While usually a fan of completely pointless salacious gossip, last week I had to say 'no' to what will hopefully be the last story I ever read about Tiger Woods' infidelity. The 'story' was in Vanity Fair's drooling coverage of Tiger's 'inconvenient women' and focused on the National Enquirer's trailing of one of Tiger's harem, Mindy Lawton. Lawton arranged a rendezvous with the golfer in that timeless romantic setting of a car park, and the story goes: "After they left, Lawton claims, reporters from the National Enquirer, who had been following her, picked up the tampon she had dropped in the parking lot, and later threatened to use it as part of a story exposing Woods' infidelity."

This led to the infamous arrangement between the National Enquirer and Tiger's 'people' – the magazine held off on the story of his affairs in exchange for an interview with the golfer in its sister publication Men's Fitness. When you start reading stories in reputable publications about sex in cars and mistresses dropping tampons, it is time to check out. No more Tiger.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to block out the Tiger. Last week, Nike released a new TV advertisement ahead of Tiger's return to Augusta, featuring the golfer staring intently into the camera while his dead father, Earl, provides a voiceover saying: "I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was, I want to find out what your feelings are and did you learn anything?" Creepy? Yes.

But Tiger's old man was in fact talking about himself and his wife, Tida, in an interview from 2004. The magic of TV, eh? In the PR circus that surrounded Tiger's fall from grace, this ad acts as the final instalment of contrition. You can't hate him anymore because he does that puppydog face and his dad is dead. The story is complete. Nothing to see here. No more chat. Now let's play some golf.

Luckily for Tiger, there's always some eejit to take the baton. Enter Jesse James, the husband of recent Oscar winner Sandra Bullock. While Bullock was filming her award-winning performance in The Blind Side, James was having an affair with a heavily tattooed fetish model and alleged neo-Nazi named Bombshell McGee. Give him a break, we've all been there. Inevitably, more mistresses were revealed – a model, a stripper and another fetish model.

Celebrity news this year seems to be full of 'serial cheaters'. This is supersized infidelity in a supersized world. Why have one affair when you can have several? Even angel-faced Take That boy Mark Owen put his hands up and admitted to a few, well, 10, actually, maybe around 20 affairs while boozing on tour. Then there's John Terry's handful of Wagabees, alongside Ashley Cole's persistent multiple cheating rumours (are footballers even worth marking on the infidelity chart anymore? Is it now just a given?)

Relentless and multiple infidelities seem to be more common in sleb land than one unfortunate slip-up. As money, fame and possessions are pursued with a frightening hunger across the celebrity spectrum, so, it seems, is extramarital sex. It's also important to note that this is all male extramarital sex – we've yet to have a female celebrity scandalised by a string of illicit love affairs.

What is perhaps more surprising than stars' constant infidelity is how much we know about it. Since online tabloids adopted a publish-and-be-damned attitude to rumour, downright lies and information previously filtered by PR managers, we know everything – the most outrageous and intricate details of their lives and affairs.

To what end, though? There's a prurient value in gossip, but how it's played out in public is unsettling. The punter becomes a consumer of marital failings and humiliation as a spectator sport, waving pitchforks at the cheaters and feeling real sympathy for those left holding the Oscar. The endless mistresses come forward, philandering becomes 'sex addiction' with the 'addict' ending up in rehab, and then there's a phoney apology, as if the public has been cheated and must be placated for the indirect crime.

What does anyone actually learn from this phoney process? What's the moral of the story? Tiger Woods was irresponsible, arrogant, reckless, and only seems to regret getting caught, not the actions themselves. With those traits, we probably should have made him the head of Anglo Irish Bank years ago. Luckily for him, though, the public is willing to forgive if his talent outshines his discretions. What of morality, trustworthiness and refinement when there's a celebrity to be worshipped.

umullally@tribune.ie