Tiger Woods car/life crash

I'm not even sure what you're arguing any more - what does being an "extreme example of 'humanity'" mean?

philanderer's be philanderin', imo. what does it matter if it's 1 or 30 women?

btw, i would also like to note that i think it's one thing to have "human flaws"... it's a whole different thing to be someone who cheats on his wife with 20 or 30 or however many women -- it's kind of an extreme example of "humanity"

― J0rdan S., Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:22 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so what

would it please you to have every violent criminal in america go on television and apologize to all their fans for the raping or w/e? we're not talking about pathology at this point, we're talking about fame, and apparently you think that famous people are somehow more accountable for their sins than normal boring a-holes. i disagree.

or

philanderer's be philanderin', imo. what does it matter if it's 1 or 30 women?

― __ ― (dyao), Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:27 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah so far tiger has shown that he's really good at doing one thing - playing golf - why should that therefore elevate him to be a superior being in other respects?

btw, i would also like to note that i think it's one thing to have "human flaws"... it's a whole different thing to be someone who cheats on his wife with 20 or 30 or however many women -- it's kind of an extreme example of "humanity"

― J0rdan S., Sunday, February 21, 2010 12:22 AM (22 seconds ago)

dude he still hasn't hurt anyone besides his wife. if it turned out he like, killed 30 people, he could apologize for being a danger to society or something. all he did was have sex with people - people do that.

ha xp!

are you gonna get on wilt chamberlain's case for sleeping with 20,000 women?

i wasn't really arguing anything with that statement -- just noting that his case is an extreme example because most people don't fuck up their family lives to the extent that he has -- again i would point to the example of kobe bryant cheating on his wife with one woman versus tiger cheating on his wife with however many -- it doesn't make a difference to me, just in terms of historical context

what point are you trying to make, exactly, with this kobe and tiger comparison

are you gonna get on wilt chamberlain's case for sleeping with 20,000 women?

― __ ― (dyao), Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:31 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark

ha i was wondering if someone was going to bring this up -- i obv don't have a problem with people who are non-monogamous -- there is a reason that wilt chamberlain is pretty much publicly celebrated for this, and it's because he never pretended that he wasn't sleeping with 20,000 women

what point are you trying to make, exactly, with this kobe and tiger comparison

― __ ― (dyao), Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:32 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark

that if tiger had only cheated on his wife with one woman that it wouldn't be as big of a deal publicly

I mean, okay, but it still doesn't prove your claim that tiger has a responsibility to apologize to the public

altho if a friend of mine was cheating on his girlfriend with 20-30 different women, i think i would stop being friends with this person, personally

i thought you were trying to make the point that he owes the world an apology, my b

xp

anyway jordan when you apologize for something it's because you either did something you weren't supposed to do, or you didn't do something you were. tiger's "responsibility" (this still is a stretch but run with this) to the public is to be a good and entertaining golfer. his responsibility to us was not to not cheat on his wife.

his responsibility to his wife was to be faithful to her and provide for her until they die, that's what the marriage papers say (are there even marriage papers and is that what they say? i'm like 12 fwiw). he reneged on that contract and therefore he should be sorry to his wife.

also not sure if I buy your kobe/tiger comparison cause in kobe's case, it was an accusation of RAPE - i.e. crime according to law - so kobe had more of an onus to clear his name. tiger hasn't done anything wrong, legally, except breaking his marriage vows

i thought you were trying to make the point that he owes the world an apology, my b

xp

― nitzer ebbebe (gbx), Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah i think coming out and uttering the words "i'm sorry" is something that someone of his stature should do -- it's pretty painless

no it isn't

lol I don't even think tiger has a responsibility to be a good and entertaining golfer - he is under no contract with nobody except maybe advertising companies, who can all drop him as soon as they want to. tiger owes nobody nothin, except his family and wife.

and again: "his stature"

srsly dude, he's just a fucking golfer, grow up

http://amputate.me/dam_puter.gif

kk otm

srsly dude, he's just a fucking golfer, grow up

― nitzer ebbebe (gbx), Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this is crazy reductive

lol and you saying that tiger is a great golfer therefore he shouldn't find it hard to apologize isn't also all sorts of flawed?

jasper parnevik is just a golfer -- tiger woods is not just a golfer

"Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity"

- Earl Woods

fuck your "he's just a golfer" shit

mind you i'm not saying he's right, just that you're wrong

lol ok - this is where I get off the train, see u

this is crazy reductive

― J0rdan S., Saturday, February 20, 2010 11:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how

i mean, i understand how it is actually v reductive ("he's a global sports figure! he's a human being! children take his actions seriously!"), but who fucking cares. bridging the gap between "he's famous" and "he owes the public a heartfelt apology" takes some serious effort, and a subscription to the idea that ppl are somehow more or less accountable to yr conception of morality because of their job title.

ps - yr politicians are corrupt, yr cops are thugs, yr surgeons are drunks, and yr soldiers are murderers

xp ok yeah, man c u

i mean, i understand how it is actually v reductive ("he's a global sports figure! he's a human being! children take his actions seriously!"), but who fucking cares. bridging the gap between "he's famous" and "he owes the public a heartfelt apology" takes some serious effort, and a subscription to the idea that ppl are somehow more or less accountable to yr conception of morality because of their job title.

they are accountable to societies conceptions of morality because of their job title, yes -- this is how the world works

normatively i think that it would be great if everyone in america realized that athletes are assholes like the rest of us, but i also think that athletes nowadays should know that that's not how people operate, and that if they do some fucked up shit that they should just up and apologize for it because a lot of people would like that apology, whether it's right that they would like it or not

ok, w/e, enjoy the world working

saying that "this is how the world works" /= "this is how the world ought to work"

your assertion was that tiger actually OWED the public (golf fans!) an apology because he laid a bunch of chicks. not that that was what was expected of him. no one would argue that the world expects mea culpas from athletes and politicians and whomever; i would, however, argue that expecting, ~valuing~, an apology from a fucking stranger for some personal garbage is juvenile to the max

xp ok

also i think doing so makes your life easier & less difficult, not the other way around, but that's a separate discussion

gbx truth bomb

i think big jim swells owes all of his fans an apology for not being an actual person

we believed in his transformative ability & his potential to change ilx forever

Interesting. In all the back-and-forth here, it's probably worth pointing out that the media in swarm mode is *completely* childish - when they're howling THINK OF THE CHILDREN to get a reaction from a public figure, it's pure self-interest. BTW, famous sportspeople who sign endorsement contracts usually have to agree to a morals clause that is more onerous than a normal person's employment contract where you can lose your job by bringing the firm into disrepute or whatever. When you're adjudged to have sullied a brand, it's the reaction of your paymasters that matters most - the demand for public apology and the idea that one is seen to repent comes from even more powerful people than Woods, not the wife and kids. Sure, the family is hurt, too, but it's the third or fourth most important thing, in business terms. Public contrition is mostly theatre where normative things are said to placate the public, at the insistence of paymasters.

There has just been something similar in Britain with the captain of the England football team having to resign because he was fucking everything that moved while showing up to collect Dad of the Year prizes; the man in question is also a prize asshole and bully who lashes out at 'little people' all the time and goes running to his lawyer to protect him from the consequences. For example, normally a person who smashes a bottle over someone else in a nightclub, in front of witnesses, is convicted of a serious assault that carries jail time. Sometimes there's a whole pattern of behaviour that is heavily policed by the figure's gatekeepers.

The general public may never know the extent of a public figure's transgressions but reporters on a beat usually do - and figures who are Not A Role Model Behind The Scenes are a special subject of ire when they come with an injunction-spitting legal team. When an unflattering story gathers the critical mass that makes it lawyer-proof for journalists, BOOM. Everything the gatekeepers were trying to keep quiet comes out ten times as noisily.

Tiger Woods has no idea who any of us are. True.

BTW, famous sportspeople who sign endorsement contracts usually have to agree to a morals clause that is more onerous than a normal person's employment contract where you can lose your job by bringing the firm into disrepute or whatever. When you're adjudged to have sullied a brand, it's the reaction of your paymasters that matters most - the demand for public apology and the idea that one is seen to repent comes from even more powerful people than Woods, not the wife and kids. Sure, the family is hurt, too, but it's the third or fourth most important thing, in business terms. Public contrition is mostly theatre where normative things are said to placate the public, at the insistence of paymasters.

that's right. but "he needs to make a public apology to mitigate his breach of a contractual morals clause" and "he owes the public an apology" are different notions.

the interesting part was how boring and monotonous his words and delivery were. was it really him or just a tigerbot?

Bill Simmons:

Say this much about Tiger: People give a crap. I don't know anyone who didn't watch this morning's speech. There isn't another athlete -- not one -- who could have made the world stop from 11 to 11:15 like Tiger Woods did.

And with that, we're done with the positives.

lol

jordan u are fuckin insane

Someone may have already raised this point, not sure: just like with steroids in baseball, the sportswriters who are passing judgement on the "sincerity" of Tiger's mea culpa like they're Romanian figure skating judges or something are being laughably disingenuous. I don't believe for a second that any sportswriter who has covered Tiger closely for years didn't have at least a sense of what was going on. No one pursued the story because a) they decided it wasn't a story, and b) (the parallel with baseball) records were being broken, and records are good copy, so who wants to put that at risk? So a tabloid puts it all out there, and now they're all running around trying to cover their tracks.

Just stumbled over this: excellent.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/joe_posnanski/02/20/tiger.apology/index.html?eref=sihp

Simmons was on fire in that piece, I mean he totally nailed it. And of course Tiger's apology was done to please his sponsors and the PGA (i.e. the places where he earns his money). Plus, guys who are all-time greats in their sport usually reach a point in their careers where they're worried about protecting/promoting their legacy. Tiger desperately wants to beat Nicklaus' record and be known as the best golfer ever, he doesn't to leave behind any loopholes so that people have an opening to claim that Nicklaus or whoever was better than him. Lots of great athletes have had their careers retroactively downgraded because they didn't get along with the press/other players/etc. and I think that might scare Tiger more than the prospect of losing future income.

i think woods' biggest worry in that regard is having to take off months to address this issue (e.g., SEX THERAPY -- what happens in SEX THERAPY, anyway?), depriving him of the chance to win many tounaments in his prime.

"the man made hundreds of million dollars off endorsements that he secured -- and "we" paid for -- because he presented himself as a moral stalwart, a consummate role model who was an anecdote to the allen iversons & alex rodriguezes of sports'

He made his billion because of his performance on the golf course, period. Michael Jordon and Babe Ruth were sort of scum bags too. I don't think it's that big of a deal. They didn't kill anybody. It's seems like it would be hard being a saint and an alpha male sports superstar.

I totally agree with your basic premise, but I'm not sure why you'd call MJ or Ruth scumbags. Jordan gambled, Ruth womanized and ate a lot of hot dogs. By all accounts, Ruth was immensely popular with the other players. How about "less than perfect"? It's a long way from there to scumbag.

Maybe "scum bag" sounds harsh, but they both cheated on their wives. I know people have different views on this.