THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

“The answer is clear: you douchebag, grant the interviews they want, and they’ll leave your family alone.”

Tango, I’m confused as to what you’re saying Woods should do.

Should he grant the media interviews with himself, or with his children?

If it’s the former, then yes, he’s being a coward.  But if it’s the latter, how is it cowardice?  You really think the right thing to do is to force his children to talk with the media?

Also, regardless of which case you meant, I highly doubt the media would ever leave his children alone.  Have official interviews ever stopped the vultures before?

Definitely the former.  The media wants quotes, reactions, etc.  Well, Woods should be the one to give it to them.  If he doesn’t, they’ll look for it from the most defenseless among his entourage, and that includes his kids.

So, he should step up, have the all-out brawl the media wants.  They’ll then move on to the next story.

There’s a double-standard some celebs have with the media. When they have kids, they rush to the cameras and enjoy the awesome coolness of being on the cover of People Magazine. When the going gets tough, and the media want to see said children during those tough goings, they scream that the kids are off limits.

Come to think of it, this mirrors the paparazzi-bashing Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone gave after the death of Princess Diana. If they’re such hounds, why throw them steak?

i agree with tango and saeger - its a double standard and i can’t feel bad for guys like tiger, as much as it sucks for your kids to involve but if he reallyw anted to protect them he would make the tough choices he’s shown he’s not ready to do.

what i dont get about this whole press conference is why he’s apologizing to the public.  i don’t care who tiger sleeps with.  he can continue soliciting prostitutes for the rest of his life, i couldnt care less.  thats his and his family’s problem.

Right, I’m watching this right now.  It’s a joke.  He’s reading his script.  What’s the purpose here?  What’s he supposed to gain?

Just finished watching it.... he went to hug his mother at the end, even though she was looking away at the time he walked toward her.  Terrible, horrible.

It was a decent script, but a horrible delivery.  He got the right people to write it, but the wrong guy to say it.

I wish he would give one interview already.  Why delay the inevitable?

The amount of coverage this is receiving is amazing to me.  I have to believe that whoever his PR firm is really miscalculated somewhere.  They should have been trying to do this damage control in december, hopefully letting the story die down to begin the new year.  But now they seem to string it along.

On the sex scandal spectrum, this seems to fall somewhere in between Wilt Chamberlain and Magic Johnson.  Risky and reckless decisions, luckily that so far has not caused serious risk to the health of his health and his wife (as far as we know).  Much better to be in this neighborhood then the other side of the spectrum that includes criminal allegations like Michael Jackson.

This whole thing has been a train wreck for the Woods’ family (and apparently we all love a train wreck).  I cannot believe the coverage this is getting.  He needs a much better PR firm to deal with this, because the one he’s got has let this spin out of control and the whole point of a PR firm is to control the spin.

As a number of commentators have noted, his statement reads better than it looked or sounded.  Not taking questions, showing little emotion, reading from a script (not exactly his strength), it didn’t go over as well as the words themselves might indicate.

I think Tango is exactly right that Tiger’s running and hiding since Thanksgiving has led the media to take what they can.  Publishing the name of a kid’s school is pretty low, though.