"For perspective, let’s flip the script. Would you believe that answer if it came from Tiger Woods?"

"Mickelson insisted he had not acted in haste or irritation. Instead, he said, he knew that the penalty for striking a moving ball was two strokes, and he had quickly determined that was a better result than letting his wayward putt roll off the green into worse shape. (There is a separate rule for stopping or deflecting a moving ball that could have led to a disqualification, but officials determined that Mickelson had violated the rule for striking a moving ball, not the one for stopping or deflecting one.) 'I’ve thought about doing the same thing many times in my career,' Mickelson said about striking rather than stopping his moving ball. 'I just did it this time. It was something I did to take advantage of the rules as best I can.'"

From "What Was Phil Mickelson Thinking?" by Bill Pennington (NYT) about this bizarre golfing:



Quite aside from what you think about that bizarre golfing, what do you think of the "perspective" supposedly to be gained by asking what we'd think if it was Tiger Woods? Is that supposed to be some sort of racial analysis, like that if you believe Phil Mickelson, you're a carrier of the infection of white privilege?

This is the third NYT article I'm blogging this morning, and the first 2 are about race. Maybe my thinking is skewed to see race everywhere — because, you know, it's deeply complex, historically layered, powerful, and submerged.