It has been a tough 72 hours for Tiger Woods, whose dirty laundry was tossed into the wind storm created by the lowest-common denominator media (aka TMZ).
Reading through the commentary over the past 24 hours on Woods, the aftermath and the apology, the consensus theory is that he's human. Really. It took this fucking long for people to realize that Tiger Woods - the golfer, the icon, the video game avatar - is human? As if his knee injury-riddled victory in the U.S. Open didn't prove it, it took him cheating on his wife and him running away in his Cadillac Escalade just before he hit the fire hydrant and tree. Fantastic. Nearly two decades of carefully crafted media images was wiped out in the span of one hour - from the time Tiger's friend was texting him and Elin (his wife) caught him to the accident. Welcome to the rest of the world, people.
To the rest of us who've been following Tiger, we've know it was a façade. We've known that he's human. We've known that he has mistakes - a thrown club here, yelling at the gallery because someone coughed there - that duffers and semi-pro golfers make all the time on the links. We've known that he didn't trust the media and the press and wanted to keep all of them at more than an arm's length. Hey, that's why you live in a gated community - to keep people away (unless TMZ and the paparazzi pay a cop or a neighbor to get in to take pictures).
And, of course, he's known to rip off a few near microphones....
Two items of proof —
First one (29 seconds in):
Second one:
OK, Gary McCord was blamed for the fart on the second video, who had a bit of a rolling humor feud with Tiger on who could break each other up with well-placed farts, but the point is simple - I think Tiger would love to go back to the time when a fart caught by a television microphone was the only uproar caused by him on and off the course.