At the beginning of the month, as the Tiger Woods scandal was first breaking, Charles P. Pierce of Esquire wrote, “I can’t say I’m surprised — either by the allegations or by what’s ensued since Friday’s wreck:”
Back in 1997, one of the worst-kept secrets on the PGA Tour was that Tiger was something of a hound. Everybody knew. Everybody had a story. Occasionally somebody saw it, but nobody wanted to talk about it, except in bar-room whispers late at night. Tiger’s People at the International Management Group visibly got the vapors if you even implied anything about it. However, from that moment on, the marketing cocoon around him became almost impenetrable. The Tiger Woods that was constructed for corporate consumption was spotless and smooth, an edgeless brand easily peddled to sheikhs and shakers. The perfect marriage with the perfect kids slipped so easily into the narrative it seemed he’d been born married.
Anything dissonant was dealt with quickly and mercilessly. Tiger’s caddy, an otherwise unemployable thug named Steve Williams, regularly harassed any spectator whom Williams thought might eventually harsh his man’s mellow. The IMG handlers differed from Williams only in that they were slightly more polite. The golfing press became aware that stories about Tiger’s temper, say, or about his ties to unsavory corporate grifters, would mean the end of access to the only golfer in the world who matters. There is a quick way to tell now which journalists have made this devil’s bargain and which ones haven’t — the ones insisting that this “accident” is somehow “not a story” are the sopranos in the chorus.
But the more impenetrable Tiger’s cocoon was, the more fragile it became. It was increasingly vulnerable to anything that happened that was out of the control of the people who built and sustained it, and the events of last week certainly qualify. Now he’s got one of those major Media Things on his hands, and there is nothing that he, nor IMG, nor the clinging sponsors, nor anyone else can do about it. He is going to be everyone’s breakfast for the foreseeable future. (Among his many headaches, there is absolutely no way that the Enquirer quits on this story. See Edwards, John.) And he’s going to be some kind of punch line for the most of the rest of his public career. There is some historical irony in all that, and not just for myself.
Howard Kurtz, today, “How on Earth did we miss it?”
With all the reporters, sportswriters, paparazzi and celebrity chroniclers chasing after the world’s top golfer, how did Tiger Woods keep his extracurricular activities secret for so long?
All those party girls and nightclub hostesses, who now appear starved for attention, and yet no tabloid got wind of the fact that Woods was scoring away from the links, again and again?
The episode exposes the dark secret of the boldface-names beat: It’s a shared illusion, perpetrated by the media-industrial complex. We don’t really know these people who are cloaked in the mantle of fame, despite their ubiquity on our front pages and television screens and laptops.
When Woods was driven to the sidelines by the relentless coverage of his tawdry affairs, the multiple mistresses seemed utterly at odds with his squeaky-clean image. But that image was a carefully crafted construct, since journalists — and everyone else — had little access to the player he truly was. He is a man with the extraordinary ability to hit a white ball into a little hole, but beyond that, we were all had.
As the Professor writes:
Sure. Just like with John Edwards. I don’t believe that nobody in the press knew any of this stuff. I think they just didn’t go there because it didn’t advance the preferred narrative.
How long before we hear “we were all had” about Barack Obama? When it becomes unmistakable that the narrative was a lie, I’d guess.
The Tiger-Obama connection is a topic that Lisa Schiffren explored recently in the American Thinker.
Update (12/18/09): Welcome Insta-readers; and a quick follow-up to the Pierce article above. Pierce wrote that among Tiger’s many headaches, “there is absolutely no way that the Enquirer quits on this story. See Edwards, John.”
If so, perhaps it’s the Enquirer trying to make up for quitting once before:
Golf Digest editor Jerry Tarde acknowledged that he was “mystified” that Mr. Woods had agreed to this. Under Golf Digest’s contract with Mr. Woods, the monthly, which is owned by Condé Nast Publications Inc., spent as much as $1 million annually on donations to the Tiger Woods Foundation, printing the charity’s annual report and sponsoring many of Mr. Woods’s preferred tournaments, according to a person familiar with the terms. In return, Mr. Woods agreed to contribute monthly articles on golf techniques and limit his appearances in competing publications.
Yet never had Golf Digest been granted the level of access to the golfer’s private life allowed for in the article and photo shoot published in Men’s Fitness in August 2007. Mr. Tarde says he did not object because the interview wasn’t a violation of Golf Digest’s agreement with Mr. Woods. He said he assumed Mr. Woods had agreed to the interview as a way to generate publicity for his trainer, Keith Kleven. Mr. Kleven, who was quoted extensively in the Men’s Fitness article, did not return calls for comment.
Mr. Woods had cut an unusual deal with American Media Inc., the owner of both Men’s Fitness magazine and the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Mr. Woods agreed to the cover shot and photo spread in Men’s Fitness, whose circulation of about 700,000 per issue is less than half of Golf Digest’s nearly 1.7 million, in return for the National Enquirer squelching a story and photographs purportedly showing Mr. Woods in a liaison with a woman who wasn’t his wife, according to people directly involved in the arrangement.
American Media Inc. denies there was any deal to quash photos of Mr. Woods in a compromising situation. In written statements to the Journal on Dec. 11, the company said descriptions of a deal between American Media and Mr. Woods were “inaccurate” and “false.” A spokeswoman and a lawyer for the company declined to specify the inaccuracies, but said sources who described such an agreement were “misinformed.” Asked whether there was any deal made with Mr. Woods to quash a written article, the lawyer said “no comment.”
Read the whole thing, as the Professor is wont to say.
Does anyone wonder any longer why the MSM is in such disrepute? Who knows what else is being kept from us in the interests of masking the corruption that has enveloped the country in this age of the celebrity. Tiger had everything but it wasn’t enough. Obama had even more and even that isn’t enough for this godhead. I never thought I’d say it, but I think the most honest newspaper in the country is the National Enquirer. It digs below the surface of the carefully cultivated images to show us what festers below.
I doubt that the press, in the aggregate, missed anything. Let’s remember how carefully they protected John F. Kennedy from any revelation of his numerous infidelities.
Tiger Woods was and remains an immensely talented, immensely attractive colored man. (NB: Not “black,” as the “Cablinasian” Woods himself has made plain.) It’s natural for journalists, who as a group are more liberal than nearly any other occupation, to want to see him do well and be lionized. It took Elin Woods’s rage and Tiger’s panic to force all his sins out into the open.
Apropos of which, sins of the flesh are the most tempting of all, and the easiest to commit, especially in this day and age. Considering his great attractiveness, the adulation he received, and the way women flocked arond him, had Woods been able to resist all of it, I’d have rated him above human. I hope Elin eventually forgives him…and that he eventually mends his ways and forgives himself, which is often the hardest step of all.
The mainstream media’s willing complicity in covering up Tiger’s transgressions has earlier precedents than Barack Obama, and ones that are more on point, viz: John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. To some extent, the media continue covering for them, and for John Edwards.
“…the ones insisting that this “accident” is somehow “not a story” are the sopranos in the chorus.”
I’ll assume since “sopranos” is not capitalized, this is a reference to these media “watchdogs” being tame and neutered, not being junkyard dog tough-guys.
Obama has a whole entourage of these castrati, called the White House Press Corps (with very few exceptions).
I realize all this makes for juicy press now, but I think you’re right that the press coverup is a bigger story than the infidelity. There is nothing about Tiger that compels the continued coverup so now the press is all over him. Compare this with Kennedy’s murder of Mary Jo Kopechne. The press still refuses to talk about it.
They will turn against Barack when it becomes apparent that he is destroying the Democrat party, which should happen in about five…four…three…
Irony abounds. There was only one person in the world who could stop the Tiger juggernaut – Tiger himself. And he managed to do it.
With Globaloney now unable to tarnish Dear Reader further, I suspect we will also see the unraveling of it accelerate, like the unraveling of Tiger, and eventually of Obama. How long before the first “big” newspaper or network folds?
Andrew Breitbart’s timing is exquisite, isn’t it? His old-line competitors are burning their brands to the waterline just as he and others begin to satisfy the demand they never tried to fill: the demand for news that isn’t propaganda, and isn’t aimed at the Oprah-tainment demographic.
Our watchdogs in the national media covered for Kennedy, Clinton, and Edwards because they were Democrat politicians. MSM looked the other way for Tiger because they, and many others as well, see him as a successful Black man, and had they exposed Tiger for a philandering fraud, they would have opened themselves to the charge of racism.
So, MSM’s presstitutes sold their professional integrity in the same Faustian arrangement with Tiger that CNN made with Saddam: self censorship in exchange for access.
Tiger Woods was marketed as a product.
In the early 20th Century, during the Theodore Roosevelt administration, Congress passed the Pure Food & Drug Act. We have long since taken for granted the fact that you can pick up a box of breakfast cereal or loaf of bread and read the list of ingredients printed on the side.
Same goes for most products. We have fabric content listings, EPA mileage estimates, redundant instructions, and warning labels attached to everything.
You can be sure that there are content labels on many of the products that Tiger helped sell. But Tiger himself was wrapped in content-free bubble wrap.
For decades our betters in the media have smugly styled themselves the “gatekeepers” of what is news and what isn’t.
But when it becomes painfully obvious that they’ve been engaging in coverups, they look around in feigned innocence and ask, “Gate? What gate?”
Tiger is the anti-Palin with the press an enabler while they hound normal people like Sarah Palin for the sin of being normal. The press is now down to their base of left wing readers and they know that there is no chance for them if they can’t hang onto that tiny demographic.
Nothing new here, the press have been covering for their favorite “stories” since long before FDR and JFK.
There was only one person in the world who could stop the Tiger juggernaut – Tiger himself. And he managed to do it.
I dunno Ken, it was Elin wielding the golf cub that night, chasing Tiger down the driveway.
If this spat had stayed in the house, what would we know today? Bupkiss.
I think this time the MSM is not at fault. For one Tiger is just a golfer, not a politico, What reason would anybody have other than the national enq. to go after the story. He is famous, married and chasing women. That is right up their alley. The golf writers probably knew but they have no reason either to tarnish their meal ticket.
Well, the captive media is still covering for some of the left wing, arrogant and wealthy Senators in Washington! What ever happened to the Kerry girlfriend who was allegedly sent to Africa for the duration of the 2008 campaign?
The Woods/Obama comparison misses the mark completely: Capitalist Woods selling Buicks to suckers vs. Marxist Obama force-feeding redistribution.
We know Tiger’s handlers paid women to be quiet.
We know Tiger’s handlers paid off a magazine with a photo shoot to be quiet.
We know Tiger’s handlers were willing to pay Elin $300 million to be quiet.
We know that a CBS newsperson was willing to threaten release of info on a celebrity unles he got paid(Letterman)
On what basis are we to believe that the reporters who knew did not get paid off?
Who the *()^ cares?? Tiger is JUST a golfer! You’d think he had his hand on the (nuclear) button the way people talk about him. And so what if we didn’t know; it was his private life and none of our business. For a group of people that supposed to treasure privacy so much, y’all are pretty nosey. How would y’all react him Phil Mickelson pulled a John Edwards?
Sic transit gloria mundi.
@Rachel: Well first off, Tiger didn’t pull a “John Edwards.” He pulled about 15 “John Edwardses,” which is in and of itself — for a man of his ubiquitous fame — a marvel of logistics worthy of a story. As for Phil Mickelson (and I’m sure you’ll agree), he’s just Phil Mickelson.
The big time tour golfers all stay, eat and dring at the same places at events, the golf media stays, eats and drinks at those same places. Please don’t try to tell me it was all a big mystery to the media.
Golf does not affect my life. The lesson this mess that Tiger is in tells me that there are probably other reporting beats that this same thing might be happening. Take the business beat. Were there signs with, say Bernie Maddof? Or the political beat. Why is it after all this time that young Mr. Obama’s college grades and papers a mystery? Why did Mr. Obama spend all that money keeping his full birth certificate hidden? Where did Mr. Obama get that money? There are a heck of a lot more political reporters than golf reporters. How come there are so many mysteries?
One day we will have an expose of high-visibility, MSM media types and talking heads. Priceless now and more fun and valuable with each passsing day.
For those of us who don’t care about the salacious details and don’t idol-worship Tiger Woods, the interest is in how for the umteenth time the media protected who it wanted to protect while trashing those it disliked.
The MSM should please just die off, already. They serve no useful purpose.
Very interesting. Now the game is, who are the hot celebs whose peccadillos still are being covered up by compliant “journalists?”
Start the guessing and estimating and analysis, please.
Why wait until the next one crashes his Escalade.
For instance: one Midwest Senator who once worked on a popular television show that was reportedly one big daisy-chain for a few years in the 70s/80s… Why doesn’t the WaPo assign, say, 11 reporters to check out the stories already published about the sex, drugs and rock and roll?
Or another: Do ESPN reporters have so much to keep covered up about their own personal lives that they extend the courtesy to the stars they cover?
I hope someone documents who knew what when in covering Tiger, so their questionable journalism becomes news.
I’m not talking about Tiger, genius, I’m talking about Mickleson, who stayed by his wife’s side while she dealt with cancer. What if PHIL – not Tiger – had an affair on his wife while she was sick with cancer?
Why don’t you read the WHOLE statement before you go on your self-righteous tangent?