Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, The Six-Week Anniversary Edition
/44 days after the accident, Bob Harig at ESPN.com brings up the nagging Tiger/media-relations/law enforcement question that refuses to go away:
Many thought last week's report by an Orlando television station recounting the FHP's handling of Woods' Nov. 27 accident was old news. But it wasn't. WESH-TV, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, got an exclusive interview with an FHP spokesperson who acknowledged that Woods had been interviewed on Dec. 1 -- the same day the organization announced that Woods had been fined and the case was closed.
But on that day, the FHP let the world believe that Woods never consented to be interviewed. And that led to a month of speculation about Woods' whereabouts, whether he had been more severely injured in the auto accident, if spousal abuse had been involved and if he needed surgery to correct any problems.
According to the Dec. 30 WESH report, Woods suffered only a "fat lip," which would seem to put to rest many of the wild theories that have been going around.
And it makes you wonder why anyone -- the FHP, the Woods camp -- would let it get to that point.
For what it's worth, I've twice emailed the spokesperson in question--Sgt. Kim Montes--asking about the FHP's decision to reverse policy and to comment on the chain email. Both replies have gone unacknowledged.
Alan Shipnuck answers reader email and explains why the golf media did not investigate or report on Tiger's affairs:
Let's suppose that, pre-Thanksgiving, SI had obtained some kind of smoking gun – pictures of a parking lot tryst, or R-rated text messages – I still don't know if that's a story we should break. Prior to his mysterious car accident, Woods's private life was still private. Is it the responsibility of a sportswriter to reveal the details of an athlete's sex life? The answer is yes, if it's affecting the game itself. When two NBA teammates are courting the same pop singer and thus disrupting team chemistry, that's clearly a story. What's happening behind closed doors at the Island Hotel between consenting adults? I don't think so.
As soon as Tiger mysteriously cracked up his Escalade, and then went underground, his life away from golf became fair game, but he is the one who set this story in motion, not the media. Bottom line: it's a bummer to have been hoodwinked for so long, but I'm not sure what more the golf media could have done.
He also answers a reader question about one of golf's great mysteries.
If you have positively nothing better to do, listen to the Orange County Sheriff's dispatch tape released today after WKMG-6 in Orlando obtained a copy.
Jose Lambiet says construction continues on Tiger and Elin Woods' home in Jupiter. And it's still looking like a Motel 6, Lambiet writes.
Kevin Blackinstone at the FanHouse blog notes this about Vanity Fair's cover and Buzz Bissinger story:
That is one of the great ironies to this seemingly never-ending story about the first billionaire athlete. Ever since his fateful car wreck in the wee hours after Thanksgiving, Tiger is the only person not making money off of Tiger. Yahoo! Inc. CEO Carol Bartz crudely admitted last month what a boon Tiger's tales are to Internet traffic. Now Vanity Fair, feeling the trembles in the wracked magazine business, is cashing in with a quick mock-up of heretofore unpublished partially nude photos of Tiger. Leibovitz can use a little extra loot, too. Late last year, she was reported to be near bankruptcy.
Connell Barrett picks apart Bissinger's Vanity Fair piece, breaking it down into the lazy and the inaccurate. Frankly, he was kind not to point out that there was an egregious mistake in the opening paragraph.
WSJ's "Numbers Guy" Carl Bialik analyzes the UC Davis study of the impact on corporations associated with Tiger Woods and finds the same flaws that others discovered.
Playing among these analytical sand traps, the Woods study added a few of its own little bogeys in the initial rounds. In its first version, the study said it included stock movements through Dec. 17, though it instead ended the day before. It also included American Express as a sponsor, though the company dropped its Woods relationship in 2007.
And Gatorade, which has sponsored Mr. Woods, is owned by PepsiCo, which suffered a big drop in share price. But that decline coincided with the company's downward revision of its forecast for revenue and profit.
Michael Gerson rebuts the column of fellow Washington Post writer Tom Shales and says this about Brit Hume's remarks:
Hume's critics hold a strange view of pluralism. For religion to be tolerated, it must be privatized -- not, apparently, just in governmental settings but also on television networks. We must have not only a secular state but also a secular public discourse. And so tolerance, conveniently, is defined as shutting up people with whom secularists disagree. Many commentators have been offering Woods advice in his travails. But religious advice, apparently and uniquely, should be forbidden. In a discussion of sex, morality and betrayed vows, wouldn't religious issues naturally arise? How is our public discourse improved by narrowing it -- removing references to the most essential element in countless lives?
True tolerance consists in engaging deep disagreements respectfully -- through persuasion -- not in banning certain categories of argument and belief from public debate.
Another purported mistress is pitching a book, wants $1 million and according to her rep: "She wants to use part of the proceeds and the exposure from the Tiger Woods scandal to promote healthy living by opening a transitional home for women who wish to escape or who have already escaped the sex industry."
No one ever accused me of being quick to post. Here's George Lopez on Sunday's People's Choice Awards, with a follow up joke from Sandra Bullock:
And finally, Dave Chappelle, who once completely lost his mind and has a career again, offers this "Race Draft" featuring Tiger:
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