Tiger Woods, I read where we're gonna hear today and maybe more in coming days, some grubby stuff about one long affair or a bunch of serial encounters or both.
It appears you've been so quiet because you've had a lot to be quiet about.
As I've said I'm amazed at how upset I am by all this, and have had to admit: Because I admire your the way you play golf so much, I allowed myself to admire you too.
My inner child, I guess—the same naive little feller who for years accused all your detractors of being jealous of your greatness … and of my hero!
When am I ever going to grow up? Ah, that's my problem, not yours.
But speaking of children, even if this episode blows over, it's now a permanent fact of history and your little kids will one day grow up and read about it on the Internet and have questions.
I have an idea what questions they might ask, because they're probably similar to the ones I have:
• Gee Dad, how could you move through the world with such apparent calm and grace and self-assurance knowing your life is an increasingly unstable house of cards?
• Tell us more about the "character education" you do at the Tiger Woods foundation.
• How could you go around giving pat answers to
complicated questions when your life appears to be a complicated answer
to a simple question?
• And how could you bring yourself to play the young pup in media interviews, talking at every opportunity about about how your father was your "best friend" and saying things like, "I'm honored to continue his legacy of caring and sharing"?
I don't have to tell you this, but you shouldn't be too quick to respond publicly to all this.
You shouldn't even be too quick to respond privately.
Maybe you don't need to respond at all.
Maybe, like Ali, you're great enough to get away with the Popeye defense (I yam what I yam).
But it looks the caring and sharing shit is over, my friend. And a lot of other smarmy stuff is too. About high time, I guess. For all of us.
MY question to Tiger [if we assume the affairs are for real – and much as I hate to say it, the TMZ’s and the Enquirers tend to eventually be proven accurate on this sort of thing] is this:
“Tiger, how COULD you be so monumentally STUPID as to leave voice mail messages and send text messages – both of which can be saved to play to the world – to these chicks, knowing FULL WELL that you are famous enough for them to make a buck off the fact that you’re a cheating jerk?!?!”
If you ARE going to cheat – and apparently none of these goofs can keep it in their pants and honour their marriages OR their children – why, oh WHY do these dumbheads not LEARN from their peer celebs NOT TO LEAVE PROOF lying around for any gold-digger out there to use for her 15 minutes?!
If for no other reason, than the fact that I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR INFIDELITIES on a 24-hour news cycle, okay??
Good questions. Such idiocy, especially when it comes from as intelligent a being as Tiger Woods, suggests denial, real blindness. From too much fame? Too much money? Or, as a wise old friend put it, just plain old “thinking with his little head instead of his big head”?
Doesn’t matter.
He’s about to embark on a whole new kind of public life. I’m sure John Daly would be happy to give him some advice.
Ah, David . . . you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking any of these jag bags are worth idolizing or looking up to.
Idolize his golf play. Admire his work ethic. Stand in awe of his guts and grace under pressure ON THE COURSE.
But never look to any professional athlete for advice on how to be a good husband/father/human being/friend.
Great post, by the way.
Steve C.
Ah, David . . . you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking any of these jag bags are worth idolizing or looking up to.
Idolize his golf play. Admire his work ethic. Stand in awe of his guts and grace under pressure ON THE COURSE.
But never look to any professional athlete for advice on how to be a good husband/father/human being/friend.
Great post, by the way.
Steve C.
Ah, David . . . you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking any of these jag bags are worth idolizing or looking up to.
Idolize his golf play. Admire his work ethic. Stand in awe of his guts and grace under pressure ON THE COURSE.
But never look to any professional athlete for advice on how to be a good husband/father/human being/friend.
Great post, by the way.
Steve C.
Well, I can’t say Tiger was a father figure to me. But why should we assume all pro athletes are “jag bags.” (Aside from the fun of saying, “jag bags.”)
Is it because we know in our hearts that our culture so thoroughly idolizes sports celebs that it’s sure to drive 99/100 of them completely insane with clinical egomania?
Woods’ apology; about as good as these things get, I’d say.
“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.
“Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious. Elin has always done more to support our family and shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.
“But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don’t share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one’s own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.
“Whatever regrets I have about letting my family down have been shared with and felt by us alone. I have given this a lot of reflection and thought and I believe that there is a point at which I must stick to that principle even though it’s difficult.
“I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves. For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology.”
Terrific post, Dave, as usual.
But I have another angle:
When we look back at the Tiger Woods scandal, we’ll mark it as the final death blow to old-school journalism.
It seems as if every new media site in existence–including your beloved Huffington Post–is now publishing Tiger’s alleged sex texts and voicemails to his various lovers.
Yes, I know: We’ve seen this no-holds-barred media coverage before, most recently with Alec Baldwin’s message to his daughter. But the Balwin affair will be a blip on the media radar screen when the Woods affair is done.
Do you remember the day when stories like this were relegated to The National Enquirer, even when they were proven true?
No more…
I heartily agree with everything in Tiger’s post on his website. These are the things I’ve been saying for a while now.
As to Mark’s comment about the death of “old-school journalism” I am going to repeat my contention [which some of my friends agree with, and other do not] that the only ones responsible for the rise of what I consider smarmy, peeping Tom-type media coverage, is us.
Whether we want to admit it or not, businesses run based on money. In the media environment, money comes through subscriptions, ratings points, or web-site hits. The media outlets have no choice but to provide the information the public will pay for.
So to me the solution is simple – every single person who clicks on web-stories, subscribes to or purchases The Enquirer, or watches TMZ instead of paying attention to stories about the wars, genocides, political decisions, and other legitmately important issues in our world, is contributing to the fast ride of our entire society into a cheap and fast ride straight into the gutter.
Conversely, all we have to do to make this garbage go away is to collectively commit to refuse to look at, and, more importantly – pay for this stuff.
Seriously people – how about we get going on making our own lives something to emulate, rather than spending time gleefully crowing over the bad choices of “famous people.”
Kristen, you place way too much confidence in the average person’s sense of civility and character. Spend an hour in a Wal-Mart. These are the people who are now in charge of the world.
Geez, that sounds condescending. But prove me wrong.
Hey, I never said I was holding my breath, David. I just said: “How bout it?”.
The one bright spot in this, is my faith in people like you, Crescenzo, my sister, and some of my other friends, all of whom are raising children, and doing so in a way that will give the next generation a fighting chance of being more intelligent, contributory members of society than my own generation appears to be!
P.S. You know better than anyone, that I don’t patronize Wal-Mart! Aside from my objections to how they do business, those places are always like the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You couldn’t DRAG me kicking and screaming into a Wal-Mart!!
Sorry, that should be “Robert” not David! And Robert you are also on the list of people who appear to me to be raising kids who’ll be better citizens!
But the deals, Kristen, the deals! Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Greg – there are few things on which I would say “Never”, because I’m old enough to know better. Saying that usually comes back to bite you in the ass.
On this one topic, however, I can say with complete confidence, I will NEVER give Wal-Mart my money!!!
“When we look back at the Tiger Woods scandal, we’ll mark it as the final death blow to old-school journalism.”
Mark, I see your point, but I’d say this story, and others like it, are marking kind of first life sign for the return of old-school journalism.
TMZ and these other sites got stuff wrong–like other journalists used to do in their chase for the story–but they got most of the stuff right and spent a shitload of shoe leather (or mouse-pad fuzz, these days) doing it.
Just like newspapers used to do with their early and late and EXTRA editions.
In this story the mainstream media “news” networks were days behind TMZ et al, their core competency being commentary, not reporting. And the newspapers were following, too. And ESPN and the Golf Channel were incredibly conservative (properly restrained, some might say) in their reporting.
Journalism WILL happen.
It’s just that it won’t come out of big corporations with more lawyers than reporters.
You know, it IS a tad bit ironic that this discussion over tabloid media, what the public wants, what we choose to discuss, what the MSM decides to report, what bloggers choose to write about, etc. etc. is happening on THIS blog, THIS week.
David is a leading expert in speechwriting. he is also a huge Obama supporter. Obama is a terrific orator.
Obama just have what will probably be the most important speech of his career as POTUS (WAAAAY more important than that line of bullshit he delivered in Cairo, or whatever nonsense he uttered in China) . . . and there’s nothing on this blog.
No analysis, no opinion, no thoughts.
David has actually “live blogged” some of Obama’s speeches. Whenever there is a big one, we usually get analysis.
But for the biggest speech of his presidency, we get not one but two posts on Tiger Woods.
Mind you, this is not a criticism, David. I’m just saying it is what it is. It’s a fact of life that the Tiger Woods scandals are like crack . . . you can’t help but be drawn to them, even when you know you shouldn’t be sucked in.
And journalists (and those passing for journalists in the tabloids) know this. They’ve known it for years.
Steve C.
You know, it IS a tad bit ironic that this discussion over tabloid media, what the public wants, what we choose to discuss, what the MSM decides to report, what bloggers choose to write about, etc. etc. is happening on THIS blog, THIS week.
David is a leading expert in speechwriting. he is also a huge Obama supporter. Obama is a terrific orator.
Obama just have what will probably be the most important speech of his career as POTUS (WAAAAY more important than that line of bullshit he delivered in Cairo, or whatever nonsense he uttered in China) . . . and there’s nothing on this blog.
No analysis, no opinion, no thoughts.
David has actually “live blogged” some of Obama’s speeches. Whenever there is a big one, we usually get analysis.
But for the biggest speech of his presidency, we get not one but two posts on Tiger Woods.
Mind you, this is not a criticism, David. I’m just saying it is what it is. It’s a fact of life that the Tiger Woods scandals are like crack . . . you can’t help but be drawn to them, even when you know you shouldn’t be sucked in.
And journalists (and those passing for journalists in the tabloids) know this. They’ve known it for years.
Steve C.
You know, it IS a tad bit ironic that this discussion over tabloid media, what the public wants, what we choose to discuss, what the MSM decides to report, what bloggers choose to write about, etc. etc. is happening on THIS blog, THIS week.
David is a leading expert in speechwriting. he is also a huge Obama supporter. Obama is a terrific orator.
Obama just have what will probably be the most important speech of his career as POTUS (WAAAAY more important than that line of bullshit he delivered in Cairo, or whatever nonsense he uttered in China) . . . and there’s nothing on this blog.
No analysis, no opinion, no thoughts.
David has actually “live blogged” some of Obama’s speeches. Whenever there is a big one, we usually get analysis.
But for the biggest speech of his presidency, we get not one but two posts on Tiger Woods.
Mind you, this is not a criticism, David. I’m just saying it is what it is. It’s a fact of life that the Tiger Woods scandals are like crack . . . you can’t help but be drawn to them, even when you know you shouldn’t be sucked in.
And journalists (and those passing for journalists in the tabloids) know this. They’ve known it for years.
Steve C.
Steve, this is not a criticism of your non-criticism, however:
A. This Woods story is has me by my particular lapels. Had this same thing happened to Roger Federer, you probably wouldn’t have seen a mention of it here. But as you know, Tiger Woods matters to me, always has.
B. Obama has given important speeches that I haven’t commented on. His inaugural address, for instance.
C. Sometimes I’m inspired to comment and even to live blog, but more often I feel this way, as I said yesterday on my other blog, at the Vital Speeches website:
“As Vital Speeches editor, I sometimes feel compelled to analyze important speeches immediately. But especially in cases of important speeches, the policy is so much more important than the speech that analyzing the speech feels like commenting on the president’s tie.”
I thought this speech was rhetorically prosaic and I decided to leave its analysis up to others.
http://www.vsotd.com/wordpress/?p=198
So there.
David:
I sometimes forget that you have other “intellectual properties” out there, such as the Vital Speech blog, where you might be addressing issues.
You are the Donald Trump of Cyberspace, with all of your intellectual properties.
However, I disagree with you about a) the importance of this speech; and b) the policy being more important.
First, you can’t compare a speech like this to the dog and pony show that is anybody’s inaugural address.
This issue could frame his presidency, making the speech much more “vital” than anything he’s done so far.
Second, this speech was fascinating!!! I read somewhere that unlike most of his speeches, they AGONIZED over this one.
How to appease the doves AND the hawks? How to keep his base happy (or at least not pissed) while not appearing to be weak on national security?
How to position it so he could win support from the other side of the aisle, without losing credibility with Moveon.org and other liberal groups that put him in office.
The nuances of this speech were so fascinating.
Personally, I think he screwed it up, by giving a timeline for withdrawal. If he’s going to commit to the surge, commit to it and say we’ll pull out of there when we meet our objectives.
But he wanted it both ways, he wrote a speech that tried to please everyone . . . and in the end he pleased almost nobody.
Whether you agree with that or not, I’d love to hear about the inner workings behind that speech.
Steve C.
David:
I sometimes forget that you have other “intellectual properties” out there, such as the Vital Speech blog, where you might be addressing issues.
You are the Donald Trump of Cyberspace, with all of your intellectual properties.
However, I disagree with you about a) the importance of this speech; and b) the policy being more important.
First, you can’t compare a speech like this to the dog and pony show that is anybody’s inaugural address.
This issue could frame his presidency, making the speech much more “vital” than anything he’s done so far.
Second, this speech was fascinating!!! I read somewhere that unlike most of his speeches, they AGONIZED over this one.
How to appease the doves AND the hawks? How to keep his base happy (or at least not pissed) while not appearing to be weak on national security?
How to position it so he could win support from the other side of the aisle, without losing credibility with Moveon.org and other liberal groups that put him in office.
The nuances of this speech were so fascinating.
Personally, I think he screwed it up, by giving a timeline for withdrawal. If he’s going to commit to the surge, commit to it and say we’ll pull out of there when we meet our objectives.
But he wanted it both ways, he wrote a speech that tried to please everyone . . . and in the end he pleased almost nobody.
Whether you agree with that or not, I’d love to hear about the inner workings behind that speech.
Steve C.
David:
I sometimes forget that you have other “intellectual properties” out there, such as the Vital Speech blog, where you might be addressing issues.
You are the Donald Trump of Cyberspace, with all of your intellectual properties.
However, I disagree with you about a) the importance of this speech; and b) the policy being more important.
First, you can’t compare a speech like this to the dog and pony show that is anybody’s inaugural address.
This issue could frame his presidency, making the speech much more “vital” than anything he’s done so far.
Second, this speech was fascinating!!! I read somewhere that unlike most of his speeches, they AGONIZED over this one.
How to appease the doves AND the hawks? How to keep his base happy (or at least not pissed) while not appearing to be weak on national security?
How to position it so he could win support from the other side of the aisle, without losing credibility with Moveon.org and other liberal groups that put him in office.
The nuances of this speech were so fascinating.
Personally, I think he screwed it up, by giving a timeline for withdrawal. If he’s going to commit to the surge, commit to it and say we’ll pull out of there when we meet our objectives.
But he wanted it both ways, he wrote a speech that tried to please everyone . . . and in the end he pleased almost nobody.
Whether you agree with that or not, I’d love to hear about the inner workings behind that speech.
Steve C.
Well, get your own blog.
(Do you think I have some magic secrets, or a red phone where I can talk to Jon Favreau and the White House speechwriters and ask them about paragraph four, line three?)
To be honest, I find accounts of the making of important speeches pretty fucking boring. This speech was pretty transparent in what it was trying to do; you sum it up well. The strategy, however, is not transparent. I think there’s lots of spooky stuff going on with the CIA in Pakistan that we don’t know about that factor heavily into our Afghanistan strategy, and I further think that Obama was hardly going to telegraph with this speech. Since when have American presidents belched out our precise war strategy in speeches to the nation ….
… wait, no one comes to Writing Boots to hear me spout off about military strategy.
No, they come here to hear your hatred of Obama bubble over in the Comments section of my posts about Tiger Woods.
I repeat: Get your own blog.
Wow . . . having a bad day, my friend?
I didn’t mean that I wanted to hear an insider’s analysis from YOU. I just think this speech was really interesting.
It wasn’t just a policy speech. It was a speech designed to win people over. And as a student of great speeches and speechwriters, I thought you might want to talk about it.
My bad.
But his presidency may very well hinge on getting public support for his policy in Afganistan . . . unfair as that may be, as he was saddled with the mess.
And when you have a great orator who needs to win over the public on a very volatile, controversial issue, it’s pretty damned interesting.
But I’m sorry I offended you. Sorry I brought up the speech.
You can get back to Tiger Woods now. I heard that a beer-cart girl just crawled out from under her rock to say she screwed him on the 14th tee at Torrey Pines.
Steve C.
Wow . . . having a bad day, my friend?
I didn’t mean that I wanted to hear an insider’s analysis from YOU. I just think this speech was really interesting.
It wasn’t just a policy speech. It was a speech designed to win people over. And as a student of great speeches and speechwriters, I thought you might want to talk about it.
My bad.
But his presidency may very well hinge on getting public support for his policy in Afganistan . . . unfair as that may be, as he was saddled with the mess.
And when you have a great orator who needs to win over the public on a very volatile, controversial issue, it’s pretty damned interesting.
But I’m sorry I offended you. Sorry I brought up the speech.
You can get back to Tiger Woods now. I heard that a beer-cart girl just crawled out from under her rock to say she screwed him on the 14th tee at Torrey Pines.
Steve C.
Wow . . . having a bad day, my friend?
I didn’t mean that I wanted to hear an insider’s analysis from YOU. I just think this speech was really interesting.
It wasn’t just a policy speech. It was a speech designed to win people over. And as a student of great speeches and speechwriters, I thought you might want to talk about it.
My bad.
But his presidency may very well hinge on getting public support for his policy in Afganistan . . . unfair as that may be, as he was saddled with the mess.
And when you have a great orator who needs to win over the public on a very volatile, controversial issue, it’s pretty damned interesting.
But I’m sorry I offended you. Sorry I brought up the speech.
You can get back to Tiger Woods now. I heard that a beer-cart girl just crawled out from under her rock to say she screwed him on the 14th tee at Torrey Pines.
Steve C.
Steve, do you know what a troll is?
“A troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
Steve, nobody likes a troll.
Are you off your medication or something?
I’m trying to figure out why you’re being so mean and unreasonable and touchy . . . and I just figured it out.
You’re having a very bad week. And I should be more sensitive to that.
Two people—-Tiger Woods and Obama—-whom you admire, look up to, support, and idolize, have both let you down in the same week.
You’re having a bad run of luck with thin, super smart, charismatic, half-black guys, my friend.
Maybe you should idolize a fat white guy for a while. Like me. I won’t let you down, buddy.
By the way, if you’re interested, your pal Hal Gordon, who has written for Reagan and Colin Powell, did a pretty nice analysis of Obama’s speech, if you care. It’s at:
http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=233D80BB1E1B4BB28F48CD9224DBE93C&AudID=3FF14703FD8C4AE98B9B4365B978201A
Steve C.
Are you off your medication or something?
I’m trying to figure out why you’re being so mean and unreasonable and touchy . . . and I just figured it out.
You’re having a very bad week. And I should be more sensitive to that.
Two people—-Tiger Woods and Obama—-whom you admire, look up to, support, and idolize, have both let you down in the same week.
You’re having a bad run of luck with thin, super smart, charismatic, half-black guys, my friend.
Maybe you should idolize a fat white guy for a while. Like me. I won’t let you down, buddy.
By the way, if you’re interested, your pal Hal Gordon, who has written for Reagan and Colin Powell, did a pretty nice analysis of Obama’s speech, if you care. It’s at:
http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=233D80BB1E1B4BB28F48CD9224DBE93C&AudID=3FF14703FD8C4AE98B9B4365B978201A
Steve C.
Are you off your medication or something?
I’m trying to figure out why you’re being so mean and unreasonable and touchy . . . and I just figured it out.
You’re having a very bad week. And I should be more sensitive to that.
Two people—-Tiger Woods and Obama—-whom you admire, look up to, support, and idolize, have both let you down in the same week.
You’re having a bad run of luck with thin, super smart, charismatic, half-black guys, my friend.
Maybe you should idolize a fat white guy for a while. Like me. I won’t let you down, buddy.
By the way, if you’re interested, your pal Hal Gordon, who has written for Reagan and Colin Powell, did a pretty nice analysis of Obama’s speech, if you care. It’s at:
http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=233D80BB1E1B4BB28F48CD9224DBE93C&AudID=3FF14703FD8C4AE98B9B4365B978201A
Steve C.
Is it getting hot in here?? Or is it just me?