Tiger Woods has no right to be teed off about lack of privacy
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Tiger Woods is having the worst Thanksgiving weekend ever. While the rest of us were in glorious food comas late Thursday night, the golf legend was speeding out of his Florida driveway and into a fire hydrant. Woods wound up with minor injuries –just some “facial lacerations” — but his reputation is suffering serious injury, as rumors swirl about why he was leaving his house at 2 a.m., how his Cadillac Escalade got its windows smashed in, and how he got those cuts on his face.
Fellow True/Slanter Steve Vockrodt sums up the juicy speculation circulating in the blogosphere and media here:
The most common version from armchair investigators is that Woods’ wreck emanated from a domestic dispute with his wife over an alleged mistress, which would cast a different image on his wife’s golf-club attack on his Cadallac Escalade. The official version is she took to the car to smash out windows in order to rescue someone with a few facial lacerations. You can begin to see how these strange explanations, coupled with an aversion to talking to cops, are ripe for rumors.
Tiger Woods does not want to talk about the incident, writing on his blog:
This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.
The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false…. [I] would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be.
- Tiger Woods, via his blog
Some of his fans agree. One commenter, Jamny, writes on Woods’ post: “He is not a politician. He is an athlete who has pretty high standards and morals..his career speaks for itself. HE IS NOT A CELEBRITY SEEKING ATTENTION…NOR is he a public official who controls our laws, finances or well being.”
Another fellow True/Slanter Conor Friedersdorf weighed in on this for the Daily Beast, also arguing that Woods is entitled to his privacy and shouldn’t be considered a public figure off the course. Though Friedersdorf argues this is for the sake of keeping sports pure.
I disagree with both of them, after the jump.
Woods is very much a celebrity. He has graced the covers of many magazines and, more importantly, he has sold his brand to an assortment of advertisers:
Woods has earned more than $100 million annually and, according to Forbes, more than $1 billion during his career thus far, thanks, in part, through endorsement deals with companies such as Nike, Gatorade, Electronic Arts, TAG Heuer and Gillette.
Tiger Woods in an Accenture ad
Another company that has packaged and sold the Tiger Woods brand is the consulting company, Accenture. On its website, Accenture says: “As perhaps the world’s ultimate symbol of high performance, he serves as a metaphor for our commitment to helping companies become high-performance businesses.”
Woods has profited mightily from people’s fascination with him. Having accepted over a billion dollars for the marketing and selling of his personal brand, it’s hard for Woods to now make the argument that his brand is entitled to privacy, or for anyone to argue that he is not a public figure.
At the Daily Beast, Friedersdorf argues that sports appreciation would be improved by less knowledge of athletes’ personal lives:
Every aficionado knows that sports are worth playing and watching as a simulacrum of life. Contriving various games with sets of rules, and leagues of competitors, we’re meant to enjoy the beauty of athletic prowess, to be awed by bodies that can do things ours can’t, to experience the suspense of live competition, the thrills of victory, and the lows of defeat—and to learn from the spectacle, all without the consequences of actual battle.
The effect is ruined when real life intrudes, even if only in the mind of the viewer, just as a movie is diminished when an actor’s real-life personality is as much a presence as the character he is playing, or a play suffers when a stagehand is heard sneezing behind the scenery during a climactic scene.
But every aficionado* also knows that psychology is a huge part of sports. The success and failure of sports teams and athletes are determined not just by how well-trained their bodies are, but also by their mental focus. Next time Woods is on the green, you know this will be on his mind. Knowing this and judging whether it impairs his play or not is all part of the spectacle.
When a highly successful golfer, who makes millions per year helping companies sell us stuff, is in the rough — on the course or off — we’re going to be interested. And we have every right to be.
* I do not consider myself a sports aficionado. Though I was a Cameron Crazy at one point in my life, I do not follow sports rabidly. My father is an aficionado though, and we have had many conversations about the role of the mind in professional sports.
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This is a well-written and logical column. Woods is a celebrity as well as a professional golfer. He should expect questions about everything he says and does–or doesn’t do. If he were a nobody, he could crash his vehicle into hydrants everynight; it would then be interesting only to the police, his neighbors, and a few uber-curious citizens.
No celeberty can have a realistic expectation of privacy, nor can anyone that is just plain old rich, thats just how it is. If he wants privacy, he needs to live his life in a way in which he is only on the sports page, the hunt has only just begun!
He sells himself like a packet of giblets to anyone with a checkbook backing 7 zero’s and then he gets all huffy when people want to know why he’s going cross-lawn in the SUV and lying to the police.
[...] Hill says this about my argument: But every aficionado* also knows that psychology is a huge part of sports. The [...]
Ms. Hill,
It seems to me that celebrities can reasonably expect at least some privacy if they make an effort to not market their private lives. A good example is the actress Ann-Margret who used a stage name and never played the “Come see my new movie because I am a really interesting / beautiful person”. She never trotted out her family to help hype her carrier. She carefully separated her business life / public persona from her personal life / private existence. Too many celebrities fall into the self-marketing trap when it works in their favor but then they cannot back out when it goes bad. It is like the Fifth Amendment, you cannot waive that right only for your benefit. Once it is waived the prosecution can ask questions too.
Is he famous for driving a car? Or being married?
Dude’s an athlete. It’s this *exact* mindset that killed Princess Diana. He’s in the news and advertising because of his golf skills. If he messes up in a golf tournament, or does something newsworthy that way, good.
If your blog writing takes off and you become nationally famous, does that give me the right to sit outside of your house with a camera and take pictures, and question every facet of your existence?
Everyone has a right to privacy. It’s constitutional, and no level of fame changes that.
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