|
Reader question: Please explain “open season”, as in this passage: The irony is that even known philanderers, confirmed adulterers, and certified hypocrites are having a field day criticizing Tiger Woods. All manner of people – people you normally wouldn’t leave your daughter or wife with, are all having fun at his expense. It is an open season on Tiger Woods; the time to abuse, to ridicule, to sermonize and to analyze his behavior and his entire life. My comments: Here, “open season” implies that the critics of Tiger Woods have been relentless. In other words, they’ve been lambasting Tiger without restraint. This sense of relentlessness and lack of restraint is the main characteristic of an “open season”, originally referring to the season when people are allowed to hunt for foxes, bears, wolves on land or fish in water. After a while the hunting or fishing season closes, meaning hunters will have to pull their guns and wait for next year. Why? To give the animals a time to recuperate, that’s why. For them to be left alone so that they may take a collective breath of relief and reproduce, multiply and hopefully regain or even grow their number. A ban on hunting for endangered animals or fish stock is pretty prevalent a practice today the world over, a sign of civilization really being civil and enlightened. On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that humans are the very ones that have put these species to the brink of extinction in the first place. | 
