It’s not the morals of Tiger, it’s the lie of the Tiger that has the public in an uproar.

The world is full of sleazy public figures, athletic and otherwise. And it’s not that Tiger has somehow achieved an Olympian level of marital infidelity. It’s hard to believe that 16 women, or whatever the number really is, is a new standard (or nadir) for professional athletes who are married. Tiger’s problem is that he got caught playing the American public for fools.

For more than a decade, with the help of at least one global corporate behemoth (Nike), Tiger perpetuated a fraud for the purpose of getting us, who don’t make $100 million a year for playing golf and pushing products, to spend our money. The “I’m the perfect athlete-son-husband-father” persona was created to make him the perfect pitchman, for which he was paid unprecedented sums. And now the public has realized he’s little more than a snake oil salesman, carefully tending a fake image to sell us razors, shaving cream, golf balls, business consulting services, watches, cars, and on and on.

That’s Tiger’s problem. It’s not moral outrage that is doing in Tiger. It’s a public outraged that they have been conned.