You have to give it to Tiger Woods– his “strategy” for dealing with his scandal was flawless. Controlled disclosure. Hide. Pro-forma confession and penitence. Chill. “Treatment”. Resurrection and resumption of endorsements. It’s all as if nothing had happened except– guess what– he’s now even more famous and thus worth even more than he was before. Even PBS Newshour had to do a story on him. That’s depressing.
I personally thought the Nike ad was brilliant. It was, of course, entirely manufactured by a pr firm (which at one time even included Ari Fleischer, press secretary to George W. Bush for a few years), but you have to consider the fact that a good pr firm would certainly advise Tiger not to undermine his own very expensive strategy by carrying on as if nothing had happened. I imagine they might have asked him– what do you want to do? Do you want to continue to philander as if there was no tomorrow? No problem– we can do that. We can do the George Clooney approach. Stay single and make no commitments to anybody. Choose carefully. Don’t, for God’s sake, promise anything.
The Nike ad was bold, brilliant, and moving. Don’t listen to the critics who claim–as if this was a revelation–that Tiger’s father was actually describing Tiger’s mother, not Tiger. That is irrelevant. It’s a work of art, not a documentary. The important thing is that it appears to confront the issue in a tasteful, dignified tone. What would you say to Tiger: what were you thinking? And the beautiful thing about it is that Tiger doesn’t give an answer. He doesn’t say anything at all. It’s as if he was above that sort of pedestrian give and take, the kind of thing the tabloids suck on. It’s as if a mere apology would be inadequate and demeaning. It’s as if no scandal, no matter how salacious, can touch the real Tiger Woods. It’s as if he took the paradox at the heart of the question– do you mean, about my behaviour or about the consequences of getting caught— and raised it, in his mind, to the level of poetry and religion. What is “is”? What is morality and ethics and principle when you make enough money to buy and sell entire nations? When you spend your spare time in a darkened casino in Las Vegas betting you can have even more money, instead of travelling, or reading, or supporting a charity– I mean, really supporting a charity, not that token foundation crap– No, Tiger says nothing. He might just be thinking, I had no idea how the media would try to cash in on the destruction of my family, with such self-righteous glee. I had no idea that the public would project themselves into my story except that would have had the luxury of pretending they really deserved it. He had no idea of how entitled the public feels to your soul, your dignity, your privacy, once they have bought into the image you fabricated just for them to substitute for the emptiness at the core of your talent.
Don’t forget– none of the scandalous stuff was anybody’s damn business in the first place. I heard a golfer state that he used to think of Tiger Woods as a role model and now he is so, so disappointed, and I wanted to slap him on the side of the head and scream: Tiger Woods was never a role model. He was a manufactured plastic robot intended to manipulate you into buying extravagantly worthless trinkets with his face or name on them. Then he took your money and gambled with it, alone, in Las Vegas, with his body guards to keep smelly, unimportant people like you out of his life; he spent it on nannies and maids and gardeners and publicists and lawyers and pr consultants, and the women… Anyone who would see Tiger Woods as a role model in the first place was always a fool.
But anyone who buys the repentance shtick, and the phony reconciliation, and the phony therapy– is even more deluded.
You want a role model? Go down the street and watch somebody work hard to support his family. Read about Bethany Maclean or Brooksley Born or Bernhard Schmidt. Never heard of them? Of course not.
