Every once in a while, a liberal cuts right through the hemming and hawing and verbalizes his true world view. Like Hollywood producer Gavin Polone commenting on the Tiger Woods episode: If you can't live up to the terms and responsibilities of an institution, the institution must change. That's essentially the lesson Polone believes Tiger should draw from his adultery disgrace.
Marriage, you see, is an anachronism that doesn't fit with how we moderns live our lives - or at least, how the important people in Hollywood live theirs.
"I know a lot of famous people," Polone said on Dec. 3 during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting." "And actually the norm is that they cheat."
Polone, who produced the 2009 movie "Zombieland," argued that it isn't fair for stars like Tiger Woods who are "in the public eye" to be "called to task for their behavior" - behavior that Polone said is "probably pretty natural behavior given what they're going through."
The real problem lies with society's idea of marriage. As a people, he said, we need to "rethink the idea of locking into someone for what one would call a lifetime marriage."
"Marriage is a very, very old concept and we live in a modern society," Polone said.
The deep-thinking movie producer was gracious enough to offer his viewers two possible marital solutions that would help lighten that ball and chain just a little bit. The first that came to his mind was polygamy.
"You know, marriage in the sense that we see it today really started coming about in the 1500s," Polone said. "Prior to that - prior to the Protestant Reformation - you know, your leaders - they all had multiple women. They had mistresses. They had concubines. But then this idea of lifetime marriage and monogamy were linked up - and that nobody could have other partners outside of it developed. And that's the trap."
His second solution was that the marriage vows should be changed to reflect something "more rational," like a mortgage contract.
"Maybe we have to evolve a little bit and start to think of marriage as something more like a mortgage, where you have an adjustable rate," Polone suggested. "I don't understand why we can't start to say, hey, it's maybe a little bit more rational to start thinking about being with someone for something like seven years or ten years."
If that were the case, Polone argued, then Tiger probably would never have been in the mess he's in now.
"If Tiger was thinking, eventually I would be able to make a choice in the future and have the option to extend my marriage or possibly end my marriage," Polone conjectured, "than maybe he wouldn't have gone out there and, you know, been with all of these different women."
According to the movie producer, a "fairy tale ending" might just not be possible anymore.
