Mediaite gets it just about right in its post on the new Tiger Woods Nike ad, calling it "strange, uncomfortable, sad, painful and creepy." I can think of a couple of words to add: "Reprehensible" would be one. "Execrable" would be another. Why on earth would Woods involve his father in the latest step of his carefully stage-managed public mea culpa -- his dead father, not to put too fine a point on it? It may be that Earl Woods would have chosen to lend his voice to the campaign had he been, you know, alive enough to be asked. But to borrow his voice post-mortem is to unilaterally appropriate his endorsement in what seems sure to be a long, meticulous, and desperately cynical campaign of rehabilitation.
My father died ten years ago this month. He was a private man, and like a lot of fathers to a lot of sons, he was in many respects a mystery to me. But he taught me a few things, and one of them was to take responsibility for my own actions. I couldn't care less about what Woods did to get himself in trouble with his wife. But it's absolutely awful that he's trying to dig himself out of it -- and save a rich endorsement deal -- by stealing words from the lifeless mouth of his own father.
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Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks: Tiger's Big Question: Did You Learn Anything?
In his recent Nike commercial, a stone-faced Tiger Woods stares into the camera as he listens to the voice of his late father, Earl. The commercial closes with the question, "Did you learn anything?"
What a classless act!
Sad.