About Tiger…The Latest Reductionist Twaddle

No, I haven’t forgotten about this guy. By now, up to four alleged jumpoffs have given the media plenty of interviews, happy to announce that they were doing the famous golfer. Some say that nine women have acknowledged their connection to Tiger Woods. One is a former porn star. Whatever.

The newest, Mindy Lawton, insisted in one of Rupert Murdoch’s screeds, The News of the World, that that Tiger was very well endowed…with other physical attributes that have little to do with golfing. Well, okay. Is that all? And no, I’m not supplying the link.

Woods told her to meet him in a shop car park in the Orlando suburb of Windermere near his £2.4million home in a gated community.

She recalled: “I followed him in through the gatehouse and was blown away when we pulled into the driveway. Tiger opened the garage doors and we went inside through the kitchen. The house was just fantastic.

“It was about 3am and very dark. I could not see any photos of Tiger and his wife around, but there was a wall lined with trophies.” Woods cuddled up to Mindy on the sofa and began kissing her.

She said: “He started to strip off my clothes and I took off his. We were sitting on a brown sofa and within seconds we were both naked.

“As a sportsman he is in great shape, but he is also very well endowed. He kept on complimenting me on my figure and kissed me all over.

“That first time he was very dominant and knew what he wanted and what he was doing. By the time we finished I looked like a rag doll, but we both had big smiles on our faces.”

Mindy left around 5am, due to begin her shift at the restaurant two hours later. Later that morning Tiger walked in with his pals. Mindy said: “He really was very happy and we both gave each other knowing looks.”

Tiger Woods is being reduced to a mindless body, and frankly, I don’t think I feel too good for him at this level. He is more than that. Yes, he is what you might call a superb physical specimen. Yes, it is his fault for exposing himself to and consorting with such women, but there is something else at work here. At first, it was his very cerebral game that fascinated people and made them believers and fans, because golf is a game not only about privilege and money, but about mind as well as body control. That’s how they felt okay about him. He wasn’t like some basketball, football, or baseball players who have problems keeping their trousers zipped. He was well-spoken, handsome, conservative, coming from a military family. And he was Buddhist, too, from the Theravada, Hinayana part of the Buddhist Street.

Unfortunately, there was no middle ground created for Tiger to occupy if something went wrong. When it comes to discussing black people in the media or popular culture, it is always in extremes, never in grey shades. These extremes die hard as people tend to be quite comfortable in revisiting stereotypes and other bankrupt tropes to explain people and events. Because, finally, Tiger Woods is black. A black man. All that ducking and weaving for naught, and it caught up with him, as many blacks knew that it would. There is no shade for Cablinasians in this heated situation, as the word becomes the made-up name it always was. Nothing wrong with being proud of your mixed ancestry, and coming from New Orleans, I knew that there were many bi/tri/quad/octo-racial people, but you can talk all that stuff under the table if you come out brown as the tops of some dinner rolls. Tiger, you are black.

Now, in these interviews with the jumpoffs, Tiger emerges as all body, which is fixated on one purpose only, getting as much sex as possible. It’s not even about love or affection. It’s dead center about sex. Your body is beautiful, and my body is beautiful, (and I am still young and rich and famous), so let’s get down and do the deed. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, been there and done that before, and it is pleasureable, but up to a point. That is, even I got tired of that, and wanted more. Tiger didn’t.

And on top of it all, he was the one who spoke vows with another woman to be her husband, forsaking all others, and continued flinging with his other women. Be wild and cra-zay if you wanna when you are single, but not when you’re married and have a family. Don’t use jumpoffs as a way of leaving the marriage, blaming the wife, working off steam, or whatever. Escape the marriage because you may want out, period.

Tiger Woods appears to be a late bloomer with all of this activity. Is he a sex addict? That remains to be diagnosed by a qualified professional. Because this makes me think that the one commenter on my last post about Tiger who said that he had married Elin Nordegren too young–at 28–was right. Tiger Woods has been living and breathing golf since he was two years old, and all the way through his young adulthood and through his quitting Stanford and turning pro. The pressure of simply being Tiger Woods must be terrific. But there are other ways to work things through, other than sexual. Tiger may be a cerebral guy, but he is like many who doesn’t want anyone fooling with the furniture up there. He likes it fine and doesn’t want to readily change.

It also doesn’t excuse his continuing liaisons with these women even after he married Elin, had children, and passed the age of 30, the new goalpost of maturity. And the report that Tiger’s not using condoms during all this makes me wonder for Elin’s sake. When you have sex with someone, as the saying goes, you’re not just having sex with him or her, but with several other people at the same time. Just what was he bringing home to his wife? That ain’t right. That ain’t even right, because for all intents and purposes, Elin was keeping her end of the promise. I don’t blame her at all for going ballistic. It’s no different from say, a brother living next door bringing AIDS or any other sexually-transmitted disease to his woman because of his activities, and later accusing her of stepping out on him when she comes up snake-eyes. You’ve heard of those stories out in the neighborhood or even on shows like Steve Wilkos.

And how many times have we heard about this reductionist thinking about black men, that this is all that they are? Just sex machines? Or that they’re the ultimate Biggus Dickus to lay? I’m wanting, begging to hear something different from brothers on this issue. So far I haven’t. Other than high-fiving each other on blogs and comment sections, or shaking knowing heads, or calling on Woods to find god, I haven’t read very much about black men challenging and revising this pervasive idea and using Tiger’s woes as an opportunity to say something about themselves and each other and tread their own middle way, be they straight or gay. It’s profoundly disappointing. Getting this latest about Tiger’s sexual prowess pulled out of Murdoch’s bag of tricks is more than just disgusting and racist. It’s fcking tired.

I’m thinking, how did Tiger really view Elin? Was he taking a page from his father? Did his widowed mother force him to marry? Was Elin pregnant when the straying occurred, and she could not fathom sex with him? Was he stressed out over his golfing? Was he afraid? Did he sense a faltering of his skills? I don’t have a workable context yet–but I am getting there–with which I can understand why he needed a bevy of jumpoffs to go along with his marriage. I don’t approve of his cheating, but more and more, I don’t like the women either from Uchitel on down. Not because they are white or bleached blonde or professional playas in their own way. I’m way beyond that. There’s always been a class of demimondaines, society women, groupies, party girls, or celebrity hostesses who’ve catered to athletes, rock stars, actors, and other famous individuals.

I don’t like Tiger’s women collaborating in this media-driven backlash against Woods, mainly because (1) he’s beat the best at a game in which he’s been the top draw for years, and these escapades are threatening to diminish his achievements, not just his image and product endorsements; and (2) he’s got a white wife, Elin Nordegren, from Sweden, a Scandinavian country–which makes her more whiter, purer, and Nordic than even the most upper class American (or Mormon) here. These women are wanting to hit at her too, and not just Tiger, as he pays off Uchitel and the other women not to disclose anything else like photos and films. Here, finally, is the weakness in his game and in his marriage and in his perfect life. The relief that Tiger is black after all must be palpable among his opponents on the golf circuit and elsewhere, and especially among those who had even begrudged him his Masters jacket.

Oh, yeah. I know the women are making piles of money and garnering a lot of publicity–some more than others–in response to being used by Woods, and perhaps they should collect during these 15 minutes. However, if someone’s story makes that jump between consent and rape, we may really have a donnybrook in the making. Lawton already suggests in her interview that Woods liked rough sex. Don’t think that they won’t try to find that person. I’m sure they’re scouring for her now.

There’s more I’d like to write about Tiger, but it will have to wait. There is more in the offing. I can’t wait to get my Cricket connection back.