton to athlete. Clinton has “athlete” like tendencies. He had a healthy appetite, took up running while he was in office, and by all accounts, he was a very competitive individual. However, his most damning athlete-like trait is the fact that he loved him some women. And not to mischaracterize every athlete out there, but as we have seen over the years, there are many athletes out there, marital status irrelevant, that like to hook up with women more than they probably should. Clinton fell into that category when he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar before he was even elected, and then again in the Oval office with Monica Lewinsky. He was a cold-blooded cheater, and one that actually stepped out on the first lady while in office.

Amazing!

What’s even more amazing though is that people still love Clinton! They love him! They love him like Sunday morning! America loves him! Other countries love him! The media loves him. His daughter loves him. Hell, even his wife still loves him, despite the fact that the man is a known, repeated, adulterer.

Who says sex is the “end all be all?”

Clearly, it’s not. Because if it were, a man like Clinton wouldn’t be so loved and so respected here and across the world.

So if a high-profile guy (the understatement of the year) like Bill Clinton can be forgiven by the public for basically shaming the Presidency with his lack of sexual brevity, then it should come as no surprise that Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant are America’s most popular sports stars.

The week all of the Tiger Woods adulterer news came out, I knew immediately that he would return to the top of the athletic spectrum, and Bill Clinton was the reason I believed my intuition to be correct.

How can the world’s most famous person cheat on his wife in the midst of the world’s toughest job and be celebrated as the King of all things Politics since the very day his Presidency ended?

I don’t know. But that’s America for you. And if the President can make a comeback like that, then surely some low-level scrubs, like Tiger and Kobe, can bounce back from cheating on their wives—who with no disrespect intended—don’t hold a candle to the stature of a Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But what does that say about us as a people? Everyone excoriated Clinton for cheating on his wife. The Republicans damn near kicked him out of office for it. But years later, he we are, sending Clinton to retrieve imprisoned journalists from the most secretive country in the world, and he did it in a matter of hours. People yelled his name and screamed at him in lust as he went on tour with his wife during the 2008 Presidential primaries. And believe it or not, Clinton has gotten more women to give him money than he has gotten into bed? And that’s no easy task given his prowess.

So am I surprised that Kobe and Tiger are again the most popular athletes in sports? Of course not. It’s the American way. People fall down, and if they work hard and apologize, we pick them back up. Hell, even Lindsay Lohan will get a second chance at stardom.

When the man under the world’s biggest spotlight goes from the outhouse to the penthouse faster than he got reelected for his second term, there’s no reason two Clinton-like, alpha males, on far lower-levels of the relevance totem poll, can’t make a comeback too. So here they are again; Tiger the best golfer in the world, and Kobe the best winner in basketball, both atop the sports spectrum, there trials and tribulations seemingly far away from the reality of their popularity.

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