Leviathan (noun) – a colossal, but destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy what it loves in its futile quest for self-indulgent fulfillment.
That’s the definition offered by brilliant British satire author Jasper Fforde in his seminal novel, The Fourth Bear, a laugh-a-minute-romp, by the way, for those of you who love literature, but it describes Woods to a tee: especially his obsession with beating Nicklaus’s records by any means necessary, heedless to how unsportsmanlike his actions look, (like swearing, throwing clubs, and trampling anyone who doesn’t walk in lockstep, with his “I am Tiger Woods, and it’s my world, you just live in it” attitude).
Some sources now speculate that Woods will go into some sort of unspecified rehab, then cry for forgiveness on Oprah and that, once the Kingmaker herself grants her imprimatur upon his act of contrition, all will instantly revert back to normal for Woods.
The Daily News has this great piece about why we can’t let Woods off with an addiction defense. From the article:
“We can’t let them get away with it. If the psychologizers win, they will allow brain chemistry, instead of free will, to co-opt habitual infidelity, thus completely and utterly absolving Woods of everything. Including driving barefoot, no doubt.
And thereby absolving the rest of us of our sins. Yes, I said it: sins.
The facts here are pretty simple. Woods made repeated and calculated decisions to deceive and hurt his family. For that he should get no sympathy. Pawning off bad behavior on some nebulous psychosis makes public apologies and professed remorse merely perfunctory, not sincere….”Rather than being a sex addict, the same single-mindedness, skill set and gift for robotic calculation that make Tiger Woods the world’s greatest golfer make him an avatar of the bedroom.”
Amazing: For both his strengths and weaknesses, psychology manages to surgically remove Tiger, a man whose power and wealth have bought him more free will than most of us will ever have, from his own life.”
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If people are stupid enough to forgive Woods because Oprah tells them to, that’s their business, but the PGA Tour has some hard questions for which it should demand answers. Questions swirl around the money trail allegedly used to procure Penthouse Executive club strippers, multiple porn stars, and party girls. This is not only the seedy underbelly of this scandal, but the NFL and NBA, something golf was supposed to be immune to with all it’s altruism and sportsmanship…a mantra Tim Finchem hides behind at every chance. But as Golf.com’s Mike Walker noted, “The knock is against a system where the rich and famous play by a different set of rules than the rest of us. That’s the real story here, not the salacious details of Woods’s personal life.”
While most of my readers and commenters have been uniformly critical of Woods – especially the one’s with young children who used to idolize him, a few, a strange bedfellowship of libertarians on the one hand and jock-sniffers on the other, want people to look the other way in the name of privacy, or cut him slack because of his golfing prowess. Here is their reading assignment for the day, and it’s terrific stuff, so grab a Snickers bar, you’re not going anywhere for a while.
1. The best piece ever written that shatters the “privacy” debate was written by the London Times’s Matt Syed, and mind you, their defamation laws are far more strict than in the U.S. From the article:
He and his advisers have systematically cultivated a public image — an image that now appears to be a sham — specifically to expand his wealth on a grand scale.
“In the past few years he has earned more money from his deals with Nike, Gillette and other sponsors than he could ever hope to earn on a golf course. To put it another way, his public image and his day job as a repository of corporate endorsement income are indistinguishable. It has been estimated by Forbes, the business magazine, that he has a fortune in excess of $1 billion (about £613 million).
Woods’s supporters will doubtless argue that consumers buy products endorsed by Woods not just because of his image, but also because he is a jolly good golfer — and that is doubtless true as far as it goes.
But only a fool would deny that Woods’s unprecedented earning power is umbilically linked to the positioning of the world’s top golfer as a family man: safe, clean, upstanding, decent, the kind of boy you would want your son to be like, and your daughter to marry….
To put it simply, Woods’s right to privacy has been fatally undermined not by his earning lots of cash beyond the golf course, but by his hypocrisy. He could have had sex with a platoon of cocktail waitresses while dressed in a pair of suspenders and still been entitled to privacy had he not, at the same time, been pocketing a sizeable cheque from Gillette via a management company that had spent three weeks figuring out how to place a soft-focus picture of Woods, his baby in his arms, and his wife looking on lovingly….
Put simply, it is not credible for anyone to trade lucratively on their public image and to expect the press to leave them be when there is evidence of behaviour (albeit behind closed doors) that directly contradicts that image.”
Check and mate. Game, set, match. Turn out the lights, the party’s over.
2. Steve Elling, closer to Woods than almost any writer due to sheer proximity, wrote this about Woods’s silence:
“The news can’t get any worse, can it? People being hauled off on ambulance gurneys at 2:30 a.m. (again), the possibility of nude photos being printed and women lined up around the block to collect shakedown money as Woods reportedly is forking over a fortune to keep people quiet. Meanwhile, Woods hasn’t said a word. Sure, there have been a few sentences attributed to him on his website, but there’s no way to know whether they were crafted by Woods or some spin-doctor. He’s been essentially silent. As his image gets rightly nuked to a crisp and his lawyers field calls from too many painted women to catalog, Woods continues to dive for cover. There are folks out there who believe he owes us no explanation, because this unseemly episode is a private matter. I heartily disagree. Fans put him on a pedestal and bought into his false image, making him a billionaire, and if he has an ounce of integrity, he will stand up and explain himself to the people he fooled with his duplicity. In the absence of denials or explanations, by sheer avalanche of supposition alone, many are believing every printed word of it, too.”
3. Referring to my asking Woods about his club-slamming and swearing back at the PGA Championship, Rachel Blount calls his petulant denial of wrongdoing there mild in comparison to his actions now. [Editor’s Note, Fox Sports’s Steve Czaban mentioned this as well]:
“We’ve all seen this show before, of course. Tiger’s ignominious tale is writ larger than most, for two reasons: an adoring public convinced of his infallibility, and an athlete unwilling to discourage such notions. That convergence set him up for a spectacular fall, but one that is unlikely to change athletes’ behavior or the way Americans react to it.
More than perhaps any other pro athlete, Woods has inspired a peculiar cult of personality. His superhuman ability on the course, his legendary back story and his carefully managed image created a figure who made grown men behave like 12-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert.”
Nail, meet hammer…commentors, are you paying attention? ‘Cause this next bit concerns you…
“He kept cashing the checks of his sponsors, who weren’t paying him $123 million a year to be either solitary or ordinary. Woods’ empire was built as much on his public perception as a pristine role model as it was on his indisputable skill with a club, and he seemed happy to play the part.
His exposure as a false idol proved both his naiveté and ours. “Personal sins should not require press releases, and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean personal confessions,” Woods said on his website, a ridiculous statement from someone who made a fortune by selling a perfect image to a celebrity-obsessed culture.
4. With all the shocking revelations sexual revelations coming out – and I don’t mean the fairly tame texts…well not “Go to the bathroom and take a picture,” but most of the rest – with revelations of porn stars and Penthouse club nude dancers, Russell Goldberg of ABC News shatters the myth that Tiger the Brand won’t take a hit:
“He is beyond PR redemption. He is in public relations hell right now. There is not a PR man on Earth who can restore his image,” said public relations maven Howard Rubenstein….He’s hemorrhaging; even a transfusion won’t help. He can never re-establish that perfect image of a happily married family man. Never,” said Rubenstein. The best he can hope for is to re-establish his image as a golfing champion. If he wins consistently and doesn’t sink to 4 or 5, he’ll be applauded again – but just for golf. There will still be plenty of snickering behind his back.”
But even a return to the golf course could turn into a public nightmare for the man many competitors once feared.
“The aura of invincibility that Tiger had — how does he ever get that back?” ABC News sports consultant [and USA Today’s] Christine Brennan told “Good Morning America” this morning. “Now he’s a laughingstock.”
They go on to add maybe Tiger is right about laying low for a while and waiting to say something until after the last revelations come out. “You can’t clear the road until after the avalanche is over and this avalanche is not over yet.” Still, the women are in a conga line and dancing all over Tiger’s wallet and image.
5. In another London Times article, they lay out the sponsors that have already dimmed their spotlights on Tiger, and explain how Tiger lost one congressman’s support in a having a bill passed to honor him. From the article:
“”This is a ride they just don’t want to be on right now, it wouldn’t surprise me if they are dropping ads. As much as these companies originally partnered with him to bask in the positive glow of Tiger Woods, they are just as quick to move away when that association becomes negative.”
Woods’s public ratings have also dropped, affecting the likes of Gillette, Nike, Tag Heuer, Accenture and AT&T, whose marketing campaigns have been modelled on his clean performance both on and off the fairways. Some retailers are reporting a reduction of up to 33 per cent in sales of their Tiger Woods action figures.
According to the Davie Brown Index, used to gauge the ability of personalities to influence shoppers, his ranking as the sixth-most-powerful celebrity endorser has fallen in less than two weeks to 24th.
His “favourable” rating with the public, which was at 84 per cent in June, is now at 60 per cent, according to a Gallup poll, which also found that 80 per cent of people were “talking negatively” about Woods.”
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So the only questions that remain are:
1. Will Woods really change from the reckless, selfish, narcissistic person he was before this incident. Tigers rarely change their stripes. If he tries to be Tiger the Brand – the wholesome, squeaky-clean, noble person he claimed all this time – it’ll be quite the change and it may prove hgard for him. For openers, Elin will have him under tight rein. No more parties, no more girls, no more reckless freedom. Tiger better understand, the veil of secrecy will be much harder to maintain now that he has a target on his back drawn by every tabloid in the world looking after his every step, and…
2. Will we be stupid enough to buy into the act if he’s not sincere, just playing it for the sponsors and fans? If Tiger goes on Oprah, cries, and begs forgiveness, we’re the idiots for believing it. We gave this guy the world and look what he did with it: He wore his money poorly, treated people like they were beneath him, and acted like a pig. “Go ahead…be a Tiger?” No thanks. We paid Tiger $1 billion to NOT be Kobe, to NOT be Ray Lewis, to NOT be A-Roid, and he betrayed that trust.
Maybe there will be redemption down the road…and we should hope for redemption. One lesson we can teach Tiger – a world-class grudge holder – is that one of the best attributes in any person is forgiveness. It’s a good person who lets go of grudges and forgives, but forgiveness here is not earned by winning the Masters or Open Championship, and not by crying to Oprah, but in his actions going forward, actions over a long period of time, not his next win on the golf course.
I’ll close with this anecdote. This week, I had dinner with friends, a young couple with young children, all ages 5-14. The little one came to the dinner table with a newspaper, pointed to the pictures of Tiger and porn star Joslyn James, and asked, “Why is Tiger’s friend wearing no shirt?” Mom grabbed the paper with a terse, “gimme that.” There was an awful silence for a few seconds as all the adults looked around, while the teens and pre-teens snickered.
Tiger, despite what Nike or IMG may tell you, this is a problem “I’m sorry” can’t fix. After all, wasn’t it Kultida Woods who famously said:
“I tell him the golf game is a gentleman’s game. I point out…John McEnroe playing Jimmy Connors in tennis and him cursing and throwing his racket. I tell him not to do it, because it will ruin my reputation as a parent. I will not have a spoiled child.”
