When the first alert hit my computer screen about Tiger Woods being in an accident and in "serious condition," my initial reaction was one of fear and angst. Gees, I thought to myself, I hope he's OK.
It reminded me a lot of Michael Jackson. The Internet is good at getting the news out, (whatever that means) but very much lacks in detail and real information. Nevertheless, I had a 'jacko moment the instant Tiger's affair was public.
As the ensuing "news" of what took place began to disseminate and the story took a very sudden and predictable turn, I had began to settle down and ultimately realize this was the beginning, the making of, we'll, the embodiment of all of us.
We are the essence of, I'll call it "Tigerness." Tigerness is modern-day America. We are officially ingrained in the celebrity culture. It is our comfort zone. It is the machine that, figuratively speaking, defines our communications zone.
Tigerness has all the players fit for our present virtues. Sex. Lots of that. Celebrity. Icon. Adultery, and that's just for starters. Haven't even mentioned "media". "News cycle" comes to mind. Jokes, lots of jokes. "Internet pictures." Have you seen 'em? Of course you have because they began appearing within the day that Tigerness evolved. God, it was the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday couldn't even truncate Tigerness. How American.
How perfectly apt a national phenomena like Tigerness defines our culture. Nothing inherently wrong with that notation; hell, I'm a particle of the remnants of Tigerness. We all are, to some degree. We are the consumers of what they feed us and we lap it up like puppy dogs. We can't help ourselves. We thrive on this type of shit. Its our collective nirvana.
Our President gave a speech on his directive to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, but all everyone was talking or joking about was Tigerness. Imagine what one of those special-tactic marine must have been thinking in one of those caves in Kabul, when word got down that Tigerness was topic A in the states. I'm sure he had an ironic chuckle.
Tigerness superseded the war(s) in the Middle East; Tigerness, for the moment, ran over the top mast of the newspapers detailing the latest unemployment figures. Tigerness took health-care out of the top and drop-kicked it to the back of the page.
Again, by golly, we loved it. We sat down and took in three Larry King programs, four Greta specials. We began listening to tapes and "voice-mail" messages, which you know, only made Tigerness that much better, but what the hell, this is what we live for.
We live for US Weekly and TMZ. We can't help ourselves and they know it. They keep force-feeding it to us and we keep breathing it all in, like when we go to the dentist and ask for extra gas. "Pleeeeeze", if the dentist happens to say no, and then, he relents and gives us our fix.
That is Tigerness. Check your e-mail box today for the latest joke. Ha-ha, "clubbin'!" Get it? Hey Amy, she hit him with a driver! Ha ha! Did you hear the news? Tiger changed his name. He's now a cheetah! Ha ha!
Meanwhile, back in the other news...the celebrity White House gate crashers...President Obama visited a tech center in recession-heavy Ohio...Senator Max Baucus speculated that the "option"-portion of the health-care bill...Niners offense under Alex Smith looked great...some Raiders fans paid for a billboard on 880 extolling Al Davis to hire a 'GM...looks like a week's worth of storms are lined up on the Pacific coast...No more talk of a drought...
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