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It’s a fascinating new media phenomenon; the multi-miked Bad Boy apology, don’t you think?
In case you missed it real-time scrolling in Google this weekend, Tiger made a public apology to his wife, children, family, sponsors and indeed, the entire world, for extra-maritally shagging a minimum of a calendar full of Playboy centrefolds, porn stars and other assorted terribly beautiful and apparently slaggy women.
He did it in front of a select group of friends brooking no questions, sandwiched neatly between two stints in rehab. It was so well scripted an apology that you could bounce a complete set of West Wing writers off it. And so well delivered, one could almost believe that Tiger had spent his entire life taking direction on how to perform exactly to specification whilst under enormous pressure. (Oh, wait...)
The main thrust, between the significant eye-contact “very very sorry” sound bites?
"I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply."
Now, I quite like that line. Because if you compare it to other Bad Boy bon mots, it comes closest to saying what they all actually mean.
Take a haunted Hugh Grant, in 1995, post Divine Brown.
“I did a bad thing.” (No shit, Sherlock.)
A post-Lewinsky Bill Clinton, in 1998, gave that response a more statesman-like delivery, whilst still holding to the Captain Obvious theme: “I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.”
And our own Jacob Zuma, just this month, showed he could do it if he really tried, only with less media-savvy writers: "I deeply regret the pain that I have caused to my family, the African National Congress, the (Tri-partite) Alliance and South Africans in general." (Seriously? You needed to tell us that you are more scared of the Tri-partite Alliance than the people of South Africa? Nice touch, silly spin-doctors.)
Because we all know what they are actually thinking. These captains of capitalism, trying so very hard to remember what contrite looks like. They are thinking:
“I am very powerful and important. As we all know, power and sex are inextricably linked in our society, and that women are subordinate in that equation. Is it really a surprise then, that I am a total hound dog?”
Wouldn’t it be great if they would just say that instead? I don’t know about you, but I find apologies that assume I have the IQ of a very small rodent not terribly effective.
But hey. That apology wasn’t about Elin or the kids. Or the 12 women who remained entirely unmentioned. (Apparently shagging the planet is a private issue between a man and his wife... which is funny, because I thought it was exactly the opposite.)
It was, as our beloved Ernie Els pointed out... about the money. And the first sponsor to drop Tiger as a spokesman after his November car crash, business services giant Accenture.
Accenture is the name sponsor of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship – the biggest golfing event of the year so far – which also kicked off on Friday. Where Tiger, of course, was NOT plying his trusty driver.
Nice one, Tiger. You hound dog.
Sam Wilson is the Editor-in-Chief of w24.co.za. You can read other stories by Sam on Women24, or subscribe to her blog or simply follow her on Twitter.
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