Question: Why has Tiger Woods never shaved his head?
Answer: Because that's where the bar code is hidden.
Tiger Woods is a consumer product. And like Coke and KFC, the recipe was a closely guarded secret. But now, everyone's had a look at the real ingredients, and oh, the horror. A young, famous, borderline billionaire has more concubines than a rajah. As Geraldo would say, shocking!
Fresh bimbos pop up like frogs in that arcade game, faster than the PR machine can possibly bop them back into obscurity. When will it end? Let's hope never. It's certainly lighter fare than Health Care or the Afghanistan surge and the national schadenfreude -- mmm, delicious.
George Carlin had had a belly-full of Tiger and Lance several years ago. Hadn't we tired of him in his Nike V-neck at the wheel of his Buick (as if) dangling his Tag Heuer-clad wrist out the window?
The riddle is this -- and please answer us, Phil Knight, with the sales figures -- who, but a child less than ten years of age would buy a sweater, a watch or an SUV because Tiger Woods -- or any celebrity -- endorsed that product?
Why do marketers continue to heap lucrative deals on jocks? It's not a matter of if they'll come a cropper, but when.
Tiger Woods, like all professional athletes, was handed a natural gift. Did he take that gift and cultivate it? Sure. Credit duly given.
So why does America venerate athletes for doing what comes naturally on the field and excoriate them for partaking of the victor's spoils off the field?
If not for an errant text message and a wife with a temper, we might have been forced to watch him fade into record books like his arthritic predecessors. Instead, we get to watch Tiger like a 4th of July firework finale -- up, up, up into the sky, then boom -- the majestic, cathartic flame-out.
This phenomenon is not new. Babe Ruth spent as much time in cathouses as he did in dugouts. And since then, most famous jocks, regardless of superhuman athletic feat, have proven themselves very human indeed.
Wouldn't it make more sense for corporations to seek endorsements from people who really accomplish something? How about the Jonas Salk Buick? The Linus Pauling Tag Heuer?
Nah.
And what of the huge corporate capital investments now rendered worthless by Tiger's libido? Maybe Tiger could re-invent himself. A leather-clad bad-boy -- New Tiger, Tiger XXX-treme or Tigurrrrr.
Nah. George Carlin was right.
Irene Zutell's new novel, Pieces of Happily Ever After was just published by St. Martin's.
Larry Bleidner is the author of several books including Mack Daddy (Kensington Press)