Tiger Tale

In reading Rich's little blurb today, the small but fascinating detail popped out that Tiger Woods had "briefly hired" former Bush PR flack, otherwise known as a White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer to help out with the whole messed-up corporate-public image thing that was surely costing Woods millions. To those deeply steeped in the Woods hole, this may have been news awhile ago -- but really, who gives a shit? Which is why this particular detail must have wafted past.

(An absolutely fabulous Blitzer moment on CNN the other night, wherein golf-ball head informed his viewers of a CNN viewer poll conducted of and presented to CNN audiences. The question was "will Tiger Woods win the Masters?" 61% -- Don't Care. Though it probably did not come as much of a surprise to CNN viewers that they mostly didn't care about Tiger Woods and the Masters, CNN was there to officially poll them and then tell them this. I expect the result was more of a shock to the nimrods at CNN than to anyone, which is why they felt it newsworthy. Nonetheless, and with a full-on Tongues of Kings deploy, CNN then proceeded to their next story: Will Tiger Woods win the Masters? The message apparently being along the lines of: by god, submit! by the time we get through with you, you will not only care about Tiger Woods and the Masters, you will openly weep if he does not win!!!)*

My what a wonderful wending of worlds, isn't it? Top professional athlete mired in publicity muck up to his neck; who to turn to? Why, of course! The guy who helped sell a phony war to the US public! The very same guy who had the balls to solemnly intone that Americans should "watch what they say," as though then criticism of George Bush were equivalent in kind to blabbering about convoy routes in the North Atlantic during WWII. And you know what? He looked like he meant it! Hell, if Ari couldn't suck Tiger out of his self-made muck pond, who could?

Also interesting is the co-mingling of elites from what one who is not an elite might usually imagine to be fairly well detached domain spaces. Ari Fleischer and Tiger Woods. Christ, how the hell does that happen?

Lots of Money. And a whiff of desperation.

* This has been (a parenthetical indulgence)²