As one who does not play or follow golf, and who doesn’t know a birdie from a chickadee, I was pleased to see Phil Mickelson win the Masters. His long embrace of his ailing wife (she has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer) was a moving moment. Above all, it was gratifying to see that, at least this once, as one headline writer summarized it, “The Good Guy Finishes First.” Golf is not synonymous with Tiger Woods. Are you tired of hearing about Tiger?

We are drowning in salaciousness and some of us are choking on it. Like geese having our livers prepared for foie gras, we are force-fed a steady diet of infidelity, corruption, theft, drug use, violence, addiction, and sexual misconduct among public figures. Perhaps the goose is luckier. When it gets fat enough, they kill it. We consumers of American media, by contrast, seem to have no escape.