cyberbarf

TIGER BY THE TALE ESSAY

Tiger Woods is a world icon. His image is plastered on billboards, advertising, magazine covers and commercials. He makes approximately $100 million per year in endorsement deals. Not bad for a young man who plays golf for a living.

But the world of superstar athlete came to a standstill on the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2009. There was a scrawl under Chemed afternoon ESPN telecast that Tiger Woods was seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident. This report sent the wheels in motion for the main stream press to find out what happened, what was his condition, and what would be the prognosis for recovery.

The speed of the internet, news webs and social linking made the story explode beyond the casual golf fan. The trickle of information created a holiday mystery story in which rampant speculation was fueled with each bizarre new nugget of information.

Tiger kept his privacy extremely private for a public figure. He sued publishers for any attempt to slander his personal family. He named his luxury yacht PRIVACY. He bought houses in gated communities to keep gawkers at bay. He rarely gave interviews. His life was scripted by a public relations machine: young phenom, champion, beautiful wife, beautiful children - - - the ideal American dream: opportunity, hard work, success and wealth to fame. It was a picture perfect postcard life. Not a taint of scandal. The things that corporations paid millions to associate with it --- their products and services tied to the squeaky clean image of Tiger Woods, the athlete of the decade.

After the first report, things got strange. It took eleven hours after the accident that the first word of the news hit the press wires. Why such a long time delay? Then it was learned that the accident happened at 2 a.m. What was Tiger doing out at 2 a.m.? Then later, sketchy details of the incident leaked out: Tiger was backing out of his driveway, ran over a fire hydrant and then hit a tree. What? And how was he seriously hurt that he had to be rushed to the emergency room? The hospital and the police were mum to any specifics during the first day of the story. Tiger's camp took the stand that it would stone wall the world. No one has seen Tiger since the accident in public.

The world does not have an official Tiger Hunting Season, but it was game on. The tabloid press, including the National Enquirer, was going to press with the allegation that Woods had had an affair while he was golfing in Australia. The public thought: really? Tiger? Then the game of connecting the dots began bouncing around the Internet and television screens. The Internet and tabloid journalism made this simple accident story take off as the number one, front page news story for weeks.

Tiger's response was interesting. He only communicated to the world through his web site, a place where he could totally control the words and images. He angrily denied the allegations in the tabloid press, and stated that his wife was courageous during the accident. Reports had surfaced that Tiger's wife, Elin, had smashed out a car window in order to get her husband out of the vehicle after crashing into the tree. But some reporters questioned the need to smash a window if the air bags never deployed (a small speed impact). And how would Tiger's wife know to smash out a window immediately after a car accident? The timing of the events led to more questions than answers, which was fueled more when Woods' family refused to speak to investigating officers. The same officers got shot down on their efforts to obtain a search warrant to obtain medical evidence. This fueled speculation of a celebrity cover-up. Then the first pictures of Tiger's SUV surfaced with BOTH back windows smashed out. Why both windows, if the idea was to smash one to unlock the doors? It fueled the speculation that the couple was in the midst of violent argument for which Tiger was fleeing the scene.

The first mistress denied the allegation of an affair, but the tabloids kept after the story. Then there was a second claimed mistress . . . one who said she had a long term affair with Tiger, with sex text messages and a voice mail. It was the voice of Tiger asking her to delete her name on her telephone because Elin had found his phone. This story put more puzzle pieces on the speculative picture that there was more to the story than a simple traffic accident at the end of Woods' driveway. The idea that a wife finds a message on her husband's cell phone from another woman could create the bonfire of accusations, hurt feelings, and the tossing of objects at the caught husband. This bombshell led to another timid response by Woods on his web site, admitting vaguely about transgressions and further demanded privacy for his family. No one knew what the transgressions were, but once there was a bloody Tiger in the big ocean of Internet news sites, there was a feeding frenzy of attention.

The bombshells began falling on a daily basis. It went from two, three, five, seven nine transgressions. Photo galleries in the US and the UK began mistress line ups. And the number of women continued to grow to the stunned amazement of the public: ten, eleven, twelve. More women hired lawyers, did morning television shows, to get their fifteen minutes of fame. It got so bad that Tiger, again only on his web site, finally admitted his infidelity.

The scorecard now stands at 12 to 16 women, known and/or identified not by name. The vast number of women made Tiger's sponsors to pause and rethink their position associating with a serial womanizer. Most women, especially wives who control household pocket books, were angry by each turn of the events. The anger grew with the gritty details of a cheater, the alleged pay-offs to the women, the alleged porn stars, the promises to his mistresses about his marriage being a sham, just for show. Tiger's approval rating fell from 83 percent favorable (a high Q factor) to 33 percent in less than three weeks. The free fall from grace has cost Woods several sponsors.

But Woods remains in hiding: he stated that he would walk away from professional golf for an indeterminate time period. Supposedly, to work on salvaging his marriage. But the seedy allegations continued in the main stream press through the tabloid sites: the VIP clubs, the alleged payments to a madam and her girls, a possible FBI and tax investigation of those allegations, and then a Canadian doctor's arrest for illicit drugs or human growth hormones and controversial blood therapies. Sportswriters began to cringe with the prospect that the game's greatest golfer was a cheater in his private life; could he also be a cheater on the golf course? The PGA Tour does have a drug policy and tests its players. But it has no test for HGH. As one sports commentator said, the BALCO steroid story did not start as a sports story, it just unraveled into taking down sports athletes in track, field and baseball. Tiger's press people have not been seen, only to quip that there is no story with the Canadian doctor, who did treat Tiger three or four times at his Florida home. But that led more speculation: why would Tiger, who can afford the best care anywhere in the world, would call upon a nutty HGH using Canadian doctor at the advice of his agents who thought he was not healing fast enough from knee surgery. This has led to the new past time: google searching for images of Tiger and how his body mass and shape has changed over time. Sports fan did this routine during the height of the baseball drug scandal when a thin spray singles outfielder comes into camp buff, no necked and hitting 50 home runs.

No official word from Tiger on the latest reports. It is impossible to stone wall the media in an electronic, no gate keeper, tabloid sensationalism cycle of stories. A small traffic citation has grown into an international soap opera. And as the story pans out from infidelity to circumstantial evidence to support suspicions about other unethical or illegal conduct, including cheating on the golf course (tainting his records and his legacy), more endorsement sponsors have backed off the Tiger bandwagon.

The story will not go away because the seedy details have captured the average viewer like a scandalous mystery and down fall of a rich and famous person normally does: Tiger is the number one search story of 2009. Tiger thought he could control the damage by controlling the media like he had since the beginning of his professional career: being distant, standoffish, short media interviews, polished package image, total control. It may have worked with the non-combative golf beat reporters. But in the aggressive, headline grabbing, scandal screaming tabloid press blueprint, the subject of any story has no control because the collateral sources are all but willing to get paid for their stories. When a rumor can create tens of thousands of instant hits, a juicy story about a celebrity will create millions of hits. The tabloid press has Tiger by the tale.

cyberbarf

THE WHETHER REPORT

cyberbarf

STATUS

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

cyberbarf

iTOONS

cyberbarf

LIT FOR TWIT BARFERATURE

As we have mentioned before, the whole 140 character messaging limitation of Twitter has fostered the ill of people unable or unwilling to make comprehensive sentences for their text messages. Other critics have thought the issue of the character restriction has spawned a generation of grammerless acron-text smiths who have lost the art of word imagery. But it also made some scholars think they could tame the Twitter message beast by concentrating a story into 140 characters or less. Well, that is a challenge which we decided to take to this page. Instead of merely stringing words together, we decided to blend graphics to the twitterature structure to create the mosaic form of new expression we call BARFERATURE.

Our Second BARFERATURE story board is called: WOMAN IN THE BUSHES.

SHE IS LAYING IN WAIT.

MORE NERVOUS THAN HER FIRST DATE.

THAT WAS MANY YEARS AGO.

SHE WAITS TO POUNCE ON HER CHEATING HUSBAND.

cyberbarf

EXCHANGE FOR NOTHINGNE$$ COMMENTARY

A computer program, a concept, the Internet and gambling: this is the growing abuse of a complex information system. The financial meltdown of 2008 was caused in most part of financial center computer programs creating unregulated, high risk bets called derivatives. Pages of disconnected facts, formulas, rates are put together under the concept of a financial instrument, a security, that could be bought, sold or hedged by bankers and insurance companies. At the meltdown, the crashing derivative market was pegged at $60 trillion, more than the U.S. Treasury and more than four times the entire United States Domestic Gross Product. How did this happen? It was all made up - - - like playing with monopoly money. What caused the down fall was the insurance guarantees that made the massive digital casino seem to be solid as a rock. It was not. The system seized up when the bankers were afraid that they would not be paid, and the insurers had no money to pay their guarantees, and the market makers of the derivatives had no money to make good on their betting slips.

Instead of letting these players go bankrupt and/or go to jail, the world banks bailed out the financial idiots under the theory that the players were too big to fail. Instead of shutting down this out-of-control boiler room of gambling inequities, the derivatives markets have now grown to allegedly more than $450 trillion!

The madness never stops. High financial computer wizards only need someone to pay a premium to trade something, anything. The latest odd concept that is trying to be legalized is betting on Hollywood movie box office receipts. Why anyone but a studio executive would care about how well a movie like Avatar or Sherlock Holmes does over the holiday weekend does not matter to the market makers. The investment community wants to sucker in the general public, and their nest egg savings, into pure gambling bets on how much an opening box office will be six months before the movie's release. What is the pay-off? One would make better use of their disposal income actually going to the movies for escapism than trying to bet against ticket receipts.

But there are suckers, legions of suckers, born every day. The Super Bowl sports books have created nonsense bets for the big game (called Proposition Bets) so baffling: like which team would win the coin toss. Gamblers are addicts who bet just to get the thrill of betting on future events. No harm no foul.

But if the entire American financial system is being built upon computerized trading of financial prop bets, disconnected gambles which have no business value except to those making the trading market, then the financial system is doomed for failure as the human gambling addiction will go hellfire and implode the other traditional banking systems in the process. People can't remember 2008 by not questioning the traders lust to create new derivatives, new markets, new exchanges, new paper pushing between funds. Toxic securities like the secondary mortgage market was merely a game of hot potato, in which the American taxpayer, who was not playing the game in the beginning, got caught and burned by the financial community and their elected officials (who are beholden to the special interests, especially their number one campaign contributors.) This is why Congress is pushing hard for a national insurance “exchange,” not that it has anything to do with health care cost savings, but as a new legalized Enron-style trading platform to suck more money from the general public.

Hedge fund managers will counter to say that the use of complex financial instruments can balance out the risk in portfolios. However, if a firm is willing to risk its own capital, and only its own capital, then let them manage their risks on their own. But today, fund managers and market makers are not risking their own capital, but the US Treasury and tax payer dollars as the Federal Reserve and Congress have taken the position of nationalizing the economy and monetary distribution of dollars through taxing and spending beyond the means of the country. America is leading the world in creating crisis in finances out of thin air. America is also leading the world in creating vapor financial markets out of nothingness for no apparent economic reason.