Cheating on your spouse is a deal-breaker. I’ve seen the shows and read the articles where certain couples were able to forgive their partners and continue on in a life together, and every time all I could think to myself was, “Where is your self respect?”

The only justification I can imagine is the one that fits most situations: things are completely different when you’re the one it’s happening to. For me, infidelity is something I’ve never been able to forgive. I don’t care why, how long it was or how sorry you are. You cheat? You’re done. That’s it.

So it wasn’t out of any amount of sympathy that I watched Tiger Wood’s apology last Friday. I’ve never been a fan, per se – I really hate golf. But I did appreciate his talent, his work ethic, and what appeared to be an attempt to live an honest life.

Among an ocean of celebrities, politicians and sports figures intent on getting the absolute most benefit for the absolute least required effort, I did find him truly refreshing. But when the news of his many torrid infidelities broke, my world was not shattered in the least. I was, however, irritated to find it was the lead story on no less than 15 different news channels in the days following.

And so, I was not even remotely planning on watching his press conference. We were just flipping channels trying to find some news on a topic that actually affects our life – such as, oh, a concrete plan with specific details on creating actual freaking jobs instead of looking busy, raising the national debt and crossing our fingers. For instance.

Somewhere in between the Today Show’s coverage of how horribly addicting Facebook games are and the mind-numbing loop of local weather and traffic coverage, we landed on the conference just as Tiger walked out to the podium. And as soon as he spoke his first paragraph, I was engrossed.

Because holy cow, right there on my TV screen, someone was taking real life, honest to goodness, actual responsibility for a huge, huge mistake. And he didn’t blame anyone or anything other than himself. Who does that anymore? Nobody, that’s who.

If everyone had a dime for each time a politician, celebrity or sports figure held a press conference for doing something colossally stupid and/or morally wrong, America could pay off the stimulus package and still have enough left to fund our schools.

Which is exactly why none of us buy these lame PR apologies. Because these people blame everything under the sun – love, addiction, circumstance, media, money. No question, they’re apologizing because they got caught. And no doubt, we do the same thing, too.

Nobody stands up anymore and says, “I messed up. Me and no one else. There’s a truck load of work I have to do to make it even remotely right, and I’m going to do it.”

No. Instead, we blame our government, our lack of opportunity, the lousy education system or our mean, horrible bosses. And I’m not entirely sure if even that’s our fault or not. Ever since I can remember the general mindset seems to be one of entitlement rather than responsibility, even though we all know the adage: Life is unfair, and the world owes us nothing.

I think they teach responsibility and self-sufficiency in school these days. (Although, the news last summer of Seattle Public Schools considering lowering the graduating grade level to a D made me seriously wonder.) I’m pretty sure they don’t teach shame or sacrifice.

As a daughter and niece of three teachers in the K-12 levels, I am sure schools shouldn’t be the only ones teaching those things. But where else do we get them? Are they reinforced anywhere else? Not on TV. Not in music. Not in government or by celebrities or prime-time sports. Judging the content of our news sources, drama, not character, is all we seem to focus on anymore.

If Tiger Wood’s apology did anything else, it illustrated to me that if we want better jobs, better kids, a better country, a better life – each of us has to step up and build it through character, through effort and a lot more humility. America can no longer hide behind the idea that if we leave responsibility for our lives up to someone or something else, it’s not our fault when it all goes wrong.