Tiger Woods, the Aftermath

By: dwil

The 12-step program for Co-Dependents of Sexual Addicts reads:

1. We admitted we were powerless over compulsive sexual behavior — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all areas of our lives.

Friday was Tiger Woods dealing with Step Eight of that program.

But Friday was also a show of who we are as a Western people.

A man’s private life has been on display for two months now. The women he slept with – and, perhaps, some he did not sleep with – who were not his wife suddenly felt they were owed something more than occasional sex and whatever else Tiger Woods wanted to share with them. They used television to make very public shows of pain and emotional distress, as if they were longtime lovers who had deep relationships with Woods, when in fact, they are no more than occasional sex partners – playthings in an unfaithful and irresponsible rich man’s life experiences.

Since those moments, various members of the press have attempted to position themselves in front of the camera. With the public spectacle has arisen a cottage industry called “media authorities.” These men and women from various profession in and outside of the media are called upon whenever there is an event of interest enough to dominate the news cycle for more than one revolution. They appear like clockwork, giving opinions, adding touches of – predetermined by the networks disseminating the programming – context to the event, and sharing their alleged expertise in the matter. All of which is alleged to be for the public good, or for “educating” the public about matters and events occurring and existing outside of their daily routines.

Tom Rinaldi “Where were you when you heard Tiger Woods address the public for the first time since all of this has happened. This is the first time we’ve heard his voice since that infamous voice mail.”

Rinaldi, not “in effect,” but in a very twisted reality, is likening Woods’ public apology to the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Robert F. Kennedy assassinations – or to the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion, or the events of September 11, 2001.

That is the world world we live in today.

That many PGA Tour golfers publicly chastised Woods for holding a press conference Friday is illustrative of the hate for Woods they have carried with them. That PGA Tour CEO Tim Finchem knew of Woods conference ahead of time, forgot to tell the Tour members and now must apologize for this gaffe – and for Woods is illustrative of the ridiculous burden Finchem and other PGA chieftains have placed on one person – Woods – for their collective financial success. This was never the burden of Nicklaus, or Palmer, or Hogan, or even Jones.

Then again, despite their best efforts, they never dominated the Tour the way Tiger Woods has. And it is not because the golfers today are not of the quality of player that Woods is, or that they somehow do not have the guts Woods has – golfers are a notoriously whiny breed, due to the upper crust socio-economic strata in which most of them have arisen and have been for decades – in America, at least.

Woods dominates the game simply because he as Jack Nicklaus once said, “Plays a game with which I am not familiar.”

Tiger Woods is the dominant force and preeminent figure in sports and in the world of athlete marketing. He is the first manufactured human good produced in the late 20th and 21st century; the first true human manifestation of the globalist-corporatist-socialist elite.

Everyone who has come in contact with the phenomenon-simulacrum that is Tiger Woods, if not knows this, innately feels this.

The world is different when Tiger Woods inhabits its spaces. If you are not someone like Bill Simmons or any other of the sporting press cognoscenti who feels a deluded sense privileged because of their own perceived stature or because of their alleged proximity to Woods, you can see it clearly when he plays golf. His playing partners, to a person, speak of the supernaturally charged atmosphere created by his presence; that every person in the gallery watching him is somehow different when he strides to the first tee.

There is a palpable electricity in the air. It is the charge of people who come to see the otherworldly occur. It is the charge of people desperately seeking a feeling of the ecstasy. It is the charge of people expecting fulfillment, expecting miracles from a man who strikes a golf ball in a way no one in the history of his sport has.

And because the corporation has won over the will of humanity, it is the same crowd that once followed prophets, transcendent political leaders, and revolutionaries. It is hero worship wrapped in a corporate sigil that, to some degree, has mezmerized every person on earth who has gazed upon it to the degree that, if they are not adherents and disciples of the swoosh, have a nearly violent reaction to its being.

Tiger Woods is the swoosh come to life. In superhero muscled body and impenetrable gaze, in the Black skin of the villain and beyond his Buddhist mother’s best intentions he comes. He comes by the way of White male-dominated Western hate of the secretly yearn for and wish to kill but exists only because he represents the life force of a darker-skinned world from which he must steal in order to breathe the richness of ancient ritual existence life into his fermented, flaccid, and flagging self.

Wrapped in a fascii Mussolini foresaw and Rockefeller and Morgan and Rothschild and all the other money masters shaped.

Tiger Woods is ———————————————– money.

——————————

Tiger Woods living for 32 years of his life through a television screen, through television, where the operative phrase for what is disseminated through the screen is called “programming.” This is the reality of the 21st century written by science fiction writers for the past century, the reality of the 21st century imagined by futurists at now extinct “World Fairs” of the 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s.

It is said that part of the reason John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in the 1960 Presidential race was due to his youthful and energetic appearance when the two men debated on television. Nixon, on the other hand, came off as haggard looking. And despite most pundits of the day writing of Nixon victory in those debates – the first telecast to a national audience – Kennedy was perceived as having won. While JFK appeared calm and spoke smoothly, Nixon broke out into a sweat that was readily apparent to the viewing audience and was perceived as humorless and cold. Still, in those nascent days of television no one could have imagined that one day the world’s most recognizable figure would not be a political figure or some person performing some great service to all of humanity.

No one could have imagined that a little boy of mixed race who once appeared on late night television with his father to show off his golf swing would grow up would be known by more people throughout the world than America’s first Black President; that his televised apology would be mentioned as an event that would be burned in the memories of, perhaps, a billion people around the world and be thought of with some of the most tragic events in U.S. history.

how much television has shaped who we are as a Western society.
Tiger Woods was raised inside of a television screen
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An ESPN television network-compiled set of reactions to Woods’ public statement gives us a glimpse into how Western men feel about Tiger Woods. It also gives us a glimpse into the direction the godhead of sports will take regarding the man.

Butch Harmon:
I like a lot of people who was watchin’ it was surprised that he read his statement completely word for word. You would have thought he would have had bullet points and showed his emotion a little more. But then again I think he probable felt a little more comfortable doin’ it that way. Ummm, you know, I-I think that this part about, you know, this is between my wife and I – the personal stuff. I don’t blame him for that. But if he comes out and plays again and has a press conference he’s gonna get asked the questions. Now, whether he answers them or not is totally up to Tiger Woods. To think that he’s gonna stand there and never get the questions asked, I think that’s a little ridiculous.

Former New York Yankees publicist Rick Cerrone said of Woods’ public apology:
What I expected to see today was some humility. What I saw today was arrogance. What I saw was anger. It was basically an infomercial.

ESPN SportsCenter anchor Stan Verrett mentioned that he was texting various people while Woods gave his apology. The commentary from Verrett was as follows:
“He [anonymous pro] said he just doesn’t get it. Why does he have to do this? He only has to apologize to his wife. I mean, I’m a big fan of his but he doesn’t owe me anything.”

Another Woods friend, Mark O’Meara, had this to say:
I know that I’ve said before that I’m disappointed by what’s happened but, I mean, who wouldn’t be. But on the other hand, with the disappointment comes hope. And my hope for Tiger and his family, for Elin and the kids, is that they work through this issue, and that Tiger gets back to what I know he’s capable of doin’.

Four-time NASCAR champion, Jimmy Johnson was even asked to speak about Woods’ apology:
I think it’s hard to watch and say, was it sincere, was it this, was it that – It’s just tough to really look at those points through an interview where he’s reading a statement…

Bill McGowan, “image consultant” from the Clarity Media Group examined Woods’ apology thusly:
“He came off very Tiger-like in that it was a little too rehearsed and a little too scripted for my liking. The more scripted you are, the more risk you run of not being authentic or sincere.”

Friday morning deposed ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine writer, and ESPN network personality Stephen A. Smith, hoping to create his own cottage industry off Woods’ back by attempting to assassinate his character:
“…he came across as incredibly fake. I think it was a pathetic performance as far as I’m concerned… I understand what Dana said she had to go through and read the statement and all that. I get that. I’m not tryin’ to diminish the importance of that… The only thing he genuine about was attackng the media as if it was their fault he crashed in to a fire hydrant… As if it was their fault that he had adulterous affairs – a multitude of them. And then he has the audacity to sit there and say he wants to make sure it never happens again…. Let me disappont all the women in the world out there today. Whether its 7 or 16 or 19 or whatever number is thrown out there… you don’t go from those numbers to zero. I’m sorry… You did nothing but attack those people who report the news whether it’s TMZ or online.com – lord knows what else was out there…”

Anyone viewing the apology can see that, from the camera angle behind and to the left of Woods (there was a temporary blackout of the camera facing the world’s most famous man) that he was alternately reading and looking up toward the camera stationed in front of him at the back of the room – even when he scolded the media for sitting outside of his toddlers’ day care center waiting to see them so they could get pictures of them.

Though he was shunted by ESPN through NBA Commissioner David Stern, Smith has somehow decided to take out his anger on athletes rather than become a league insider truth-teller and sports media watchdog. The lesson here is that Stephen A. Smith has no allegiances to anything other than to ensuring that his face lands in front of a camera with his jaws flapping. What comes from his mouth is solely dependent on who is writing his paycheck and nothing else.

ESPN personality Skip Bayless has maintained since last Friday that Woods is a “phony” Bayless claimed Woods showed no “real raw emotion.”

The mainstay columnist for ESPN.com, Bill Simmons wrote so poorly of woods that, hopefully, other professional athletes might take notice and finally realiz that, for all his years gifted by ESPN to spend in close proximity to athletes, gifted to write about them and their sports, Simmons know next to nothing about the sports of which he writes and knows less about the athlete’s mindset.

Of Woods, Simmons wrote:
The control freak whose life slipped out of control dipped right back into control-freak mode, reading a prepared speech in front of a hand-selected audience of people, taking no questions, talking in clichés and only occasionally seeming human. Everything about it seemed staged. Everything. When the main camera broke down at the nine-minute mark and Tiger had to be shown from the side, I half-expected to see that he was plugged in to the wall.

Whatever. I was going to leave it alone. After all, that had to have been a humiliating experience for the guy. But listening to talking heads praise that ludicrous speech pushed me over the edge. Someone actually said, “It came from the heart.” It did? Was it C3PO’s heart? I thought it seemed like an automated response from Microsoft’s new “Cheater’s Confession” program.…

When we first saw the room in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., it looked like the set of a “Saturday Night Live” episode: small podium, blue curtain, some heads. The camera panned the crowd, revealing that there apparently had been an emergency casting call for somber white people in blazers. (Why didn’t I get an invite? I own a blazer! I could have looked somber!) At 11:01 a.m. ET, Tiger emerged from the back, and I remember thinking that it would have been awesome if he were naked from the waist down.

He spoke for the next 13 and a half minutes. He spoke … like this. There was … no emotion … in his words. His face … was blank … and empty. Part of me … felt bad … for him. There were … a couple of moments … when it seemed … like … he was trying … to shed a tear … or have his voice catch … just for effect. You get … the idea.…

I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me has to rank among the worst excuses in the history of mankind. Christ, Tiger, you’re pretending that you put real thought into this? You thought you DESERVED to enjoy all the temptations around you? That’s your explanation? Trust me, you should have gone with “I got married too soon, I should have sowed my oats first, I didn’t, I’m an ass.” Much better. We could relate to that. Instead, you came off like a horny robot. Again, I think you should fire everyone at IMG and start over. They are doing you damage…

In a few weeks, or a few months, Tiger will start hitting golf balls and everything will be fine again. I just want to get there. For now, we apparently have to put up with a few more weeks (and possibly months) of the Tiger Woods Rehabilitation Tour. There will be more rehab, more staged photos, more secrecy and eventually a carefully planned interview with the right person who won’t be a threat to ask him anything interesting. Wake me up when he plays a tournament. And if you want to watch a clip of the speech, just watch the first 10 seconds that started with the curtain. It’s still there.

Associated Press writer Tim Dahlberg stole-borrowed liberally from Simmons (or maybe they both just happens to share an affinity for the banal and humorless, “Saturday Night Live” and has eyes for the transhumanist movement behavior):
“In one weirdly scripted and strangely robotic appearance, we got information overload….

“It’s all part of recovery, and at times it seemed like Woods was trying to cram an entire 12-step program in for extra credit when he returns to therapy. Other times it looked like a bad Saturday Night Live skit. You half expected Tina Fey to jump onstage at any minute.”

Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5WPR, a New York PR firm that performs “crisis management” work mirrored the sentiments of his cohort Bill McGowan when it came to Woods:
“He just came across as very arrogant, not believable, not likable,” said “I found myself almost giggling in the sense of what was he apologizing for? Being caught or for really doing something? The fact there was continually three women in the frame was clearly very contrived as well.”

Josh Levin of Slate added his two cents of pap:
I have no doubt that Woods, when he chooses to return to golf, can once again turn the course into his sanctuary. (”I do plan to return to golf one day. I just don’t know when that day will be,” he said on Friday, adding that “I need to make my behavior more respectful of the game.” One can only guess this means that he will stop cursing and throwing clubs. I don’t believe there’s anything in the rules of golf about having more than a dozen mistresses in your bag.) I’m not sure, though, about how he’ll manage the rest of his life. No matter how much he pleads, the tabloids will never leave Woods alone, nor will his hagiographers continue to spit-shine his halo. Sure, Tiger Woods can zone out on the golf course. But can he really dodge questions for the rest of his life?

And those questions might be? No one ever confused Slate writer’s attempts at sports Writing with informed commentary.

Former morning show host and now ESPN SportsCenter anchor (how nice it must be to have a big-wig husband in the simularcum business to take care of your whims to work) Hannah Storm, in demeaning Woods, gave us – albeit accidentally – the close the truth of the what constitutes “news” in the 21st century:
He didn’t really say anything of news value… We still don’t know whether he’s going to stay married or what the status of his personal life is and we don’t know whether or not he’s going to come back to play golf – and when.”

Think about this for a second: a woman who, for the better part of two decades has been immersed in the news casting business tells a national audience that the state of Tiger Woods’ marriage is news. Storm tells us that “the status of his personal life” is news. And she tells us that whether Woods returns to the PGA Tour is news. How Storm landed on ESPN erstwhile Sunday show, The Sports Reporters, is beyond comprehension. Storm, as a SportsCenter newscaster, performs exactly zero duties of a sports journalist or reporter.

Hannah Storm’s appearance on a show reserved for those who actively cover sports is testimony to how little Disney-ESPN cares about journalism; this should be an ample warning sign to anyone who would think that the godhead of sports engages in the meaningful dissemination of anything that is not directly related to the score of a game.

While America and it ally countries are at war with two countries in the Middle East or are enabling the U.S. in its continued massacre of millions of Iraqi and Afhgani people, our primary concern, or so we are told by a “news person” is whether or not Tiger Woods and Elin Nordgren will remain married.

We are told that it is the right of journalists to know the status of a person’s private life – should they deem it newsworthy. We are told that a man’s choice to continue with playing professional golf is somehow news.

Woods’ life dominates pages of newspapers and virtual pages of websites. Woods’ life is must talk-about television for too long stretches of each day. And at the same time there is a continued media-okayed blackout of reporting the death and destruction caused by our deadly aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan,

Photographers and television trucks camp out around the Woods’ children’s day care center but they refuse to demand of our government that they be allowed to show the American people and people around the world images of war. They refuse to ask police chief’s tough questions as police officers continue to wantonly kill innocent young Black men in urban neighborhoods.

Just like these same journalists and news casters refused to hold CEO of what was know as Blackwater (the civilian armed security army) Erik Prince, or his mercenaries to the fire for the wanton shooting of innocent Black people in New Orleans. Just like these same journalists refuse to hold the U.S. Government, mainly George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s, and law enforcement officials’ feet to the flame for allowing sheriffs to travel to New Orleans to “coon hunt” after dark In New Orleans.

Except the coons were not raccoons, they were Black people wandering the streets without homes and traumatized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thes people were allowed to sit on rooftops and use Black people as “target practice.” They used bulldozers or front snowplow scoops on SUV’s to push the bodies into the high waters so they could claim they were “missing” and presumed dead in the wake of the bursting levies.

—————————

The little boy we met some 32 years ago through the wonder of television is now a prisoner of that device. While we are told shows like “Desperate Housewives” are exploratory peeks at the underbelly of the life of the suburban house-whore screaming to all who watch that extra-marital sex is the latest guilty pleasure du jour, the little boy grew up to star in his own show, “Desperate Golf Husband.”

When he went out and married the whitest, blondest, blue-eyed-est woman he could find with an exotic, decidedly non-American accent we all believed that he was the Sammy Davis, Jr. for our times. It was a denouncement of his skin color but a confirmation of the post-racial Levi’s advertisements and Republicans who wanted to bury any thought of ensuring that the common workplace mirror the racial make up of our nation. Tiger Woods the Cablanasian and Elin Nordgren the color-blind Swede shared gold bands and bore two Cablanaisden girls. The family of four looked American television perfect. After all his major victories Elin was there giving her billion-dollar man the golf wife hug and kiss and Tiger appeared happy to see her.

But in the back of his mind, while Elin was there with her arms around him Tiger was already planning his next excuse not to make love to his wife but screw his next miss thing.

If the tabloids are close to correct, as more time elapsed from Woods’ first infidelity about 31 months ago, the women became more and more, ummm exotic. Not that some waitress, wanna-be VH1-MTV “reality show” – there’s an oxymoron for you – star from Las Vegas isn’t exotic or anything, but sorry honey, but your honey pot just isn’t enough to keep the world’s most recognizable man happy. Apparently Tiger need large dose of porn stars – even if the one who talked about pregnancies is lying, he did screw at least one, for sure, and in his apology while he said he did not do PEDs and his wife did not mistake his dome for for fescue in Scotland, he never said he did not do what is claimed of him. Perhaps he wanted that part of his apology to go away, perhaps that too was part of his rehab step eight, but Woods was whoring to the grandest of scales.

But, if you think about it just a bit, and take a gander at the U.S. television landscape, there is salacious flirtation, cut-away just before the act begins, and hardcore grinding called soft core porn everywhere. From ABC (it is no accident that the station that spawned Desperate Housewives is owned by Mickey and Minny and its major cash cow is the godhead of sports news) to MTV to Showtime, somebody is almost screwing or screwing without the penetration being shown from 8 p.m. to four a.m.; everyday except major holidays.

If you grew up in a box surrounded by porn with philanderer for a father and girls and women offering their muffins to you at every turn, what would you do? Short of joining a monastery you might just devolve into a man who more resembled the big-balled alpha male of a brood called every woman in the U.S. who wants to willingly bed you.

All it takes is one look at that fine glowing red ass and you’re on your way.

But in America, you live by the box, you also die by the box. And for all the money Tiger Woods made in exchange for being the first person to wholly be a product of the box – Michael Jackson was close – but he didn’t begin until he was nine – there came with this a price. That price is, live by the box, die by the box.

You see, tiger Woods is reviled by many people, too. The people who are responsible for the myth that was Tiger are also responsible for fomenting the hate of the myth of Tiger. Men named Phil and Vijay and Fuzzy, and most any Australian who wears the short spikes and flared-bottom slacks, laid in bunker – White on white hides well – and have come out as critical as they are predictable. Some are hiding their own dalliances, but all are jealous. Tiger Woods stole their world, darkened it to the point where they kept the promise of more color at bay from their workplace. He stole their women and made money they thought was rightfully theirs – on and off the golf course.

But now the Tiger is truly tamed. Not tamed in the way his father meant. Not caging the rage of the five-year old tied to a tree wanting to kill everything White. But tamed and caged by a snarling rabid press. They want, not two, but ten pounds of flesh from this Tiger. They have waited for something more than the press conference same old snark or the post round quip – all that this Tiger used to knowingly leave them in a lather. They were as enthralled by their mere proximity to Woods. Now they want to remake him in their image. Carve out his television future in their studios and their specials. They want Woods to know they are the owners of the box called television and he will jump through their hoops at their command.

Of the media, Woods mother chastised them best:

“You know what? I’m so proud to be his mother. Period. This thing, it teaches him, just like golf. When he changes a swing… he wants to get better… He will start getting better… it’s just like that. Golf is just like life, when you make a mistake, you learn from your mistake and move on stronger. That’s the way he is.”

“As a human being everyone has faults, makes mistakes and sins. We all do. But, we move on when we make a mistake and learn from it. I am upset the way media treated him like he’s a criminal…he didn’t kill anybody, he didn’t do anything illegal… They’ve being carrying on from thanksgiving until now, that’s not right!” she said.

“People don’t understand that Tiger has a very good heart and soul,” she said, citing the role of his foundation in helping kids and also in Thailand. “Sometimes I think there is a complete double standard… He tried to improve himself.”

“The tabloids and newspapers just killed him, held him back. To me it looked like a double standard…”

It is a double standard. The press knows and they revel in knowing they now hold power over over Woods.

And no, they – the press – haven’t killed him yet. But one day, should they choose, they know they can – and they will. Judas, in the form of mistresses and alleged mistresses have already sold Woods to Pontius Corporatus, the godhead of sports, for a few pieces of silver.

Perhaps it will be a public crucifixion just like his public apology. Raised in the box – killed in the box. The 21st century way to kill a Tiger.

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