It’s official now. Tiger Woods is in pursuit of a second legacy.
The image-battered golfer might just catch Jack Nicklaus’ record for major championships and Michael Jackson’s descent into pop-culture weirdness.
As of this writing, I’ve had 30-plus hours to digest and multiple opportunities to rewatch Woods’ waterboarding-inspired, sexual-infidelity apology that was transmitted across the globe.
Objective eyes and ears were shocked at what they saw and heard.
The cuddly tyke introduced to America at age 2 on “The Mike Douglas Show” and marketed to the world by his father, Earl Woods, and Nike as the boy-next-door who might save the planet has somewhat predictably evolved into a no-people-skills freak.
I cannot stress to you how much it pains me to write this. You would be hard-pressed to find a more passionate fan of Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods than yours truly.
But it’s impossible to deny that fame, fortune, corporate manipulators and fathers hell bent on producing once-in-a-lifetime entertainers stripped Jackson and Woods of anything approaching normalcy when it comes to human interaction.
Perhaps pale from being away from the golf course and stuck in hibernation born of embarrassment, Woods’ complexion on Friday even resembled Jackson’s late-life hue.
At the height of their popularity and earning power, the King of Pop and the King of Swing were both shot down by stories of sexual impropriety. The child-molestation allegations leveled against Jackson were obviously far more heinous than the noncriminal extramarital affairs currently dogging Woods, but the image damage seems just the same.
Before their controversies, Jackson and Woods had positioned themselves as racially transcendent superstars. Crotch-grabbing and brief, on-course tantrums were as controversial as Jackson and Woods got.
Now they’re polarizing.
The dubious and money-driven attacks on Jackson reshaped our view of the rock star and seemingly drove him deeper into seclusion, plastic surgery and odd behavior. We don’t know which direction Woods will head in the aftermath of his public comeuppance.
On Friday, he strangely disappeared alone behind a blue curtain and was reportedly on his way back to the prisoner-of-sexual-repression camp where he’d already survived 45 days of shock treatment.
Maybe Tiger’s handlers know better than all the critics who demand that Woods sit down with Oprah, Barbara Walters or some other high-profile interviewer. Maybe the less the public knows about a man groomed on a golf course the better.
You don’t shoot a front-nine 48 at age 3 and break 80 over 18 holes at age 8 because your parents made you spend your free time socializing with relatives, hanging with the boys and girls from your ’hood or playing team sports.
Just like Jackson, it appears Woods burned a good deal of his childhood developing a professional skill rather than social ones.
Another similarity between Woods and Jackson is that they were both raised outside the American religious mainstream. That is not written to express the superiority of Christianity. It’s written to suggest that their religious upbringing — Jackson, a Jehovah’s Witness, and Woods, a Buddhist — contributes to their public awkwardness.
“Awkward” is about as flattering as you can get in describing Woods’ delivery of Friday’s speech. It was emotionless and impersonal. A man we’ve grown used to seeing express a wide range of nationally-televised emotion on a golf course — anger, jubilation, regret, tear-stained joy — mustered none when trying to publicly make amends for destroying his life, his wife’s, his children’s and a legacy crafted from birth.
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