TIGER WOODS-THE NIKE AD FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE:WHEN POOR TASTE RUNS AMOK

To be brutally honest-I really don’t care about Tiger Woods-but he’s been a lot of fun lately (cannon fodder in many ways).Tiger is the gift that keeps on giving for topics because he wears such a big bulls eye on his back. But I wish the guy would disappear from real news shows and leave that arena to real news stories. 

Because in reality, Tiger really shouldn't mean that much in the real world. I don’t care about golf-a televised so-called sport where the lawn mowers are more exciting than the game. But the Tiger Woods coverage crossed a line this week when his comeback trumped all other real news.

I turned on the TV for an update on the worst US mining disaster since 1984-the one where real men lost their lives earning a living and every network led with the Tiger Woods comeback.

That’s wrong.

 Then NIKE released that ghoulish TV ad where Tiger takes a “beyond the grave” lecture from his late father.

Tiger put his best “kid with his hand in the cookie jar” look throughout this debacle and this is supposed to evoke some emotion from the viewer-I’m guessing sympathy in NIKE’S fondest dreams.

 But it didn’t do that for me-I was repelled by this ad. I can’t even imagine exploiting my late father in such an obviously cheap grab for publicity. It makes you wonder how much Tiger is spending these days on lawyers because I can’t help but be reminded of an interview with Ali when he was asked why he kept going into the ring after 1978-the last time he won the Championship.

His answer was simple-he couldn’t afford not to box. Ali was living at a level that required an 8-digit income so he had to keep going back into the ring for more damage. He was, in essence, a mini-industry and many people relied on him for employment. In a way it was honorable and ultimately it was tragic, but Ali will always be remembered in history as a man of conviction who believed and lived by his own principles.Whether you agreed or disagreed with his stance on issues, Ali was consistent with his own code of conduct.

Tiger won’t be so lucky-he will be remembered as a man of questionable principles who allowed an endorsement contract to override instinct. The instinct that should have told him that exploiting his late father in a TV ad was quite possibly the lowest, sleaziest thing he could have done to his dad’s memory. Basically, Tiger dragged his dad’s ghost into a sordid, cheap mess for commercial gain.

 His biography was tainted but this ad is the icing on the cake- it is so tasteless, yet coldly exploitive, that it makes his cheating look pretty good by comparison. The last sacred trust you have in life is your parent’s memory-Tiger put a NIKE price on that.

For that reason alone, Tiger Woods should never be the lead story in any genuine news service when real workingmen are putting everything on the line in coalmines to support a family. Tiger’s not news-let’s not pretend that he is so…

let’s eject this sleazeball from the nightly news and banish him to the cheap tabloid newspapers where he so clearly belongs.

COMMENTS 

DENNIS:"AMEN! But what would those who drool over "Brad and Angleina's" every move or "Oprah's" latest cause, or that idiot twit with the 8 babies, or anything else you can find in the magazines at the check-out line of the grocery store do if they couldn't get their daily "sleaze fix" on the national TV news as well.