Tiger's String Theory

I don't pretend to be a PR person. I barely pretend to be a good person. All of that being said, I have no idea what Tiger Woods thinks that he's up to. All I know is that Sunday afternoon I heard that he had given two separate interviews to ESPN and The Golf Channel (yep, there's a golf channel) and that they would be airing "in their entirety" Sunday evening. Two interviews? In their entirety?! I immediately cleared my schedule, as I figured that this was must see TV. OK, granted, my schedule was already pretty clear, but I've always wanted to say that. (I also exaggerated with the "must see TV", as it was really "I'll watch it if the re-run of The Simpsons isn't one of the really early ones where all of the characters seem to have just a touch of Cro-Magnon in them.) In reality, even if my schedule was packed, I would have only had to block off ten minutes, as each interview was only five freaking minutes.

Really Tiger? Five minutes each? Who in the world gives an interview that is only five minutes. Way to hype this up, ESPN. "In their entirety". Please. When something is only five minutes long, it's a little hard to not show it in its entirety! They didn't even sit down! He just stood there, uncomfortably close to each interviewer. He was wearing a ball cap with one of his TW logos on it, as he is the only person who will endorse himself these days. First up, the Kelly Tilghman interview.

Kelly Tilghman has apparently been with the Golf Channel since its inception. She's a very attractive woman who might know something about golf. (It's hard to know whether or not they base their hiring practices of very attractive women who will be on TV on whether or not they have an in depth knowledge of the sport itself as opposed to how good they look holding a phallic shaped microphone.) She started off with a fairly reasonable inquiry. She asked, "Tiger, you’ve been a master of control your entire life, how did things get so out of control?" That's when Tiger started off his part of the interview with a fairly ridiculous response. "Going against your core values, losing sight of it. I quit meditating, I quit being a Buddhist, and my life changed upside down." Oh, spare me.

You quit being a Buddhist?! I don't remember Tiger Woods being all Buddhist-y before. And I'm going to disagree that he went against his "core values". It would seem to me that his core values included sleeping with any woman with a sizable rack and carrying some sort of drink tray. Yeah, that's what happened. He quit being a Buddhist and suddenly found himself screwing every cocktail waitress around like he was some sort of jackrabbit on crack. (I mean, you know,if the whole inter special thing was even possible in this analogy, then it would be just like that.)

Question Two from Ms. Tilghman: "Were there moments you thought you should stop, but didn’t?" And ridiculous answer Number Two from Tiger Woods: "Yeah, I tried to stop and I couldn’t stop. It was just, it was horrific." Yeah, it sounds horrible. All of that crazed sex that you were having all the time, whenever you wanted it, with whoever you wanted it. You poor, poor, tortured soul. And without your Buddha to keep you company (as far as we know). Good Lord. Horrific? That's hilarious. He has apparently confused the time when he was screwing anything that wasn't nailed down (and presumedly had an appropriate orifice) and the time when he was finally busted. The getting busted part? That might qualify as "horrific". The rest of it? All of the not stopping? Not so much.

Let's see...oh! Here's one that really exemplifies how Tiger has NO intention of giving any sort of answer with any sort of substance. Question: "For a man who’s so disciplined physically and psychologically, why couldn’t you say no?" Tiger's answer: "I don’t know, now I know. It’s part of what I learned in treatment, being there for 45 days you learn a lot. You strip away the denial, the rationalization and you come to the truth and the truth is very painful at times and to stare at yourself and look at the person you’ve become, you become disgusted." Uh-huh.

Wow, he actually used the word "strip". I guess maybe because he's awfully familiar with things that strip. You might notice that he didn't offer up what he had been in treatment for. No, no. That would be too much. He still thinks awfully highly of himself (and he's one of the few that still do) and he's not about to totally admit that he so screwed up. And down, too, probably. The whole transcript of that interview is available over at something called National Post.

Moving onto the other five minutes of his time that he managed to spare yesterday, we have him speaking with a one Tom Rinaldi of ESPN. (The transcript of those 300 seconds is available over at The Huffington Post.) Tom (I call him Tom) said to him: "Eleven months ago, here at Isleworth, I asked you, 'How well does the world know you?' What's your answer to that now?" His response sounded remarkably similar to what he said to Ms. Tilghman when he said, "A lot better now. I was living a life of a lie. I really was. And I was doing a lot of things, like I said, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly." The stripping. The denying. The rationalizing. All very good key words to throw into an interview answer...if you don't repeat them five minutes later!

My favorite part of ESPN interview was actually when he was asked "What's the difference between the man who left Augusta national a year ago and the one who is about to return?" Tiger answer with "A lot has transpired in my life. A lot of ugly things have happened." I don't recall any of this happening to him. I really don't recall these events transpiring. I recall him almost getting beaten senseless by his extremely angry wife (allegedly) on Thanksgiving after she found out about a multitude of strippers that he had been fornicating with, but I don't know if I'd call that "events transpiring". No, I'd simply call that "getting caught".

Rinaldi, er, Tom also asked him, "I ask this question respectfully, but of course at a distance from your family life. When you look at it now, why did you get married?" That seems to be a perfectly reasonable question. But the answer that Tiger gave sounded almost like he was surprised that someone would ask such a question. What?! You want to know why I married my wife? Just because it's been revealed that I've been sleeping with Perkin's waitresses in my Escalade outside of their mobile home?! Is that why you're asking that? Uh, yes. Yes, it is. But his answer? "Why? Because I loved her. I loved Elin with everything I have. And that's something that makes me feel even worse, that I did this to someone I loved that much." Please note the use of the term "loved" as in the past tense. As if we needed to read anything into anything as it was, but whatever.

Seriously, how was he supposed to answer that question? "Uh, I thought it would look good." "Uh, well, I thought she wouldn't find out." Or what I find to be the most plausible: "Dude, she's a Norwegian model who has a twin sister! Do the math!"

Look, I'll give him that he was less robotic than he was during the odd, odd press conference in which he rambled on for 12 minutes (and scolded the media at one point for following his children). It was still pretty robotic and it's still pretty evident that he hasn't internalized anything. (I base that on the repetitive answers and that I don't believe anything that comes out of the serial fornicator's mouth and neither should anyone else.) I couldn't quite figure out what he was up to until the very end of the Kelly Tilghman interview when she says to him, "I noticed you’re wearing a bracelet, can we see it?...What does it mean?" A bracelet? Where? What...that? Behold!

That's a string. Is a string a bracelet? Because that's a string? Guess what it's for? That's right! All of the Buddhism! He told her, "It’s Buddhist, it’s for protection and strength and I certainly need that." Protection from what? Cocktail waitresses? Is that string from one of their thongs? Does is work at fending off porn stars as well? Like those magic bracelets that Wonder Woman wears? Is it like that? Oooh!! Do you have magic lasso, too?!

She continued with the string inquisition by asking, "When did you start wearing it?" ("The second I got it off of that hooker." Oh, I kid! That's not what he said!) "Before I went into treatment." Ohhh. BEFORE the treatment. Of course. Because you sat down and thought long and hard about what you'd done and you decided that a string around your wrist would be in order. Gotcha. Anything else? Why, yes. Yes, there was something else. Apparently, Ms. Tilghman was fascinated by this string. "Will you be wearing it during the Masters?" What do you think he said? Come on! Guess! That's right he said, "Absolutely." And she took it a step further (and thankfully it was the last step) and asked, "For the rest of your life?" And what do you think he said to that? Come on! Guess! That's right. Again with the, "Absolutely." I get it.

So the string is a decoy. It gives people something to focus on. That will be his way of not having to talk about how he's doing in the future. If you see the magic string, you know he's protected from cocktail waitresses. Seriously, what else could it be for (because it certainly isn't for protection from anything)? We (the public 'we') are just so stupid that we're going to believe that if we see the string, that he's a faithful, Buddha loving, family guy once again. Oh, OK! We believe you! Sure! Did Ari Fleischer come up with that one? It's new. Let's see if it works.

Not 'works' in the sense that he'll be protected from hookers or anything, but 'works' in the sense that people will assume that he's not effing anything that moves like some wild beast, but only if he has the magic string on his wrist. Look, just because someone has a string on their wrist, it doesn't mean they're faithful...to anyone. Not to their wife. Not to their mistresses. Not to their hos. No one. String or not.