Is Traci Lynn Johnson A Homewrecking Pro-Ho?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Dear Traci Lynn Johnson:

Was Tiger Woods not available?

Ms. Johnson is the young woman for whom former NFL star Tiki Barber allegedly left his wife of 11 years, Ginny Barber, who also happens to be eight months pregnant.

There are many victims here and the first is Ms. Barber. The others are their children, including twins soon to be delivered into a world full of unfaithful liars and celebrity-seeking young whores.

But the list of victims ends there. Ms. Johnson is not and never will be a victim. She can talk to Barbara Walters for a sexy November sweeps piece in seven short months and claim between sobs how she really believed the ex-New York Giant loved her and only her.

Much like the women Tiger slept with who are making the rounds to shout how badly they now want that all-important truth to be known, Ms. Johnson will surely attempt to get her story told after the rich, handsome Barber dumps her for a model who wasn't so recently a television intern.

I will never let a philandering athlete off the hook. The jokes, er, true stories about jocks fathering seven kids with five women in four states are as tiresome as postgame I'm-just-happy-to-contribute cliches. Fatherless children often become human debris, the dirty stray cats of a material culture. All because a coddled pro athlete felt entitled.

But what gets forgotten is that many -- most, perhaps? -- of these women go out looking for our shallow culture's most important people, the rich professional athletes, not caring or at least not caring to know whether the flavor of the month is married. As long as there's bottle service behind the red-velvet rope, the car is waiting out front and the hotel's penthouse view intensifies the orgasm, you'll have a great story to text to your sadly envious BFF the next morning.

A few years ago, friends and I would lament the steroid-fueled downfall of baseball by saying things like, "Man, I just wish one of these guys would say, 'Yes, I took steroids because I knew it would give me a competitive edge,'" or something to that effect.

Now I'm embarrassed to admit I'm just hoping one tight-sweatered 20-something will have the courage to tell a camera, "I just wanted to sleep with a professional athlete." The sad part is that whenever that day comes, there will definitely be cameras around to record it.