Tiger Woods: Lessons Not Learned – Again
December 18, 2009 by dwil
How mass media forms public opinion.
Let’s get this straight first: Tiger Woods’ platelet-rich plasma treatement is not “controversial.” Anyone who says or implies it is can be perceived to be disingenuous.
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Despite the fact that only one woman’s alleged trysts with Woods has been substantiated, Tiger Woods’ wife, Elin Nordegren, is said to be seeking a divorce. Nordegrin was seen recently without her wedding band – big money over love, big money over love, baby. On Woods’ side of things, like father, like son. Earl Woods’ first marriage resulted in two children —- and a divorce. Now, apparently, so has Tiger’s.
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Now, onto a USA Today column written by former Washington Post columnist, Christine Brennan. First, let me say that when I was but a pup at the Post Brennan was the one columnist I respected most. She was outspoken when it came to Title IX dealings and intercollegiate sports and was always fair and thoughtful when it came to writing about minority athletes and sports figures.
However, Brennan has altered her takes on sports and sports-related subjects and today is too often knee-jerk in her assessments of subject matter and leans toward sensationalist conjecture whenever possible. And today is no exception.
Brennan’s near wish for Woods to be somehow outed for HGH usage in her Thursday column is as sad as it is sickening. It is, though, too often the new tack taken by mainstream columnists in reaction to the innuendo and pap-filled posts at popular sports-related blogs like Deadspin and Pro Football Talk. It is an overall reaction by editors of newspaper and mainstream sports websites not only to blogs, but to the type of television produced by that unwieldy behemoth of televised sports-related viewing, ESPN.
Despite all of the bluster of Mike Greenberg and Jemele Hill, Skip Bayless and other network talking heads like those on the ESPN afternoon rant show, Around the Horn, that the sports media cannot be blamed for, well, almost anything, the fact is mainstream sports media can be blamed almost entirely for the direction taken by both amateur and professional sports.
That Brennan could use the loosest of ties to link Woods with possible PED use but preface the writing with, “There is no evidence at all, not a known shred, that Woods used an illegal substance or cheated on the golf course in any way,” is telling. Brennan knows exactly what she is doing. She knows how disingenuous her column on woods is. She knows she is walking down the path where TMZ, the National Enquirer, Deadspin, and Pro Football Talk reside.
And yet she remains willing to sink to that level for —————— what? A mention on ESPN, some extra website hits on her column, and some jackass editor calling her to let her know what a “good job” she did because her column generated controversy, which led to so many more hits to USA Today’s sports section.
But what good is the controversy if it is disingenuous, irresponsible, and is false in its premise?
Intense and incendiary, but honest writing can and does easily achieve the editor’s goal of creating controversy and of extra website views. In fact, an honest assessment of the Woods-Anthony Galea situation would lead to far more viewers visiting USA Today, as that assessment would include the unsavory role played by the U.S. and Canadian governments in Galea’s arrest, would include a scathing attack on Big Pharma companies, and would contextualize the link between the two men so that readers become empowered by gaining a thorough understanding of the various factions and people that must be involved to create such a public situation. In the end, the columnist earns credit for elucidating a complex situation, opens discussion of the situation for further exploration by that and other writers, and can garner the writer a wider and more loyal readership than the writer who is prone to splashy rumor-mongering, or who will create controversy where there is none.
Instead, even normally responsible columnists are excusing their Natty Enq-styled prose, portraying critiques of their mad dashes to derive the snarkiest line about Woods’ travails, to gleefully report the next woman who comes forward saying she bedded Woods as telling the truth despite not having a shred of evidence to substantiate her claims, and the other myriad ethics-challenged offenses as one columnist put it, a “leave-poor-Tiger-alone crusade.”
The thought that any talk of this sort about Woods is a prevailing attitude at all would be laughable if it was not such an overt attempt to bully critics of the columnist who continue to pound Woods in such a wanton and noxious manner. As usual this kind of language is meant to obscure the knowledge that, despite the legions of sports journalists who have devoted thousands of words to Woods which have, at best, yielded the wholly narcissistic and ineffective “cautionary tale,” so few writers have sought to provide the public with an understanding of Woods as a human being, that the examples are next-to impossible to find.
And despite the protestations of so many mainstream journalists, it is they who pull the proverbial apple cart leading the public by its ear, not the other way around. all of the aforementioned writers and most others readily tell the world it is the other way around. This is the media and its representatives’ excuse when they are called out for deciding salacious writing bordering on slander is more preferable to a well-thought out piece of journalism.
If any reader fails to believe that Tiger Woods is preternaturally dominant in the news today, including sports news consider of this: it was revealed recently that Tiger Woods appeared on the New York Post‘s front page for 19 days in a row, which is one day more than the previous record holder for front page appearances —– the events of September 11, 2001 and the 18 days subsequent to the events of 9/11.
Surely the NY Post is just one-half step above the Natty-Enq and TMZ.
But.
What say you, mainstream journalists? Don’t use the Post to critique newspapers across the nation? The following are Friday examples from the nation’s widest-read newspapers… Washington Post – two articles on Woods listed on its Internet sports section front; New York Times – one sports article on Anthony Galea article which mentions Woods; Atlanta Journal-Constitution – featured sports “tweet” “how long before Tiger woods surpasses Wilt Chamberlain?”; Chicago Tribune – columnist Fred Mitchell writes of Oprah Winfrey Show producers seeking to have Winfrey interview Woods; LA Times sports section feature headline: “Tiger Woods and Wife: If they split, how to divide?”
Excuse me? Don’t use the Post? Okay. Pray tell, which which national daily newspaper should be used as that beacon of ethical journalism that understands that the salacious reporting and editorializing on Woods has gone altogether too far?
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For Brennan, her piece on Woods acts to pigeon-hole her as a shock columnist, makes her untrustworthy as a disseminator of sports news; all this in addition to the fact that the premise of her column, Tiger Woods used HGH = the end of his career, is such a Captain Obvious statement that not one word need be devoted to it. At least not by any responsible mainstream journalist. The premise is elementary enough to be shunned by professional writers and juvenile enough to be found in blogs penned by undisciplined, juvenile, adolescent-thinking twenty-somethings who believe snark and creating shock value is the path to fames and riches.
Equally unfortunate is that Brennan can fall back on the BALCO-Barry Bonds case as a way to excuse herself and the New York Times for its reporting of the Galea arrest and his tie to Woods. What Brennan so quaintly leaves out of her column is that the reporting of Galea’s arrest and that he treated Woods is not at all the problem here. Brennan’s attempt at reductionist thinking is a tried-and-true method used by the media and by legislators to devalue people who are critical of the two institutions of mainstream news outlets and government. When Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent at IMG, was critical of the New York Times article on Galea written by a cadre of Times writers led by Michael Schmidt, strongly and rightfully questioned Schmidt’s journalistic integrity, mainstream writers and newscasters like Brennan, Hill, Greenberg and nearly anyone else with access to a television camera went on air to admonish Steinberg and defend Schmidt – and themselves.
These people are still stung by the largely irresponsible writing surrounding the BALCO case, especially as it pertained to Bonds. It seemed every mainstream writer took a turn at editorializing when Bonds’ name was mentioned. all the writers who failed to contextualize the BALCO case relative to the mal-acts of government and who failed to treat government representative Jeff Novitzky with the same jaundiced eye they did Bonds, did the public a monumental disservice.
By failing to make the obvious tie of Novitzky’s personalized pursuit of Bonds to the Bush Administration and its proclivity to engage in precisely such vindictive and opportunistic behavior, mainstream journalists from Brennan to near to San Francisco, San Jose Mercury-News columnist Tim Kawakami to Mark Fainaru-Wada, who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle which was ground zero for the case, our sporting press aided and abetted Novitzky and the federal government in all sorts of illegal and unethical acts. They so emboldened Novitzky that later he refused to obey Judge Susan Ilston’s order to turn over the names of MLB players he quite literally stole from the lab where tests for PEDs were conducted as part of an agreement by MLB and its player’s union. Not one mainstream journalist – not one – ever questioned Novitzky’s act.
Not one.
Here is Brennan’s personal effort to excuse irresponsible sports journalists:
It was foolhardy of Steinberg to believe any news organization would not report on an association between someone like Woods and someone like Galea. Since 1988, when the Ben Johnson scandal broke at the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, the enormously important topic of performance-enhancing drug use has been the biggest worldwide issue in sports.
Associations between doctors and athletes, or sports medicine/nutrition gurus and athletes, have led to some of the most crucial performance-enhancing drug stories in sports, including those involving Johnson, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Marion Jones. We are better as a society for having found out about them.
We are a better society? By whose measure? Is there no more PED usage among athletes? Have all the pursuits for better, undetectable through testing PEDs stopped? Are high schoolers no longer using PEDs? Have PEDs been properly contextualized so that their benefits are now widely understood; so that legislators are seeking to amend laws concerning PEDs to allow their use, under the care of a physician, by U.S. citizens; so that they are readily available and cheaply-priced medicines because of their capabilities to enhance the well-being of their users?
The answer to all of those “better society” questions is a resounding NO! And so goes tumbling to the ground Brennan’s straw woman argument.
But now we have another easy target in Tiger Woods. And what do journalists seek to do today? Write of Woods in the same manner they wrote about Bonds. Tell the public it is is the fault of the public that they are compelled to write in the tenor in which they do. Now, journalists are suddenly separating themselves from Woods when for the past 13 years they have sought to suck his wake as it passes them and then tell the world about how close they are to the man.
The blood-sucking ways of sports journalism never ends. The twisting of sports figures to suit an idealized perception of that figure relative to us -ina positive or negative manner – never ends.
We refuse to look in the mirror and grow up.
We refuse to point to ourselves and ask why.
We refuse to refuse to succumb to what makes money with the least effort, no matter how damaging it is to our society.
We are so self-centered that we just do not give a damn who we hurt and who gets pulled under by the wake tide created by irresponsible manner in which we report our news.
We just do not care.
And the mainstream sports writers who continue to treat Tiger Woods travails as if they were headliners at their local comedy club or their personal moral playground tell us with their every written word that, as we watch the certain decline of this portion of Western civilization it is better to hop on the splintered merry-go-round that is today and die than it is to put in the hard yards and seek an enlightened, hopeful future that includes everyone.
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More Recent Tiger Woods Writings:
Quick Announcement of FBI Investigation Into Galea Is Clue that Something Nefarious Is At Hand
No More Tiger Woods Blah Blah Blah…
More Tiger Woods & the Media: Which Truth Will Set You Free?
Explaining Eldrick Woods; Explaining Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods Latest: Why Reporting of a New Woman Shows the “Tick Press” Faction – and America – at Its Worst
Tiger Woods: Can a Cablanasian Man Have Some Privacy???
But D, man….actually educating one’s readers means WORK and RESEARCH, dude! The columnists would have to fire up Lexis-Nexis, look up prior cases, hell, maybe even call up the local Big University science department and see if there’s a pharmacological expert on hand.
That’s just too much to do in a day!
S2N-
I’d lmao at your comment if it wasn’t so sad…. so, I’ll just chuckle grimly instead.
lmao@Signal to Noise
…and here I am sorting mail at my employer (university library) and up pops an invoice for Lexus-Nexus. They always said librarians and support staff don’t get paid that much. No wonder with all the faux-news and tabloid media sensationalism as the norm along with chasing those greenbacks and “waiting” for someone to “change” the culture like some i, Robot(s).
I think I read an Esquire brief on someone (Walter Cronkite?) that basically said news and entertainment were once on separate entities, but these days the boundaries have been blurred. I’m sure the media in this country was always suspect, but the incident that I fall back on that had the media “jump sharks” was during the O.J. coverage (from chase, to verdict). Think of all the actual news that could have been reported during that time frame. Now, think about all subsequent “breaking news” from then to now with the exception of 9/11.
It even rubs off on government, since they recently took time out to discuss that NCAA BCS mess that we all know is flawed. Heck, they can’t even get an HCR bill passed, due to petty differences that, under normal circumstances, would’ve passed months ago. There’s just way too many folks in the way for progress…sort of like that mall escape scene in the Dawn of the Dead remake. Pass me that propane tank ASAP!!!
This is just pathetic over and over again. Media assholes set the rules that govern their profession and then, when they creat too many of them and too many outlets for them, in a pathetic attempt to slice as much of the pie as they individually can, they determine that they have the right to change the rules and turn gossip into news, all the while acting as if their shit don’t stink. I’m trying to think of a professional journalist I DON’T hate right now.
Kev
You like Dwil. He’s a professional journalist. Signal to Noise too.
But yeah, I agree with your sentiment.
It’s hard out here for a Cablinasian.
So let’s see…..Tiger went from God’s gift to a serial womanizer and skeet dispenser. His foreign wife, apparently, married for love (not money—yeah, right) and she physically assaulted him with a weapon I’d use if a burglar broke into my house. No charges filed for the white European lady, by the way. Now the media is trying to pin the steroids label on him. Wow. I’m shocked. NOT! First, they’ll try to paint this as a loss of integrity and morals. Then, with the ‘roids, they’ll take away his athletic achievements. It’s a high-tech emasculation.
Tiger tried to be the “good black.” He smiled at ‘em. He played their little game. And, like Adolph Ceasar said to Denzel Washington in “A Soldier’s Story:” “They still hate you.”
Amen Phil.
See the thing is Tiger forgot rule number 1…………..a black man can’t be no golden boy.
@ origin,
And for all of Earl’s failures as a husband and father, I know he taught Tiger that he was black and what that comes with.
Phil………so true. But Tiger ain’t the first or the last black person trying to run from their blackness.
Heck remember when that fool Vin Diesel talked all that mess that he was half italian, dog, horse, pony, rat, roach, skunk and everything else except acknowledging he was half black. Even said he didn’t know what race his long lost dad was……….LOL!!!
Yeah you know what your mother is but have no idea what your dad is……..so I guess dad was a klingon or something.
So folks even pointed out how he made sure to cut that hair real low to make sure there was no kinky hair showing…..so that he could be ambiguous.
Like Paul Mooney said jokers like him and Mariah Carey wanted to claim everything under the sun………fish, ox, hog, sheep and etc….but black. Until it fits them.
Orgin, LOL at Vin Diesel.
I know for a fact he knew he was black because I used to date his first cousin. She’ was an airline attendant and looked pretty much exactly like this…
http://www.zimbio.com/Black+Hairstyles/articles/13/Wendy+Raquel+Robinson+Short+Black+Hairstyle
Dang Wendy Raquel Robinson…………man oh man thats a bad sista.
Man Kev his sister looked like that??…WOW.
Anyway he couldn’t fool us with that mess. I mean we as black folks either look like him. Have parents who look like him or have family members that look like him.
So him trying to be ambiguous wasn’t going to work on black folks. We come in all colors and hair hair textures and contrary to non-black folks belief, we don’t have to have a non-black parent to look this way.
And as Paul Mooney says well thank you slavery.
@ origin and KevDog,
My cousin is black and married a Japanese lady. His son is all grown up now, but has always been “conflicted” about who he is and how he’s accepted racially. And he lived out of the U.S. for many years and had not been around many black people, particularly family. We had a family get-together and he came to DC, and for him, it was like he’d arrived at the Mecca. He was immersed in blackness that he’d only seen on TV or read about.
We dropped him at the airport, and I told him, “See you later, Black Man.” It’s an expression I picked up back in the neo-black movement back in the 90′s. And he said “Why’d you call me that, Phil?” I said, “Because that’s what you are.” He’d never, in his life, been considered a black man. He’d never felt acceptance. And some of that is in the eye of the beholder, but most of it is from within as far as self-identification. Tiger, quite frankly, is ignoring the salient variable of what this nation’s historical constructs prescibe what he “is,” and you never go against Shakespeare: “to thine ownself be true.”
Black folks may have trouble guessing how old other black folks are (just like everyone else, good black don’t crack) but we have no problem knowing who is black or not.
Phil Deez,
Interesting story about your cousins son. It’s funny when black-ass puerto ricans, africans, south americans, carribeans, or mixed asians come to this country and are either confused about what they are or are adamant about what they are not (black folks). I’ve heard some from the groups mentioned that they are not black but _________ (fill in the black). What’s weird is if they are from a country other than one in africa or the carribean, they are subject to the same racism, if not worse, that african americans in this country experience, yet they still try to claim “other” sometimes.
@ Awb,
Black self-knowledge is a motherfucker, ain’t it? When Jennifer Beals showed up in “Flashdance,” we all know what the frickin’ DEAL was. And then she started with the fractions and percentage. And we all said “Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch, PLEASE. You might as well be as black as coal.” We saw Mariah’s kinky hair, her nostrils, etc. and we knew. Tommy Muttola didn’t even care. Then she started having a BUNCH of black dudes in her videos and then he got wise. LOL. Folks are so busy trying to pull off the modern version of “passing” that they act like they are doing something new.
My cousin implicitly knew he was black. His father ain’t dead, so he had to know. Where he lived? He had nobody to be “black” with. No one to relate to. But he’s also never really had the opportunity to BE accepted by other black people and/or judged on his merits as an individual. It must’ve been rough for him growing up in that sitation.
What cracks me up is that some white guys will marry an African woman (almost always Ethiopian) but won’t marry an African-American woman. A lot of it is the stereotype that American blacks are ignorant like what you might see in a coonin’ Tom movie or TV show with bugged out eyes and “Get out my face” etc. Africans from the continent, to a degree, are seen as more cultured than us “fieldhands” and “cottonpickers.”
S2N-
I’d lmao at your comment if it wasn’t so sad…. so, I’ll just chuckle grimly instead.
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Big Man -
Thanks…. and back to
Kev-
Did you mean that to read “mainstream”?
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Phil-
I agree with you, to a point (your initial comment). But from what I have gleaned from people Earl did do a lot of “stiff upper lip” shit, too. Plus, he left his Black wife and two Black children for a Thai woman, had Tiger with her, and messed around on her, too.
And from some discussions today I don’t know how much Tiger internalized what his father imparted to him about race-racism or how much some of the things like making all kinds noise while Tiger was in the middle of his backswing had a “they’ll do this because they hate your Blackness, son,” message behind it. Because to hear Tiger tell it, the goal was just to make him impervious to distractions on the golf course, period.
Your most recent comment is a very interesting perspective on Black-Asian mixed children-people…. add to that getting tied to a tree and called all kinds of nigger, and, as I wrote a couple of articles and commentaries back, we have Mr. Woods.
“What cracks me up is that some white guys will marry an African woman (almost always Ethiopian) but won’t marry an African-American woman. A lot of it is the stereotype that American blacks are ignorant like what you might see in a coonin’ Tom movie or TV show with bugged out eyes and “Get out my face” etc. Africans from the continent, to a degree, are seen as more cultured than us “fieldhands” and “cottonpickers.”
True Phil.
My sister went to school with a white girl who was dating a black african. Well the girl told her parents that her boyfriend was black and wanted to bring him over for dinner. Hear parents heard that and went into a fit and told her no way they were going to let her date a black man. Well they ended up asking their daughter where he was from and she said africa.
Do you know her parents said that it was O.K. to date him because african blacks are more civilized then american blacks and had respect for themselves.
I mean really the madness never stops.
O-
Damn… I’ve never heard of that shit, but I can see it. I guess it’s like having your own personal, novelty zoo-human roaming free in your home.
Good point AWB of how some black foreigners act.
@ Phil………..Like I said we can peep another black person a mile away. Because no matter what we have folks who look just like that.
@Dwil………..hmmmm good points about Tiger’s dad. So he was nothing like Mr. Williams. I heard he screamed all the racial slurs at Venus and Serena, to let them know this is what you will hear and these folks will hate you no matter what.
Origin,
Black americans have less self respect? Wow that ish is so twisted. It’s like if I dated a girl and beat her, raped her, demeaned her ect and then left her because she was so “crazy”. “Yeah, broad was angry, sullen, had low self esteem and poor image of her self so I had to cut her loose. Wonder how she got that way?”
O-
No way he was like Richard Williams!
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TO ALL-
I added links to all the recent posts on Woods and Woods related subject matter in case anyone needed any previous info.
Dwil,
Let me just add that the majority of steroid users, according to one study, are white white-collar males, not athletes. Hardly a peep from the media about this peer-reviewed study: http://www.jissn.com/content/pdf/1550-2783-4-12.pdf
If journalists want to be moralistic about roids, they need to look at themselves and their fellow professionals, first.
Dwil-Of course my man.
@ Origin,
That shit is crazy, isn’t it? One Ethiopian lady at my wife’s office saw our wedding picture on my wife’s desk, and had the fucking NERVE to say, reflexively, “He’s good looking, for a Black guy.” My wife said, “He’s good looking any way you slice it, Honey. You need to check yourself. And you wonder why you have no black friends.” An Ethiopian woman didn’t even REALIZE that 99% of white men don’t know if she’s from Addis or from SE DC. They don’t give a fuck, that’s why. They see her big brown eyes, vaguely European features (for a woman from the African continent), her big boobs and booty that might as well have a bulls-eye on it. Funny finish to that: the Ethiopian chick only dates white guys. And the white guys at the office LOVE oogling this woman and fall over themselves at her feet. She banged one of them awhile back, and she thought he’d date her seriously. Nope. He treated her like a Maytag. Dropped a few loads in and walked the hell away to the nearest white lady. A few months later, they were taking engagement. Not saying a black guy wouldn’t do that to her because we’re far from perfect, but she wanted a white guy to drop a load in, and he pumped-and-dumped her witht he swiftness. Karma’s a bitch.
@ Dwil,
Earl was no angel. And his marital proclivities are well-documented. It does sound as if his kids from his previous relationship aren’t bitter at all or upset about Tiger’s success or Earl’s attentiveness to Tiger’s career to their deteriment as his first children. THAT’S a serious thing to look into that we might never know about.
Earl, Jr’s daughter, I believe, is at Wake Forest on a golf scholarship. Tiger’s niece. More power to her. I remember reading that Earl had helped her out a bit with her golf instruction as far as giving sage advice, etc. I hope it works out for her. The pro tour might not be a reality or possibility, but a Wake education for free? She can do something with that.
Phil
You all over this thread dropping knowledge.
Phil-
Yes she is at Wake, Phil (actually she talks w/ Tiger quite a bit, so he does have a relationship with his her – Photos here; best comparison photo here; story and video here).
But he didn’t do what he needed after the tree incident, he didn’t teach Tiger about Blackness, at least not to the point where it meant anything to him, yet he was Tiger’s life coach crutch because all that is coming out now didn’t begin until his father was dying.
nice breakdown D on the media bullshit as they justify in their heads that they are doing the right thing so that they can sleep well at night. I’m so sick and tired of media changing the rules and then saying “Tiger has no one to blame but himself”. Infidelity has never really been covered in pro sports unless it had a direct connection to a court case or something like that. And you are right that this is Bonds all over again on multiple levels.
And the Around the Horn reaction to tiger HGH rumor was vomit inducing.
Well……the “Niggerization of Tiger Woods” is almost complete. He should just shave his head, grow a goatee and start sporting some kente cloth golf pants.
True Miranda.
I was telling someone 2 weeks ago that Tiger might as well get some corn rolls, ear rings and a tat on his arm like Kobe.
The thing is that Tiger can never come back fully even if he wins. ZWhite America has a hard time of forgiving black athletes.
Perfect example………..Kobe’s trial was thrown out. He came back and won and is the best player in the world.
Yet Kobe endorses nothing except a basketball shoe and video game. And even in those commercials one is animated version of him who doesn’t speak and the other is a muppet thats voiced for someone else.
@ Origin,
Does Kobe still endorse Nutella? LOL. I think they were the only sponsor that didn’t drop him after he caught the rape case. IMHO, I always thought that Kobe did like it a little “young, fresh and green.”
@ Miranda,
Tiger is absolutely getting “Niggerized.” It’s amazing that his hyper-sexuality is being essentially blamed on his black genetic make-up.
@ Dwil,
I always did, in the back of my mind, worry about what would happen to Tiger’s career once Earl stopped being the driving force. I’m not shocked that Spike Lee and Charles Barkley can’t get to Woods because of the handlers around him managing the damage control. This sounds a LOT like what happened with Mike Tyson after Cus D’Amato died and Don King got involved. Only difference is that Tiger’s handlers are white, and they won’t be villainized.
Dwil-I can think of no greater sadness that could come to my life, other than the death of one of my daughters, than to imagine one of them trying to “Opt out” of being black. I wonder how Earl felt when Tiger came up with that CaBlaasian bullshit.
Miranda-True, true. I wonder if he’ll pull a Kobe and start to let go and actually start to take off the white veil now that he sees white folks see him as the nigger that let them down.
Orgin-Kobe grew up in Italy and IMO, never really felt connected to the black community until Colorado. I think he realizes now that growing up in America don’t make him any less of a Nigger to some.
But I don’t think the accusations had much to do with his endorsement life. Even when he was the Golden boy of the NBA, every single one of his commercials centered around his obsession for basketball. He was never like Tiger, Mike, Shaq, LeBron and the rest of the buffoons, selling his image to any tom dick and massa that came along.
I doubt you’ll ever see him hyping Reat-a-center like that Magic shuckin’ Johnson
Phil-Nutella dropped Kobe and recently asked him back. He declined.
True on all points Kev.
I just feel that its fishy how Kobe has 2 national endorsements and his actual true self isn’t shown. I can’t help but feel its intentional.
And yes he was always endorsing things as a player first. But when he was with Sprite and Mcdonalds selling their poison……….you actually saw Kobe. Not some computer animation or a damn puppet using someone elses voice selling shit.
I just believe that white america will never see him as an innocent man. So there for he will always endorse things from a distance.
And brotha Kev I like you would roll in my grave if my daughter tried to opt out being black. It is maybe the saddest form of self-hate that there is.
But like I sad 2 weeks ago Tiger learned that marrying a white woman and calling yourself a Casablasian doesn’t buy you a ticket to the big house. Nor does it give you the white boy golden boy ticket.
Just like you have to be a true italian to be a made man. You can’t be no black man/woman (whether mixed blood or not) and be a part of the good ole boys club.
The sad part in all of the is that even though Tiger and the rest of the so called elite well to do black folks got millions and billions of dollars. But don’t have a “Nickle” worth of power.
Thats like a man living in a house and paying all the bills but don’t have a say in how the house in ran.
Things that make no sense to me:
1) Too often we “admire” “congratulate” or just basically consider it an achievement for an athlete or entertainer to be paid to endorse products that for the most part are not good for African-American people and/or working class people.
2) tiger, unlike most people of other races who come from nothing to entertainment status, did not “marry up”. Look at Swartzenagger – he married “royalty”. Who did Tiger marry? What type of spouse do most of our so-called “superstars” marry? Now, Tiger’s getting ready to give her half-a-BILLION dollars (who is she going to spend tiger’s money on). If tiger had taken that same $500,000,000, set up a trust, earning just 5% interest annually would have contributed $25 million a year to endow some REAL contribution to some working peoples’ lives. Other people get rich by taking monies from one community (i.e. Phil Knight becoming a billionaire by using/making an ass of michael jordan) and enriching another community. Rap does do this to some extent.
3) As Malcolm X said, African-Americans, for the most part, do not utilize our education for the purpose for which it was intended. As he said, we don’t use our skills/achievements to advance the condition of our people (which as Malcolm X predicted, would go beyond “race” to “class” – the working class which nearly all of us exist in). No, we use our abilities in an attempt to integrate ourselves into a class that will never accept us. Malcolm said that no man can rise beyond the condition of the majority/masses of his people.
And it just goes on and on…
@ Victor Kermit,
Your first point makes sense. You’re right. Rent-A-Center, Car Title Loans, Your Job Is Your Credit (Washington Redskins and Wizards, yeah, Trick, I’m talkin’ to YOU), etc. Your Job Is Your Credit IS the easy credit rip-off that they were singin’ about in the theme to “Good Times,” but niggaz love thems a new car don’t they? My “newest” car is 7 years old. Paid for. And I’ll drive it until I find it out front of my house with all four wheels in the air until I think about another one. LOL.
It IS quite interesting that Kobe and Tiger both married women that were not only not black but also working jobs far less influential than what their soon-to-be husband was pursuing. Now, I won’t out-and-out begrudge them for not marrying black women. That’s their business. But you do make a good point about how Kobe and Tiger, for their wives, was nothing more than a brown-skinned lottery ticket with a dick attached. But for the jersey-chasers of the world? Those two guys represent the motherlode of athletes as far as money and prestige.
One thing that has begun to bother me is our matriarchial society in the black community. Mothers, aunts and grandmothers raising our sons. They aren’t doing a bad job, now, but we as men don’t do enough to make sure that we’re there. This is why a white basketball/football coach can pretty much walk in to ANY house in America and select black talent, and a black coach has to fight tooth and nail for every single kid he signs. In the old days, let’s face it, North Carolina wouldn’t have given a FUCK who (insert name of big-time player). Now these kids wait for an offer like it’s Santa coming down the chimney with a Wii game system. An HBCU gives these kids an offer and the kid laughs in the coach and the school’s face. There aren’t any blondes with big titties at an HBCU to fuck two and three at a time. (As if there aren’t good-looking women interested in basketball players at HBCU’s. As if there aren’t hot-ass-hell cheerleaders. It’s pathetic.)
I’ve said this many times, the more black athletes, from jumpstreet, allow white mainstream society to define them? The more issues there are going to be. You have to define yourself FOR yourself. (Paraphrasing Audrey Lorde)
….”That Brennan could use the loosest of ties to link Woods with possible PED use but preface the writing with, “There is no evidence at all, not a known shred, that Woods used an illegal substance or cheated on the golf course in any way,” is telling. Brennan knows exactly what she is doing. She knows how disingenuous her column on woods is. She knows she is walking down the path where TMZ, the National Enquirer, Deadspin, and Pro Football Talk reside.
And yet she remains willing to sink to that level for —————— what? A mention on ESPN, some extra website hits on her column, and some jackass editor calling her to let her know what a “good job” she did because her column generated controversy, which led to so many more hits to USA Today’s sports section….”
DWIL,
It’s about character assasination, racism and mainstream sports media needing a new target.
Tiger got to big, and now he must pay the price even if ESPN or members of the mainstream media can conjure of something and try to desperately find a ‘federal attorney’ to endorse their stories about HGH or shady doctors.
The PGA tour has made a lot of money off of Tiger and his competitoors have benefited, but let’s face it, there is a strong contempt for Tiger’s success on the golf course, and many feel he should be taken down a peg or two. The PGA may think they don’t need Tiger anymore and is ready to throw him to the wolves.
Mickleson is silently thrilled and others see it as an opportunity to have success with Tiger out of the way for awhile…or maybe forever…
Phil
Preach.
Those self-righteous sportswriters never cease to amaze me. First, they brought him down hard as a philanderer now they are trying to label him as a PED user. Really, the media professionals have lost their soul by playing the game of digging dirt in order to boost their so-called credentials.
Amen Phil and Victor.
Phil when this stuff dropped you and I were saying the same thing.
Like Victor said here is Tiger worth a billion dollars and he marries a women who is a nanny. And messing with women that aren’t worth 2 food stamps to rub together.
If the roles were reversed those women and tigers wife wouldn’t have even spoke to Tiger.
Hey on the real he and other athletes can marry who they want. But its funny that here you have Tiger who likes white women and what not. But this fool could have had Paris Hilton, the Olson Twins…………hell put Miley Cirus on lay away and holla at her when she is 21.
I mean he could have messed with heffas with money. And lets be honest Tiger would have never even married a sista who was a maid or a nanny.
It just pisses me off that these dudes will handle their careers, business and professional like. Handle the media, business and professional like. Do all of this, business like as to not mess up their money. But when it comes to dating and screwing will handle that unbusiness like. When thats the shit that can have you end up broke probably the most.
All the while chasing broke mud ducks and scalawags (as my southern folks like to call unattractive women).
I mean can’t these dudes pick someone to build their wealth with??
Origin,
Tiger bet that the fembot with the perky tits married for money. The five-iron she whacked his ass with tells me that she felt something when he dropped them loads in her tailpipe and she FELT this fool. Tiger wasn’t going to leave her. He was going to sow his royal oats around, come home to her and expect to saddle up. And she gave him the Sunshine Anderson “Heard It All Before” and he’s never been told no. But had he not cheated on her, Elin probably would’ve bore that guy a dozen more chirrens and done it gladly.
We all know Tiger likes the white wimmen. And that’s OK. But now he done disrespected one, and he’s going to have to pay a price for all that tail he’s been chasing: wannabe celebutants, hoochies, pancake waitresses, etc. Part of the reason many many many athletes are so oversexed (in our eyes) is because they are big fiends for high-stakes action. Risk and pushing it to the limit is what these guys do for fun. So if it’s Mike Phelps banging every hooker and co-ed in Bmore? So be it. These guys are young, dumb and full of cum. And we expect them not to skeet, skeet, skeet (Goddamn, skeet skeet skeet skeet)?
The mistake Tiger made was to get married. He should’ve learned from that other Cablinasian named Derek Jeter. Some of these women have been ridden more than Seattle Slew, but no one cares that Jeter does it because, hello, he ain’t married.
True Phil.
I can’t even get mad at the guys for chasing that tail.
Heck there are countless stories of guys going to their hotel and some hot momma some how found her way in their room and is laying right there in the bed butt ass naked.
I mean its easy for me to talk…………but I don’t have every women and their momma throwing coochie at me.
My mother once knew a lady (she went to college with her) who was a professional athlete chaser. Do you know that this woman had her chest done(went to a size D) to help catch the athletes.
She bragged on how she had dated 3 dudes on the Bulls team. And was trying to catch her a Chicago Bear player.
She would go to all the bars that the players hung out. Even showing up at the hotel lobbies they stayed at.
Phil catching an athlete is a big money business and a lot of these women play for keeps.
But in the end like I said my beef is with these athletes not being smart with their selection is wives and side chicks.
Also I don’t believe that Tiger messed up by being married. You and I know there are a ton of married folks who swing and everything. Hell we know the stories of married couples in Hollywood who swing and no one says shit.
We have all heard the rumors of a certain famous black couple in hollywood that
swings. The husband is allowed to get a piece of whatever ass he wants as long as the wife gets first crack at the chick.
If Tiger married Madonna and juiced some of these dames in the music business and in hollywood………no one would have known. Cause why would those jumpoffs tell. Then he could have let Madonna freaky ass get a taste of what ever side chick he brought home and he would have never gotten busted upside the head either by her.
By doing that the dude could have done all that and kept his money.
And if these simps are marrying to have kids they are dumb. Even if you want the image of the married man with kids to help your stature. Shoot do like MJ……….pay some heffas to be your surrogate mother/wife. Divorce her and pay her to be quite.
Shit MJ paid both his wifes off. Dude dead and they still won’t talk.
Hate to say it but Tiger problem is he is a simp. And the media is a bunch of Captain save a Hoes……….they are actually doing E40 song justice.
Now thats real talk.
@ Origin,
The Hollywood couple you’re referring to (let me guess: the wifey’s originally from Bmore, right) is a known commodity. And wifey-boo got turned out back when she was on a certain spin-off show…..all the black females in the cast got “indoctrinated.” Now THAT’s real talk.
The difference between the Hollywood couple and Tiger, though, is that Tiger’s marketing campaign was to be on every station as “the role model,” the antithesis of the Rod Tidwell athlete aka the buffoon, or the braggadocious chest-beater or even the elder statesman/socially conscious. As Earl said, Tiger was going to get on that Arthur Ashe/Muhammad Ali level. And when Tiger started lining up the nappy-stack? He flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted.
Bro, I’ve seen some of the DC Metro’s finest fly-traps, and let me tell you: they are good at what they do and business is good. One gal is curvy but pettite and she’s rolling around town in a brand-new drop-top Mercedes talkin’ about “I didn’t have to sleep with him to get it, and yeah, it’s in my own name, paid for.” All she had to do was be on dude’s arm on the red carpet a coupla times and the deal was done like dinner. The fool even put a ribbon around it and had it delivered to her shitty apartment in Silver Spring. None of these guys (baseball, hockey, motorboat racing, etc.) is above squirting some baby-batter up in a nice, cozy snatch. And you’re right: some of these women will do ANYTHING for these guys. For all you married guys on here that remember what the wifey used to do for you back when you needed to come with the steak dinner and 18 jumbo shrimp, make a list of those nasty things you want her to do that she won’t, and hand it to one of these jersey-chasers. Trust me, bro: they do everything on that list and will even shine up the hood for you. Squirt it in their hair? They don’t care. A big-time baller can afford to fix her weave and get it skeet-free for her.
Tiger’s in a situation that he had no idea he’d ever be in with his wife. Every now and then, an NBA/NFL guy will get caught out there by his wife because he’s fuckin’ some stripper on the road, etc. But for the type of money that Elin’s trying to get from Tiger, and what Tiger’s got to lose in terms of endorsements, Q-rating, etc.? What’s amazing to me is how this stuff stayed locked down for so long.
Yeap you know the couple and the one who turned them out was the sister of the lady that played jello puddying mans wife on TV.
True it is amazing it took so long for it to come out. But like I said about Brandon Roy……….the media keeps shit in their back pocket for when the time is right. Or when they gather up enough info to bury your ass.
Speaking of Brandon Roy………..this Tiger shit done saved his life. Caue them necks were gonna make him the new black villian for the year.
But then Tiger had the accident and was cause with the mud ducks. So Brandon Roy is on the back burner again. Just let his black ass slip up……..ummm maybe get suspended for too many technicals. Or get a speeding ticket.
Then Boom they throw out the not standing for the anthem………then bury Roy.
Origin, PD…y’all got me rollin…did you see this story last week?
http://www.ajc.com/news/magic-star-atlanta-native-240267.html
A friend of mine joined the site “Lipstick Alley” and she has been reporting back…this is obviously the groupie support site. There is a lot of info on player likes and dislikes from the pro-hoes themselves!!! We have been TRIPPIN over the information!
Yeah Miranda I heard of that last week.
Actually Dwil mentioned there relationship last year. That lady is like 6 years older then dwight. She hooked up with him when he was like 18.
Anyway I have seen Lipstick Alley and have been on another site. I can’t remember it but its a groupie chat room too.
Sista Miranda guess Phil and I are bringing that barber room talk on SOMM.
I swear the internet is like a gossip/dirty laundry meeting place.
No wonder Mediatakeout and Perez Hilton are so popular.
@ Origin,
Dwight Howard had better hope this lady knuckles under and that he never once laid a hand on her and she recants. You can’t win hitting women and having word get out. The whole happy, smiling NBA star thing won’t fly anymore.
True Phil there is no coming back from that. You can’t put your hands on women.
But at the same time whether this is true or not is a different story. Hard to go by what gossip sites say.
@ “We are a better society? By whose measure? Is there no more PED usage among athletes? Have all the pursuits for better, undetectable through testing PEDs stopped? Are high schoolers no longer using PEDs? Have PEDs been properly contextualized so that their benefits are now widely understood; so that legislators are seeking to amend laws concerning PEDs to allow their use, under the care of a physician, by U.S. citizens; so that they are readily available and cheaply-priced medicines because of their capabilities to enhance the well-being of their users?
The answer to all of those “better society” questions is a resounding NO! And so goes tumbling to the ground Brennan’s straw woman argument.”
That’s a fatalistic point of view: don’t try or report because it won’t make a difference anyway? You can make the argument that reporters are premature in their reporting of Woods’ connection with the doctor (TW’s publicist Steinberg certainly is). Where is the straw man? It certainly isn’t a straw man or straw woman argument to say that reporting on a subject or awareness about a problem has the power to change things, even for the better. In fact this very fact is what motivates many journalists to do what they do.
Are you really saying we shouldn’t report on these issues because it won’t make a difference?
People (myself included) are interested in fairness in sports. Some of the biggest stories that came out of the Beijing Olympics (and virtually every Olympics before that since doping became ingrained in athlete culture: remember East Germany’s “miracle” at the Olympics spanning the 70s and 80s?) have been about doping.
They are interested in it w/ respect to baseball, tennis, swimming, running, and cycling. (though people–myself *not* included–seem to be less interested in doping in football and basketball)
I agree with Brennan that, were any thing to come of this connection, this would be the bigger, more important story. As exciting as TW’s sex life is, the American public has a short memory. Give six months or so, and some more tournaments under his belt, this chapter in the the TW saga will be all but forgotten.
The only reason (IMHO) that it has been given this much air at all is, like I said in an earlier post, the fact that TW is the most famous, most rich athlete of all time, and that he has put himself (and been put on by others) this pedestal of a model individual, in every aspect of his life. He’s golf embodied much like his buddy RF is the embodiment of tennis. It’s no story that athletes cheat on their lives–literally. Famous athletes cheat on there wives all the time, and people don’t report on it. But this athlete has InStyle magazine doing features on his wedding and honeymoon. Personal interest stories on his family. Americans are gawking at a fall from grace of epic proportions. A similar public response may only have been evoked if similar circumstances were ‘revealed’ in connection to someone like Federer (though the Europeans are less shocked by this sort of thing).
Even still, this will all blow over, and TW, who has at least 10 years of pro golf left in him, will keep winning titles and (eventually) get endorsements once again.
hello-
So, it is fatalistic to ask for context from writers?? Really?
And did I write don’t report because it won’t make a difference??? Obviously not. The manner in which we “report” news – sensationalism w/out context, biased reporting in order to shape public opinion and move it in a desired direction, and selective reporting where some facts are omitted because, god forbid, inclusion of those missing facts might just render a different outcome than that which is desired are too often what we find is “reporting.”
If the above represents the majority of what passes for “reporting” sports news stories, we are doing the public a disservice.
And for a columnist like Brennan to seek to link woods with Galea and use a Captain Obvious “if, then” observation – if Woods used PEDs, then he’s finished (no shit Sherlock) to obfuscate the verbiage of linkage is irresponsible journalism, even for a columnist.
And isolating the passage you mentioned and removing it from the rest of the commentary so you can attempt to twist its meaning is an equally irresponsible act.
I understand your point (above). But in that case, what was the point of the paragraph I quoted? (I didn’t believe that I was taking it out of context). It is one thing to criticize journalistic integrity, but I don’t know how what I quoted fits in with that argument, which I thought was more about the questioning the premise of journalism for a “a better society”
You write:
It is one thing to criticize journalistic integrity, but I don’t know how what I quoted fits in with that argument, which I thought was more about the questioning the premise of journalism for a “a better society”
Overreacing theme of commentary:
Mainstream writers too often write irresponsibly, for a variety of reasons, particularly to shift public opinion in a direction desired by the writer and others within whatever given medium
Theme of passage:
Has irresponsible journalism as it pertains to the premises of the NY Times article written by Michael Schmidt, et al. which is referred to and, with other writings on the subject of PEDs, lauded by Brennan, led to any positive societal changes that pertain to PEDs?
Answer:
NO.
Question:
Does Brennan’s argument that – “Associations between doctors and athletes, or sports medicine/nutrition gurus and athletes, have led to some of the most crucial performance-enhancing drug stories in sports, including those involving Johnson, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Marion Jones. We are better as a society for having found out about them,” therefore hold muster?
Answer:
NO.
Now, juxtapose your comments with this one sent to me in an e-mail by an editor of a group of mainstream sports-related magazines:
Your commentary on Brennan/Woods was absolutely on the mark. It should be required reading for every sports journalist. No, make that every
journalist.
The questions relative to this exchange, as they pertain to you, are these:
1) How were the editor and the above commenters able to contextualize the passage relative to the commentary that you failed to contextualize?
2) Did removing the passage from the remainder of the commentary serve to do anything other than removing it, contextually, from the remainder of the commentary?
Amazing thread.
A lot of I agree with, some I disagree with. But fascinating.
Orgin. I never thought of it like that. Good point with the puppets.
Maybe for me the issue is that I don’t have a handle on your style of writing; even your response was hard for me to follow. I think you are making the point that Brennan is being disingenuous and dishonest in her selectivity of reporting, and that that kind of reporting (w/ a lack of context) does not have the power to change society? And that journalism that got at the heart of these issues might have such a power?
If that’s what you mean, then I agree. One of my friends was a starting running back for a big 12 school who ended up leaving because of how ingrained the PEDs were at the school. He saw it destroy lives, and decided it’s not worth it. He’s put that long since behind him, and never discussed the real reasons he left the school with the press, though people were certainly surprised.
i actually like deadspin. they treat espn and its personalities the same way they treat athletes.
as espn sinks to new lows examining and offering marital advice to tiger. deadspin exposed the numerous sexual harrassment claims at the world wide leader.
two wrongs do not make a right. but if espn continues to compete with access hollywood. deadspin should dig further into their trash and see what comes up.
http://deadspin.com/5427249/new-york-times-gets-a-piece-of-the-tiger-action-with-its-hysterical-ped-story?skyline=true&s=x