Monday, December 07, 2009

"What I can't figure out," Tiger Woods asks Vincent, the limo driver, "is why so may good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball. Is it because, you know, people always say that, like, black guys have big dicks?" - Tiger Woods

Woods made this and other remarks in a GQ interview back in 1997. The then up and coming phenom may have known how to play golf, but he didn't know that if you don't want to see something in print, you shouldn't say it in front of a reporter. Tiger was on a roll that day.

"The Little Rascals are at school. The teacher wants them to use various words in sentences. The first word is love. Spanky answers, "I love dogs." The second word is respect. Alfalfa answers, "I respect how much Spanky loves dogs." The third word is dictate. There is a pause in the room. Finally, Buckwheat puts up his hand. "Hey, Darla," says Buckwheat. "How my dick ta'te?"

But wait, there was even more. "He puts the tips of his expensive shoes together, and he rubs them up and down against each other. 'What's this?' he asks the women, who do not know the answer. 'It's a black guy taking off his condom,' Tiger explains."

It is clear from these exchanges that Tiger doesn't see himself as a black man. He made it official when he told Oprah that he was "Cablinasian." OK, fine, up to him, but his self-proclaimed non-black identity gave him even less right to make jokes at the expense of the group he claimed no allegiance to.

Now Tiger is the butt of jokes and fodder for media over kill. The over kill part does bother me, if only because I'm not very interested in his life. But I don't feel sorry for Tiger the man. He is a self-hating asshole and assholes eventually do themselves in.

I doubt that the public relations problems will last. The sponsors will stick with him and he will be wealthy for the rest of his life. I should have such problems.