Tiger's apology far too public for private problems
Tiger Woods hit his mark, hit his notes, and unless you are easily moved by public statements days and even weeks in the vetting, still failed to answer to the one compelling question from the last three months:
Is this about the man, the family, or the brand?
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| Tiger Woods could have apologized to his mother Kultida and other loved ones without TV. (Getty Images) |
Which is not to us.
The mostly iron-stiff statement he made Friday to begin his public rehabilitation worked in that other than a couple of riffs about the evils of the modern media age, he owned his guilt. But since his transgressions weren't crimes but character failings that affected those he regards as close to him, what would have been wrong with apologizing privately to everyone in the room, everyone he said he affected with the behavior he called "irresponsible" and "selfish?" Why did it have to be a television show, so tightly scripted?
In short, it was a nice show, it asked us to want to love him again, and it was thoroughly not needed. This isn't a public problem, no matter how much we demand of our public figures. He cheated on his wife, he had some associates help him do it, and he left others to answer publicly for him. Those sins require personal, not televised, amends.
As for the public, it has been down this road too many times with too many other transgressors to fully buy this show. It was too tightly controlled and directed to be fully convincing to anyone who had an open mind, maybe because there isn't an open mind about Tiger Woods.
There are only three kinds of aficionados of the Woods phenomenon, and the number is sliding dramatically toward the second and third groups.
One is the kind that forgives him all his trespasses because they are either close to him, need him for their own work or because he can hit a golf ball fewer times in a four-day span than any other professional, and is by that definition alone a great American. Some of them were the ones in the hermetically sealed room.
Then there is the kind that doesn't forgive him anything because they never liked him, or because they think they got played by someone who failed to be a moral exemplar in his private life, or even a smart philanderer.
And then there is the kind that doesn't really give a damn either way because they have learned that the celebrity/role model thing is pretty much a fraud, that the only thing you can actually say about a great athlete celebrity is that he or she is a great athlete or celebrity.
Steve Elling
Mike Freeman
Now this, this was a slickly produced one-way defense, sprinkled with lectures about the media's considerable excesses. There, he was at his most heartfelt, especially when he said, half-demanding, half-pleading, "Please leave my family alone."
Then he broke into a quick analysis of his Buddhism, as if to remind us that even in supplication, it is about him as man and image.
As soon as the announcement was made that he would be apologizing again in a sterile atmosphere, surrounded only by people who would support and defend him if he were caught selling orphans on the Internet, the only questions that needed to be asked were these:
So why does he need the TV time to apologize to people he could see away from the cameras?
And whose debts are being paid here?
As had been said ad nauseam, Woods needs to make himself right for his family, as nobody else is a signatory to his wedding vows. Everything after that is just tactics -- to mollify the sponsors he has, schmooze the ones he lost or attract new ones. And above all, to try and get the world off his back.
But the format for Friday's address was so rigid and Kremlin-formal that one wonders if his media advisors moonlight on the side for the American Association of Industrial Arsonists. No journalists within a mile of the event. Then three. Then six. Then three again. And none would be asking any questions. It was a nice attempt to keep the affair from going all McGwire-ish, but it was also the kind of disingenuous artifice that has betrayed Woods from the start.
If he wants to make things right to those he truly wounded, that's a private matter that requires sincerity and supplication, not handlers. If he wants to rekindle the sponsors' love, take 'em on a weekend golf outing. They're still suckers for that sort of thing.
But no staged event can be all three things at once, which is why today's statement is something that will change no minds, will release no pressure on Woods, and only ossifies the positions people already hold. Which frankly made the need for a public display asking for the kindness of strangers all the sillier.
When he said, "Find room in your heart to one day believe in me again," he missed the real plea. It should have been, "Allow me the chance to prove to you I can be worthy of your support." Trust isn't the issue. His own path to personal redemption isn't solved in public, and "believe in me" is a disturbingly lofty phrase, as though he wants to be the icon again.
That's not it. Being the lofty and harm-proof icon is part of what even he admitted got him in such trouble. Making the private matter public in itself is the error, because public contrition is to be distrusted in this media-engorged age.
Lots of people agreed it was great theatre. That, ultimately, was the problem. What he has to prove, he has to prove to the family he wants to shield from the outside world. The rest of the world has to be on its own.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
