Couldn’t Tiger Woods have made his public mea culpas without taking a dig at the media?
Well, apparently not. At his Friday press conference, the golfer was all apologies, expressing regrets to his wife, his mommy, his children and his sponsors.
I thought for a second he might work in the little rubber ducky that he used to take baths with as a kid, but Woods mercifully steered clear of that one.
He may not have played the “rubber ducky” card, but Woods whipped out the bash-the-media one.
“My behavior doesn’t make it right,” Woods whined, “for the media to follow my 2 1/2-year-old daughter to school and report the school’s location. They staked out my wife and they pursued my mom. Whatever my wrongdoings, for the sake of my family, please leave my wife and kids alone.”
I’m not exactly prostrate with grief about the plight of either Woods or his family being hounded by the media. Woods has never complained about the fame and wealth — especially the wealth — that come with being one of the greatest golfers in the world. If his wife and children, or even he, are hounded by assorted paparazzi, then there’s a term for that: It’s called “the price of the ticket.”
When people who find themselves in sticky situations are quick to play the “blame the media” card, I tend to smell a rat somewhere. Baltimore’s recently departed mayor, Sheila Dixon, had to resign in disgrace after she was convicted of misusing gift cards meant for the needy.
Throughout her ordeal, she insisted that she had done nothing wrong. And throughout her tenure as both mayor of Baltimore and president of its city council, Dixon made her disdain for, if not downright hatred of, the media very clear.
Dixon was accused of, among other things, routinely accepting gifts from contractors who did business with the city. One of the contractors was a married man; Dixon also had an affair with him. When all this business came tumbling down around her feet, Dixon looked around and figured that someone (or someones) were indeed to blame.
But she was not one of those someones; the media were. Dixon was, by all accounts, a good mayor. The number of homicides in Baltimore — annually so high that the town has been cynically nicknamed “Bodymore, Murderland” — decreased under Dixon’s stewardship even more than under her predecessor, now-Gov. Martin O’Malley.
And Dixon accomplished her feat without turning Baltimore into a mini-police state where police made mass arrests for petty crimes. Many of those arrests, critics charged, were even illegal. (Under the O’Malley regime, Baltimore had yet another nickname: “Stalag O’Malley.”)
Once I heard Dixon constantly harping on the media, I knew she was going down. The media didn’t accept gifts from contractors; she did. The media didn’t misappropriate gift cards meant for the needy; she did. The media didn’t have an affair with a contractor who was a married man; she did.
In Woods’ case, the media didn’t have affairs with a string of mistresses; he did. He admitted as much in his statement.
“I recognize I have brought this on myself,” Woods said, “and I know above all I am the one who needs to change.” In another part of his statement, Woods said, “I have always tried to maintain a private space for my wife and children.”
This entire matter seems like a private matter between Mr. and Mrs. Woods. Why did Woods need such a public statement at all? Was this statement meant for his wife and family?
Or for his sponsors?
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
