Mel Gibson, who weathered his own P.R. disaster three years ago, says the Tiger Woods affair has been blown way out of proportion and that he feels sorry for the golf star.

“I feel sorry for Tiger Woods,” the actor-filmmaker, 54, tells Britain’s Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine. “Why are we talking about this when we’re sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? … He’s being used as a diversion, and it just drives me crazy.”

But Gibson, who stars in the upcoming film “Edge of Darkness,” says he thinks Woods should face up to the facts and “take it like a man.”

“Nobody is without sin,” he says. “You have to try to make amends if you can. You have to shut up and move on and not whine about it. And you have to deal with it like a man … You’ve just got to accept your own culpability.”

Gibson dealt with the fallout from his DUI arrest in 2006 in California, when he was pulled over and reportedly made anti-Semitic comments. He later apologized, pleaded no contest and received three years’ probation.

Gibson says he’s been sober now for 3½ years. “But I put some time together before that – one time it was eight years, one time it was five years. I have to be vigilant about these things or it will creep back in.”

Greg Norman and Chris Evert, who separated last fall after 15 months of marriage, quietly finalized their divorce in December, according to a report. The golf and tennis legends had the paperwork finalized in Key West, Fla., on Dec. 8, according to the Palm Beach Post.

The paper says the couple agreed to abide by their pre-nuptial agreement, which was not made public, and that no money changed hands as part of the settlement.

In confirming the split in October, Evert’s rep told People: “Chris and Greg will remain friends and supportive of one another’s family.”

Evert, 55, and Norman, 54, were married in June 2008 in a sunset ceremony in the Bahamas.

Sheryl Crow is trying to ride to the rescue of thousands of wild horses that roam the West.

After campaigning for President Barack Obama in 2008, the Grammy-winning singer has become a leading critic of his administration’s plans to remove as many as 25,000 mustangs from the range and ship them to pastures in the Midwest and East.

Since coming out in favor of a moratorium on government roundups of mustangs in November, Crow has lobbied Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, dropped off books and DVDs about wild horses for Obama at the White House and appeared in a video produced by equine activists.

To no avail, she also called on the president to halt a roundup of about 2,500 mustangs in Nevada, which began late last month as part of the administration’s strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from the range.

“My main concern is that horse numbers not be dwindled down to where they can become extinct,” she said, fearing the roundups are leaving mustang herds with too few breeding horses.

The government says the number of wild horses and burros on public lands in the West stands at nearly 37,000, about half of them in Nevada. It believes the number that can be supported on the range is about 26,600.

An additional 34,000 wild horses already live away from the range in federal-run corrals and pastures. Those are nearly full at a growing cost.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Crow said the romantic symbols of the American West are being sacrificed, in part, because of ranchers’ drive for land. She disputed the government’s position that booming mustang numbers are threatening the horses with starvation, and harming arid rangelands and native wildlife.

“I think there has to be a better way than taking them away from their native lands,” she said by phone from New York. “I feel so passionate about the issue because wild horses are one of the last remaining ties to the land as it was and our history in America.”

The 47-year-old rocker became acquainted with the issue when she rode an adopted wild horse named Smokey in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains in July 2006, several months after she and cycling champ Lance Armstrong broke off their engagement.

Kate Winslet, Jennifer Garner, Kiefer Sutherland and Cher will be among the presenters at this year’s Golden Globe Awards.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association says the actors — all Golden Globe winners — will hand out trophies at the 67th annual ceremony. They’ll join an all-star cast of presenters that includes Jennifer Aniston, Tom Hanks, Jodie Foster and Sophia Loren.

Ricky Gervais will host the awards show at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 17. The show will air live on NBC.

— The Associated Press also contributed to this report

lsmith@denverpost.com

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