Stop the trainwreck, I wanna get off.

Look, you all know what went down with Tiger Woods over the last few weeks, there's no point in me rehashing it.

What I am going to hash, though, was how we as a society reacted to Tiger Woods falling down. And really, it isn't flattering. We ate it up, chewed it up and spit it out, cackling like wild people and pointing fingers with a Nelson-like "ha-ha!" We took pleasure in his family's pain.

Really, there's something very disturbing about the utter glee we take from tearing down our heroes.

Of course, you say, Tiger tore himself down. He was the one who did the bad things, the tear-down-able things. And I'm not disagreeing with that.

But it's the sheer joy, the rubbing-hands-together-with-glee excitement with which people greeted the news that Tiger wasn't such a good boy after all that really made me feel kind of nauseous. People were loving it. Everyone was cracking a joke, making a buck off this man's mistakes and his family's pain. And I didn't understand. I was of the opinion that the guy and his family should be left alone.

But others disagreed. He's a public figure. He's a "brand", his good boy image carefully crafted in order to win him lucrative contracts and sponsorships. If that brand was a lie we, the public who bought in to it, should be aware!

Who knows. Perhaps this careful image sculpting did exist. Perhaps every appearance was managed, manicured, scripted to present a very different picture of him than the reality. Or maybe he was simply a person who wanted to keep his private life private, and succeeded in doing so for many years. Is that branding? Well, maybe. I guess so. And if that's the case, I guess we're all brands now, carefully crafting our persona that we present to the outer world so as not to appear to be... fallible? Vulnerable? Human? Because we can't show any of that. It isn't acceptable in this world. As soon as we present an imperfection, the tigers pounce. So don't show it.

Are we as a society just too cynical now? Do we simply lie in wait for everyone to fall on their faces? And what does that say about us?

It's not just Tigergate. We also cackled in glee when Britney Spears sank into mental illness and substance abuse and lost her children and came as close to complete self destruction as you can probably get without submerging. We all tittered up our sleeves when Kate Moss was photographed snorting coke and laughed as her modelling contracts dried up one by one.

We read blogs like Lainey and Perez and TMZ and drink up the gossip. We talk about other people's lives and pass judgment as if we have any clue what it's like to walk a mile in their shoes. We watch shows like Cops and (god forbid) Steven Seagal Lawman and watch people at their absolute worst, during some of the most awful moments of their lives, and we call it entertainment.

Why? Why is this entertaining? Is it really that old cliche, that we enjoy it because others' misfortunes make us feel better about ourselves?

I truly don't know. But what I'm finding particularly interesting is how other cultures such as the French and the Italians are laughing at North America for being so utterly horrified at a man having mistresses.

While I in no way condone infidelity, these Europeans have a point. Perhaps it's the weight of history on these countries, but they seem to know far better than we do that everyone, including celebrities, are fallible. They know that the hero has a dark side. And they watch us build these pedestals for our heroes, and we build them out of fragile, delicate, spun glass that will collapse with one misstep, one shift of balance. And they laugh, because they know that this outrage we all feel when someone inevitably falls is of our own doing. We set our celebrities up to fail. We refuse to believe in the fallibility of human nature.

The other option is, of course, that we know that the fall is inevitable, and we just sit with a bowl of popcorn and wait for it to happen. Who knows.

Either way, it kind of makes me feel queasy to watch people get happy and make money over the misfortunes and missteps of others. But I guess I'm the only one.