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I don’t want to listen to Tiger Woods’ phone messages.
The media in 2009 is an outrage.
Did Henry VIII have to deal with this kind of invasion? Caesar? Elvis?
In my view, Tiger Woods has behaved impeccably, and utterly without reproach, in the relevant category: Superstars Married To Someone Hot But Not Famous.
I don’t see how can we hold Tiger Woods to a different standard to other rock stars.
Adulation is part of the job description. It’s like marrying Superman and expecting him to walk everywhere.
Mrs Woods — a nanny (ie illegal immigrant guest worker), not even a member of the Spice Girls — knew, pre-marriage, that Tiger was worshipped globally. To this life-lottery Powerball-windfall of a union, she brought zero fame, and only three sexual-fantasy points, she being a (1) Swedish (2) Nanny (3) Model.
Yet, are we to believe that for this meagre investment — which would only diminish over time, especially with Florida sun damage — she expected 100% of the worldwide rights to Tiger’s entire body, even in countries she wasn’t in at the time? She expected rights in Melbourne? New York? Las Vegas?!? Surely, the most she could expect were the Swedish rights to Tiger, in perpetuity, and events where they were both on the premises and arrived on the same flight.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if these were the exact words of their wedding vows.) Who did she think she was, Jennifer Aniston? Sarah Jessica Parker?
Good grief, we’re talking about Tiger Woods here.
Tiger is in his own category, like Elvis.
Would we be surprised, or judgmental, that Elvis cheated on Priscilla? No. People had class in those days, even the media. People knew to turn a blind eye. Even Priscilla looked away. She didn’t act all trashy, chasing his car out of Graceland, smashing the windows with blue suede shoes. Mrs Woods, on the other hand, used the golf champion’s signature club to attack the sponsor’s luxury vehicle, after scratching his face, no doubt with sponsored nail polish (he’s worth it.) Has there ever been domestic violence with this much product placement?
Life for Tiger is completely unfair.
You can be the best-looking billionaire on the planet, a global monarch. Here’s all the women who want to have sex with you right now, this instant, as soon as they wrap from their underwear shoot, but don’t touch them. What sort of deal with the devil is this? Let’s be honest, the puritanical media reaction is pure envy. We would love a deal with the devil, but we can’t even get an appointment.
It’s so easy to say, don’t cheat on your wife. Of course Tiger knew he was married. But have you never forgotten something you knew? Everyone knows not to lift their head on contact with the ball, but they all seem to forget when there’s a club in their hand. So it is with groupies when you’re famous and married.
Jesper Parnevik, shame on you. How dare you say you regret introducing Elin to Tiger? The only reason we care what you think is because you knew Tiger. (I suspect he’s deleted your number now.) And thanks to that introduction, eight years ago — several lifetimes in celebrity years — Mrs Woods is set for life. And since when did the Swedish people get so morally uptight? Not to mention turbulent, and fingernail-attacky, like Latin Americans at an election? Good grief, the French president met his previous wife when he was celebrant at her wedding. Let’s get with the times.
And credit where credit is due. What about all the women Tiger hasn’t had sex with? Do we have any idea what it’s like to be Tiger Woods? Imagine being in a room where 100 people all try to hit you at the same time, with 100 tennis balls. A few would hit, right? Well, if you’re Tiger Woods, it’s not tennis balls being thrown your way: it’s women.
Beautiful, sexually aggressive, competitive women. Sure, he’s had a few affairs. But as a percentage of all the beautiful women who have offered to sleep with him, I’d guess his uptake is somewhere between celibate, homosexual or dead.
I bet the Dalai Lama doesn’t have as clean a record as Tiger. Anyone who wears bed sheets constantly, is obviously sending out the glad eye. Maybe we should call him the Glad Eye Lama.
Let’s look further at what else Tiger didn’t do.
Faced at 2.30am with anger and violence, and indeed shame — his mother was right there — he didn’t contribute violence. A lover, not a fighter, he drove away. Indeed, in a hybrid, for the planet.
As Michael Jackson implored us to do, Tiger beat it.
Like Gandhi, he chose the path of non-violence.
If only, like Mandela, he’d chosen a long walk to freedom instead.

So the new version of Fame is out. Matter of time, I suppose. (There are probably 1980s weather forecasts in Hollywood development.)
“Fame costs and right here is where you start paying.”
Error 1: Fame is somehow linked to training in the performing arts.
Obviously this doesn’t apply today. The way to be a household name is simply to be the last one evicted from the house.
But did the Fame theory ever work? One of the original characters was a brooding songwriter. (How many songwriters ever need to evade paparazzi?)
A cellist. (Cello isn’t even an instrument, it’s child abuse. And not even the glamorous child abuse that gets you on Oprah.)
And, a dancer. (Check the chorus of tap-dancers in a Broadway musical. How many of them test positive for fame?) Dancers are the least famous people in the world. Any time it’s better when there’s more of you on stage, it’s not fame. You might as well make patterns in an Opening Ceremony. For that matter, sit in the stands at an Opening Ceremony. Same thing. The big picture is the star, and you are a pixel. Pixels don’t get their own dressing room.
Does fame cost? Well, the price of fame is privacy. And for the non-famous — those suffering a chronic oversupply of privacy — having some removed, is the whole point. Fame doesn’t cost. It just keeps giving and giving. Until it expires. Right there is where you start paying. The price of fame is the comedown. Pay later. It’s like a credit card.
Which brings us to…
“I’m gonna live forever.”
Elvis (42), MJ (50), Bruce Lee (32). Yes, their names are remembered. Is this the same as living forever? On this question, the coroner is still out. If he were alive today, Elvis would be 74. In other words, alive, but not freakishly so. Only as ‘immortal’ as a healthy human. So, fame keeps you alive, up to the normal lifespan. Forever? We’ll know more about fame’s magic healing powers, if Elvis is still famous when he’s 150.
So how to update the Fame school curriculum?
Well, look at what’s on TV. These days, the Fame classes would have to include performance cooking, grumpy restaurant management, house renovation, landscape gardening, hiring, firing, spouse selection, wilderness survival, envy, quippy vitriol, and veterinary science. And of course, how to marry a professional athlete.

Maximum length 140 characters? How much can you say? What are they doing — serialising a novel, one sentence at a time?
I guess Twitter is the pulse. But of what, I’m not yet sure. Maybe it’s the collective unconscious. Instead of divining the collective unconscious, now you can subscribe to its feed. Phew. Bullet points. No more sniffing the clouds, reading the symbols, weighing the zeitgeist. In the mental traffic of Ashton Kutcher’s brain, now you get the make, model and licence plate of every car.
But what will I tweet? How many followers will I amass? How many does everyone else have? What’s average? Is that one Tweet, or five? (I need someone to author a guide on Twitter structure, a how-to, so my 140 type-strikes don’t sag before the big finish.)
Why is everyone doing it??? It’s madness. It’s an open mike in an asylum. Everyone makes utterances, utterly, but it’s not communication. It’s noise. It’s all greeting card and no occasion. It’s the answer without the question.
I’ve got enough to do. I’m under enough pressure on Facebook. My status doesn’t fluctuate that frequently, and I’m sure this lowers everyone’s opinion of me.
Do I want this? Do I need this? I suppose I do if everyone else does. Otherwise I’m the guy in the conversation who doesn’t know anything about the weather.
Forget micro-blog, I remember the first time I saw a blog-blog. It was ages ago. My brow literally furrowed. I had to smooth it back down. What? This girl — has published her diary — on the internet! Boys. Being treated badly. Suicidal thoughts. What the hell is she thinking? What if people see this?
It simply did not compute that this was her aim.
Once upon a time, the future was about going to other planets. Now it’s a fantastic voyage, inwardly and tinier, into the cellular minutiae of your neurosis. No meme too small.
What next? Nano-blogging? 95 characters? 29 characters? Bonsai haiku? Eventually people will just publish little fragments of each letter of the alphabet.

So the Germans have produced an Aids awareness ad in which Hitler has sex with a hot woman. Well, Hitler’s the surprise reveal at the end. It’s not like the ad opens on Hitler, in bed, ranting, giving a speech, while a sepia map of a nude woman uses cartoon arrows to indicate Hitler’s artillery, tactics, and sites of invasion.
It’s more like this: a smoking hot woman is having glamorous, smoking hot sex all over every part of an expensive hotel room, with some guy — oh, it’s Hitler. The end.
When they reveal Hitler’s ravenous coital face, the tagline reads: Aids is a mass murderer.
(For the observant, there are subtle clues enroute that the man was Hitler. The sex begins, after all, in the shower.)
For most of the ad, though, not seeing the man’s face (and not wondering either) all we do is savour the woman’s lust. The viewer thinks: whoa, that chick is hot.
And then - the buzzkill downer. It’s Hitler. (But I was enjoying that!)
My first reaction to Hitler was the same as any time I’m watching porn and we dwell on the man. Move the camera. Away. Go back. To the woman.
My second thought was this. Way to go, Hitler! Hitler’s scored a hottie! Hitler has a way with the ladies! As the saying goes in German, Power pullen Pornopussy! Not only that, Hitler has clearly been hitting the gym. Ripped? He looks like he’s just completed the Iron Cross in the Berlin Olympics. He’s built like the pool boy, not the millionaire. This is not some jaded, decadent Caesar’s lazy five-minute assisted wank with a slave girl. He’s really putting some effort, imagination and cardio into the whole session.
As reflected by her enjoyment. She’s having a great time. She is definitely not lying back and thinking of Austria. Samantha from Sex and the City would give this session two fists up.
But alas: It’s Hitler.
We the audience only notice this at the end, but surely, she knew this from the outset. Some would imagine this was part of the attraction.
So what’s the real moral?
Hitler has Aids, so when you time-travel-shag him, use eine Kondom. Be a safe Nazi.

It bothers me that Malawi won’t let Madonna adopt that little baby girl Mercy. Maybe if it was all anonymous, it might be OK. Maybe if there’d been a group of orphans (finalists if you like) it might have been less hurtful. It would be less cruel if no single orphan knew they were the actual baby who had won the lottery to become Madonna’s Next Top Child.
But Mercy will one day grow up and learn that when she was a baby, she had this opportunity. As fateful as the circumstances she was born into, she was offered a quantumly different opportunity. And the life people dream of, to the power of ten, could have been hers. But her government said no. Envy?
In years to come, as a young adult in Malawi, Mercy will look around her humble surroundings, and wonder what the hell her underperforming handout-requiring state was trying to prove. What chip on their shoulder possessed them to stop one of their own being scooped into the golden lifeboat? Couldn’t they have thought of it as a nice thing for the baby? Surely just the music and dance lessons would make it worthwhile. Not to mention the chance to get past infant mortality.
Malawi owe Mercy a life-long debt, big-time. I don’t know what could pay it back. No income tax ever? President for life? Maybe the kindest thing to do is to change her name, and gently brainwash her so she never finds out — what could have been. Sigh.