Tiger Woods used to live in a world of his own. Unrivalled as a golfer, his name became a measure of excellence and, with Nike’s advertising muscle fully flexed on his behalf, one of the best known brands in the world. A generation ago, athletes dreamed of becoming their sport’s Michael Jordan, this generation has grown up longing to be Tiger. Not only did he raise modern golf to a new level, but he did so with an enviable amount of personal grace. Throughout his career he has maintained a preternatural calm in the heat of competition and displayed a maturity beyond his years when dealing with the pressures of his reputation and the inevitable cult of celebrity. Confident without being arrogant, he avoided the limelight, refused to be drawn on questions of his racial identity, and never bragged about his remarkable achievements. Fiercely competitive on the course he was magnanimous in his occasional defeats. Most importantly, perhaps, his private life made no headlines. Few were surprised when he reportedly became the first sportsman to earn a billion dollars.
All of that has changed, vertiginously, in the last two weeks. After being attacked by his wife and crashing a car outside his private residence early one morning, Woods has suffered a deluge of negative publicity. Increasingly prurient revelations have turned him into a daily highlight for the American tabloids and their delight in his downfall is palpable. Behind the public façade of disciplined professionalism they have found another cliché of the rampant black athlete. Overnight the squalid details of his many extramarital liaisons – including phone and text messages – have been broadcast for public consumption. Self-proclaimed experts have pored over the provisions of his prenuptial agreement, and speculated about the legal settlements available to his wronged wife. Now the pressure is growing on his sponsors to drop their endorsements. Nothing in the saga has anything to do with Woods’ professional life, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how he will emerge from this spectacle unscathed.
America’s fits of morality are usually directed at more deserving targets. In the black and white court of public opinion, it seems generally fair when personal indiscretions catch up with people who have made a career out of persuading other people to trust them. The trials by media which brought low political figures like Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Edwards – and Republicans like Tom DeLay and Trent Lott – were all a sort of poetic justice. Even more understandable have been the exposés of hypocritical preachers and abusive clergy. Most deserving of all, perhaps, are those guardians of public morality, like the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who prove to be all too similar to the people they persecute. But do sportsmen really deserve to be judged by these standards? Would any West Indian be scandalized to learn that one of our cricketing heroes was a serial adulterer? Would it even make the headlines?
The media coverage has become so intense that Woods has taken the unusual step of issuing a press release on “current events” at his personal website. After a few evasive remarks about “transgressions” and “personal failings” the statement pleads for his “right to some simple, human measure of privacy.” Acknowledging that there are those who will not willingly grant any private space to the world’s most famous athlete, the statement continues that “Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.” The statement has so far generated more than 20,000 responses, most of them supportive, but a significant number of them extremely critical. To his credit, Woods has not censored any of the negative responses.
We live in a culture obsessed with celebrity. While developed countries struggle to summon the political will to tackle serious problems like poverty and domestic violence, there always seems to be a large and passionate audience for the follies of the rich and famous. Like a mediaeval morality play, the public has developed an appetite for building up public figures like Princess Diana, for projecting onto them qualities which they usually do not possess, the better to humiliate them when they fail to be adequate ‘role models’ for millions of people they have never met. Some of this is simple envy, but much of it is also the result of the corporate takeover of modern culture and entertainment. In our times well-known actors, singers and sportsmen are only partial authors of their destiny. Often they owe their fortunes to a hidden network of agents, public relations firms and marketers who broker the deals that turn them into household names. Their success comes at a steep price, however, for as they become associated with various commercial interests, they forfeit the right to privacy in the eyes of the general public. So when the pendulum swings the other way and it is time for them to be infamous for fifteen minutes it should surprise no one that public images which have been carefully manipulated for years, sometimes decades, collapse like a house of cards.
Woods can at least console himself with the knowledge that sex scandals have a very limited shelf life in modern America. Six weeks ago the adulterous talk show host David Letterman was subjected to a comparable blizzard of media attention, but now his failings and personal transgressions are yesterday’s news.
