Tiger Accident Clippings, Vol. 11

Media coverage appears to be splitting off in various directions, seemingly a good thing for Tiger until you read the actual content.

On the business front, Bloomberg's Michael Buteau notes a huge plunge in a Q-rating type index from 6th to 24th. He also writes about the disappearance of Woods-related ads.

The last prime-time ad featuring the 33-year-old golfer was a 30-second Gillette Co. spot on Nov. 29, according to New York- based Nielsen. Woods also was absent from ads on a number of weekend sports programs, including NFL games, Nielsen said.

“Last weekend there wasn’t any advertisement during those games,” said Aaron Lewis, a spokesman at Nielsen.

And just one reminder that the Gatorade story was in the works prior to the accident, Lawrence Donegan notes:

They would say that, of course. But in fairness the decision to dump the "Tiger Focus" drink was revealed in the November 25th issue of the always readable Beverage Digest (my copy must have been mislaid in the post) - two days before the scandal broke.

Duff Macdonald at the Daily Beast takes note of the sale prices on Tiger Woods action figures and writes:

The Toys "R" Us outside Seattle had four different kinds of Tiger figurines, also discounted to $9.98, though the store manager insisted they had been on clearance before the scandal. When we asked a sales rep at a Target in Tukwila, Washington, if they carried Tiger Woods action figures, she said she’d never heard of the product, before pausing and asking a sincere question of her own: “Is that intended as a gag gift?”

The WSJ's Andrew LaVallee shares an item in which Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz says "God bless Tiger" for spiking web traffic.

News, photos and other content about the pro golfer, whose personal life has become tabloid fodder since his car accident and cryptic apologies, are contributing to Yahoo’s sports section, as well as news, gossip and the front page, Ms. Bartz said. When asked if Mr. Woods would help the Internet company make the quarter, she said, “Oh, absolutely,” and added that he’s fueling more visits than Michael Jackson’s death.

The SNL skit continues to be questioned, yet no one writing about the sheer awfulness of the skit has the courage to question the investigation. If you believe there was domestic violence involved, how is SNL to blame for spoofing something the police say didn't happen?

Connell Barrett talks to those on both sides of the debate and writes.

Anti-abuse advocates said the sketch made light of spousal abuse. EW.com wrote that "intimate partner violence isn't a ripe source of material in the first place, but with [abuse-victim] Rihanna as the musical star the sketch seemed even more poorly thought out." And according to PopEater, "[H]ad the genders been reversed, 'SNL' wouldn't make light of the potentially violent situation." Of course not. The story is satire-worthy because the roles are reversed.

Leave it to a golf writer to call out the Florida state attorney who torpedoed any further investigation of a possible DUI or domestic violence. Steve Elling writes:

The Florida Highway Patrol has statements from an unnamed witness -- believed to be Woods' own wife -- who said Woods had been drinking and possibly had taken prescription drugs, yet the Orlando area's state attorney denied an FHP request to subpoena any possible Woods blood samples. Bad as Woods' image has taken a hit over the parade of women, the Central Florida cops have become a comparable national laughingstock, too. It's farcical. Glad to see my tax dollars are working so hard for me.

Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio questions whether some of the women linked to Woods were actually his mistresses. Unfortunately for Tiger, he's suggesting they were acting as pimps. And Stephanie Wei backs up Daulerio's post with her own circumstantial evidence about Rachel Uchitel's party planning work and unlikely romantic ties to Tiger.

Some golf writers continue to offer their thoughts on the impact this has on the game, starting with Doug Ferguson writing about how suddenly Tiger's image has been altered.

Just like that, he has become the butt of jokes.

His colleagues, who once spoke about him with reverence, now take pity. Even John Daly feels sorry for him.

Despite being among the most famous athletes in the world, we knew so little about Woods. Now we know too much. Woods managed to keep himself out of the tabloids for years only to be the cover boy now.

Matthew Syed in The Times on why Tiger is fair game:

He and his advisers have systematically cultivated a public image — an image that now appears to be a sham — specifically to expand his wealth on a grand scale.

In the past few years he has earned more money from his deals with Nike, Gillette and other sponsors than he could ever hope to earn on a golf course. To put it another way, his public image and his day job as a repository of corporate endorsement income are indistinguishable.

To put it simply, Woods’s right to privacy has been fatally undermined not by his earning lots of cash beyond the golf course, but by his hypocrisy. He could have had sex with a platoon of cocktail waitresses while dressed in a pair of suspenders and still been entitled to privacy had he not, at the same time, been pocketing a sizeable cheque from Gillette via a management company that had spent three weeks figuring out how to place a soft-focus picture of Woods, his baby in his arms, and his wife looking on lovingly.

Lawrence Donegan is fed up with the coverage.

After 11 days of of the Woods "scandal", we really are down to the dregs of journalism, not to mention humanity. Unfunny comedy sketches, uncorroborated "scoops" floated by that apparently unimpeachable source of information in 2009, TMZ.com. Another day, another alleged girlfriend. Does anyone care? As for those who do - one has to worry about the poverty of their emotional existence.

Rush Limbaugh took a different stance on his radio show and says greedy corporations and the sports media sold us a bill of goods so they could make money. Add him to the list with George Lopez of potential awkward AT&T Pro-Am partners. Assuming either gets invited after this.

The reason people are still continually focused on this Tiger Woods business is that it's an act of betrayal, that there was a hoax perpetrated here.  He was presented as somebody he's not, and people knew it all along.  They knew it all along, but there was money to be made on both sides of it.  There is money hopefully still to be made, so they're trying to repair it so that it can remain what it was.  But I think the genie's out of the bottle on this now.  And where you find a hoax, what do you always have to have to perpetrate it?  You have to have a compliant media, be it a global warming hoax, be it a financial crisis hoax, you have to have a compliant media going along with it.  And the media in the Tiger Woods thing was also a beneficiary.  I mean television ratings, golf tournaments in which he played skyrocketed.  And they wanted access to him.  A lot of sports media, just groupies that have a computer keyboard or camera and microphone, just groupies.  They want access, want to hang around. 

Naturally, Rush then went on to suggest Barack Obama is a product of a similar hoax and cut out of the same cloth as Tiger.

Sal Johnson of Golfobserver, analyzed the golf media's coverage and linked back to all of the sites he writes about except the one he says has done the "best job," GeoffShackelford.com. He writes of yours truly:

He has helped this story accelerate more in golf than any other site and has been the place to go for every seedy story. He has put up every story about this saga, no matter what the fluidity or accuracy of the story is. He has done more in promoting the TMZ's and the Radaronline than anyone else. As most news organizations have shunned the News of the World story and the summaries on Huffington Post or the Daily Beast, Shackelford has prominently posted these sites and stories, which have helped fuel mainstream writers to source this material.

Of course, the "seedy" News of the World story he refers to featured information matching a story from the Daily Mail, which I read after finding it at...GolfObserver.  Johnson linked it this way Friday night:

December 5, 2009 9:34 pm - MailOnline
Be forewarned that this could be one of the worst stories in the Tiger Woods saga, an affair with an $8-an-hour diner waitress in Orlando that caused a cover-up that put Woods image on the cover of Men's Fitness. Be forewarned it's graphic in nature. -

An eleventh woman was linked to Tiger today. One more and as comedian Chelsea Handler said, we could have a calendar.

Thanks to reader Tim for Dana Summers' editorial cartoon in the Orlando Sentinel:

And what would a day be without yet more reenactment videos. Warning, Tiger is shirtless and photographing his genitals. Now those are words I never thought I'd type.