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Post by Kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 12, 2009 0:35:01 GMT 12
From SFGate.comTiger Woods must dieThe sooner he flames out completely, the sooner he shall rise againBy Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Friday, December 11, 2009 LEFT: So many holes, so little time, eh Tiger? — Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images.
RIGHT: You'd react dramatically too if your Official Skank Accuser Count had entered well into double digits, and showed no signs of slowing. — Photo: Chris O'Meara/Associated Press.I find I am, almost against my will, utterly delighted by the Tiger Woods crash-and-burn who-woulda-thunk slut-of-the-week pornstars-n-skanks flameout shockfest circus funhouse megaspectacle.
It was not a quick realization. Fact is, I have never once cared the slightest bit about Tiger Woods or anything he has ever done, represented, embodied. I have zero interest in golf, don't care for insipid multimillionaire celebrity endorsements, gated Florida mansions or blinged-out Cadillac Escalades, and I have never once found myself remotely enchanted or bedazzled by anything Woods has said or done, largely due to the fact he doesn't appear to have much of a discernable personality or any spiritual fire to speak of, and his sole accomplishment seems to be making a mountain of cash by playing one of the world's most boring, nonathletic sports exceptionally well.
But never mind any of that now. Tiger has transformed. Tiger has transcended. He is right now entering another glorious, rarified realm, a unique strata of American iconography, that of the fallen hero, the broken god, the disgraced saint soon be abhorred and mocked by millions, only to be — and you may take my word for this right now — loved and adored again in about, oh, I'd say two years and change. Maybe less. Just you watch.
It's the same old story, really. Woods is now in the midst of nothing less than a classic, time-honored pattern that just might be one of our nation's finest, most insidious inventions of all time.
Do you know this pattern? I bet you do. It's the same one that's been followed, with varying success, by all sorts of rock stars, supermodels, actors, athletes, pastors and politicians since George Washington was caught indulging his gay fetishes in an opium den in Paris. It's a blueprint that appears to work best in a ruthless capitalist system, not only because this is where wealth, power and ego can explode out of scale so quickly, but because capitalism gave birth to the damn thing in the first place.
It goes something like this: Above-average human with just the right mix of talent/timing achieves massive success in a particular pop cultural arena, largely based on the blind love of millions who, through relentless marketing and media hype, have come to see him/her as a true icon, a symbol of faultless morals and righteousness, the poster child for the American Dream — even though the American Dream doesn't really exist, and it never really did.
Said blessed human goes on to enjoy an impressive, even stellar, career, sets records, makes blockbusters, appears in every magazine or cereal box known to man, becomes a brand, dines with the president, marries a supermodel/shipping tycoon, has God on speed-dial, earns influence and power far exceeding his/her actual domain/sport/category. All seems beautiful, ideal, bulletproof.
Then, the magic happens.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a crack appears. A dire mistake is made. An Escalade crashes into a tree, a line of cocaine is snorted near a paparazzi's hungry camera, a random drug test comes back positive for steroids, a gay prostitute proves he's had frequent meth-addled sex with a powerful homophobic televangelist Christian nutball. You know: same ol', same ol'.
You know what happens next. All sorts of delightful pop culture hell breaks loose. Celebrity has spectacular flameout, reveals self to be far more debauched, wicked, strange, stupid than gullible fans and followers ever wanted to believe.
Ensuing meltdown makes massive headlines as celeb loses product endorsements by the millions, is shunned by former community/fanbase, makes children cry, becomes instant pariah/punchline for wary and jaded nation, the poster child for How It All Can Go Oh So Frightfully Wrong.
As we're beginning to see right now, the force of this negative backlash can be downright shocking. Americans hate to feel like they've been duped, even if they willingly helped co-create the saccharine lie from day one. What's more, unbeknownst to the celeb, all that support and love they had in the beginning often morphs into quiet, seething resentment, over time. It's just waiting to be ignited, uncorked, tabloided straight to hell.
Enter Tiger Woods, the bland, clean-cut Buick spokesman and nice-guy family man, who is turning out to be just an incredibly offensive, adulterous slut, a Vegas-hopping, hooker-hoarding, waitress-nailing, cover-up money-giving, skank-loving, cheating whorebag of fun, a guy with absolutely awful taste in women but excellent skills at sleazy duplicitousness, hereby fully earning the crown as the new American pariah. U-S-A! U-S-A!
Oh, but wait. We're not even to the best part yet. Because, as I mentioned, I am hereby predicting, based on the Great Pattern o' Fame mentioned above, a relatively quick turnaround for poor Tiger.
I am confidently suggesting that Woods will crash, burn, be stomped into seemingly cultural oblivion in the coming months, only to rise again. It's virtually guaranteed. Unless Woods is revealed to have murdered a few hookers in Vegas or says something in a public microphone about his love of dog fighting and watching gay porn with Glenn Beck, his rosy future is a lock. Well, maybe.
Look, if there's one thing we love more than discovering new heroes and building them into overpaid royalty, it's tearing them down again, just so we can watch them fall from grace like a lunatic taking a swan dive from the Empire State Building.
But even more than that, we really love it when they defy the odds and later rise again, when their former transgressions — especially sexual transgressions, hey we're all sinners right? wink wink — somehow magically turn into a charming defect, an appealing foible. All it takes is a clever agent to re-cast Woods as a reformed sinner, a misunderstood bad-boy with a heart of gold. Let him win a few big tournaments and donate all the proceeds to the Las Vegas Skank Rehabilitation Fund, and he's all set.
So take heart, Tiger. Yes, it's about to get far, far worse. Yes, you will be America's punchline for many months to come. But take it from, say, Kate Moss, whose career flameout was truly epic just a few years ago. She lost hundreds of millions in endorsements and couldn't get a modeling gig to save her life after she was photographed doing a line of blow in a dressing room. But not a year later, she re-merged as the highest paid model in the world, more powerful and sought-after than ever, in large part thanks to her "bad girl" image.
So play your transgressions right, Tiger, and they might just become, in the mangled gears of the American celebrity machine, a sublime asset. Your trespasses will be forgiven, your star repolished, your image reborn, your giant suitcase full of condoms replenished. Soon enough, you will again have all lame car endorsements, ugly sweaters, and slutty party-girl waitresses you can handle. God bless America.______________________________________ Mark Morford's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. Contact him here.
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Post by Kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 27, 2009 12:02:01 GMT 12
From SFGate.com101 reasons why men cheat(Tiger Woods Edition).
The timeless question comes round again. Can you answer?By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, December 16, 2009What, more than a dozen mistresses and a zillion horny text messages and cartons of used condoms and assorted first-class hotels and knowing his libido and his fame, and you think she really didn't know? That she didn't totally allow and even condone it for the sake of the mansion and the multimillions? That she probably had a small army of her own lovers? Really? — Photo: David J. Phillip/Associated Press. LEFT: So many holes, so little time. — Photo: Nam Y Huh/Associated Press.
RIGHT: Whilst reading this very column, somewhere around reason #56, Woods' penis was all, like, enough of this crap, let's go to Vegas! — Photo: Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press.Plethoric are the theories, the pop psychoanalysis, the dime store hypothesis. In the wake of Tiger's epic fail, we hereby present a quick rundown of the real reasons many men cheat, as compiled by the whims and vagaries of the baffled, needy male ego for the past, oh, about two million years. Ready?
Basically, men cheat* because:
1. Their penis told them to.
2. The penis is always right.
3. Unless it's not. Unless it's totally, blindingly wrong. But that's really not possible. Just ask it. Wait a sec, it's busy with that Vegas waitress. OK, go ahead. See?
4. The man's marriage is sexless and loveless and boring, and he has needs that must — nay MUST — be met. Just ask the penis.
5. The wife has low/no libido, whereas the man has enough for nine teenagers and a box of rabbits.
6. No, really. The male libido, generally speaking, far outpaces the female libido and is never really satisfied for more than a day or two, tops. This is why so many men choose to be gay. Gay sex is like, off the hook! It's true! I read that somewhere. Lesbians, on the other hand, often suffer a terrible fate known as "lesbian bed death." You can Google it.
7. #6 is a totally unfair cliché that doesn't always hold true, and, by the way, all men are pigs. I mean, duh.
8. The kids steal all the love/attention/energy from wife, leaving man with nothing but XTube, golf and vodka.
9. One word: Ego. Three more: ego, ego, ego. Nothing like nailing a beautiful female acolyte to boost self-image, over and over again, as she coos your name adoringly and feigns surprise that you just bought her a Mercedes.
10. Or is it the other way around, and many women are shockingly predatory, often hunting for rich, powerful men who will buy them stuff and give them a shred of self worth by association, because the truth is, they have no identity of their own, and all they have is sex, which they wield like an ax made of lip gloss and open hip flexors and Cosa Bella thongs?
11. Man is a rock star/golfer/politician/televangelist and women — or gay prostitutes — are knocking on his hotel-room door day and night, and the penis is like, are you going to answer that?
12. Man's marriage is basically a sham, held together only for the sake of kids and media and multimillion-dollar Nike endorsement deals, and to pay for mansions, guitar-shaped swimming pools and giant chrome rims for the Escalade.
13. Sex is tasty and delicious and should not be denied to mere mortals like weak and meager little men.
14. Man is insecure, and sex makes him feel wanted and powerful.
15. Man is very secure, and sex makes him feel even more wanted and powerful.
16. Man is impervious. He cannot possibly get caught.
17. Man is impervious. He does not care if he gets caught.
18. Wife won't do various kinky/perverted things man has taken a liking to from scouring Interweb at 3 a.m. whilst moderately drunk and naked. Wife has zero sex skills. Wife hates sex. Wife only grudgingly has it when she has to to shut up his whining. Wife is disgusted by his dirty suggestions for the new video camera. Wife has let herself go. Wife will only have sex if it leads to more babies. Wife is Sarah Palin. Mix and match.
19. Sex is not love. Cheating is not really "cheating," per se, given how most men consider casual sex romps to be just slightly above "meatball sandwich and an ice cold beer" and just below "hitting 210 mph in Porsche Carrera Turbo while tripping on acid in a lake of fire" in the Male Desirables Index.
20. Man has become convinced the human animal is not meant to really be monogamous, that fidelity is for Hallmark cards and Mormons and has no bearing on real life. Man is simply not wired to mate for life. Hey, it was on the Discovery Channel!
21. Wife actually gave man permission that one time when she was really drunk after being handed keys to new Bentley and a house.
22. Except she wasn't drunk at all and knew exactly what she was doing.
23. And so did he.
24. Quit making excuses. Man is a pathetic, sexist jackass and always has been, basically.
25. Which makes you wonder why she married him at all.
26. Maybe she thought she could fix him. That's pretty common.
27. Or maybe he was very, very convincing when he said he'd changed, that his playa days were over, that he loved her and needed her and never wanted to have sex with anyone else, ever — no really, I mean it this time.
28. Which was probably true.
29. When he said it.
30. And she wanted to believe it so badly. "Maybe marriage would change him? Or a couple kids? He's ready to settle down, I can feel it."
31. Even though everyone around them was like, "Oh my God, that's a disaster waiting to happen, right there. He's such a letch. Why doesn't she see it? Should someone tell her? Is she just not very bright?
32. "I mean, he just totally hit on me at their Christmas party. And she was like, 10 feet away! Of course, I slept with him. But never mind that now!"
33. Let's flip it over. Maybe wife is a ruthless, nightmare harridan, relentlessly negative and mean. He can do no right. He is lonely and starved for attention. But they have kids, a home. Divorce is ugly, expensive, public. So...
34. Oh, stop it. There is never any valid reason for cheating, even if she's an abusive monster. There are only excuses.
35. Thank you, Elle magazine. You are childish and wrong and do not live in the real world. Go back to your pink pedi and "Twilight."
36. Bite me.
37. Man is entitled. "I deserve lots of casual sex. After all, I didn't work this hard on my business/golf game/these abs not to have them licked by a wide variety of giggly TGI Friday's hostesses. Wait, did I? No. No I did not."
38. Porn made him do it.
39. Sex addiction. He's a victim.
40. And a sinner! We are all sinners. Who are you to judge? Sinner! You! Now take off your pants and get in the goddamn hot tub already.
41. Man fears mortality.
42. Man fears erectile dysfunction.
43. Man fears fear.
44. Man fears deranged fan will beat him/kill herself/post photos on Facebook if he doesn't have more sex with her. What's he supposed to do?
45. Man is getting back at his mother.
46. Father.
47. Priest.
48. Invisible friend.
49. Invisible friend's priest's mother.
50. Wife has tacitly agreed to don't-ask, don't-tell policy WRT his fooling around, and is not at all unhappy with having $20 million in her checking account while she never has to have sex with her husband. Hello, American dream!
51. Organized religions and entire conservative platform essentially say that women are lesser, lower, should be kept in their place, and that place usually involves denial and alcoholism and blind acceptance of your man's wanton indiscretions, because he's the man and that's all there is to it, so shut up and take another Zoloft and keep your crying to yourself. Yay, GOP!
52. Didn't Jesus fool around? Is that written somewhere? The lost Gospel of Hey Baby, Nice Rack? All those prostitutes and magic and hocus-pocus? I bet he did. Dude could walk on water. Chicks love that.
53. And by the way, isn't cheating sort of God's will? I mean, He's omniscient and everything, right? That means He knows it all before it happens, it's all predetermined and fated and a priori, and therefore he knows we're gonna cheat, right? So it must be OK.
54. Hey, temptation is irresistible. Who can say no to a secret illicit romp on the office conference-room table?
55. ... or on the boss's desk?
56. ... or in the principal's office?
57. ... Wal-Mart parking lot?
58. ... iHop walk-in freezer?
59. ... 1995 Chevy Caravan third row fold-down seating?
60. Men don't cheat, actually, at least not nearly as much as the culture/feminist theory thinks.
61. They actually value and cherish emotional connection just as much as women. It's true. Media blows it all out of proportion. So not fair.
62. So essentially, we're talking about the classic, time-honored breakdown in communication and gender understanding, exacerbated by horrible sex education and Dr. Phil's BS and endless lies from fashion magazines and Oprah and porn.
63. Actually, the headline of this column is sort of misleading. Men don't cheat. Some men do, and some women do, for all sort of reasons, some of which are actually sort of valid, if you will, and to insist on some ironclad universal rule of absolute unquestioning fidelity is to presume a ridiculous, impossible level of perfection in the human animal and to dismiss the million messy, complicated variants a human love relationship can take.
64. Oh, just shut the hell up, #63. No one wants to hear your tepid, permissive psychoanalysis. Cheating is wrong. Always and forever. Now let's talk more about drunk jerks and skanks!
65. Hey, I'm just trying to provide a little perspective, rein it all back in. This is getting out of hand.
66. Whatevs. This entire column is built around a totally ludicrous and unanswerable question, anyway. Sure, there are as many reasons for infidelity as there are human emotions. Life is messy. Love is messier. But mostly it's about the penis.
67. Yes, but ...
68. Just stop it.
69-100. Something to do with monkeys.
101. Love is not your bitch.
* NOTE: Many of these also apply to women who cheat. So don't kid yourself, sister.______________________________________ Mark Morford's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. Contact him here.
To get on the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing.
To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, blogs, yoga and more), click here and remove three more.
His website is right here.
Mark's also on Facebook and Twitter because, well, why the hell not?
This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/16/notes121609.DTL
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