This past weekend as some of you may know, a tradition unlike any other was held. No, I’m not talking about my bachelor party (though the fact that Rick, McBournie and myself are still alive remains a medical mystery), I’m talking about The Masters. Phil Mickelson’s victory at Augusta National was a great story of a family facing a true adversity, not a tabloid one. It was also one of the single greatest performances at the event. Unfortunately though, this year’s edition also brought back Tiger Woods, and one of the biggest slaps in the face to public intelligence in a long time.
If you haven’t seen the commercial yet, a solemn Woods is pictured in black and white (somebody has been watching a lot of Schindler’s List!). He stares at the camera while a creepy recording of the late Earl Woods speaks to Tiger as if beyond the grave. Trying to get us, the public, to feel some sort of sympathy for a self-induced train wreck. And oh yeah, go out and believe in the Tiger/Nike lovechild again.
Um, no.
Nike is trying to give the impression that Woods has manned up to his mistakes, and that we should embrace, possibly even feel sorry for a flawed individual (Next up, Nike salutes Judas!). We’re supposed to take this all in and publicly forgive woods as he stares at us blankly … with a giant ####ing Nike logo squarely centered on his hat and in the middle of the frame.
So Woods has manned up, right? Lets look at the fact that he came back only for a major. Only at a crowd that could be controlled. Only at a place where he believed he could start again, and by winning, be redeemed. Then, when he lost to the man who is actually true to his words. Woods took his ball and went home, saying he didn’t know when he was going to play again. Great marketing.
I’ll admit, that over the weekend, I too got roped into watching Woods to see if he really could take five months off and dominate as he once did. But then the loss, the press conference and the commercial all culminated into me now realizing that this isn’t a human being we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with a “sex-addicted” robot who uses commercials to try and manipulate us into believing this guy actually has a conscience. Now where are my Reeboks?