Devil With Blue Dress Claims Tiger As Latest Victim

Michael Jordan was the most famous athlete in the universe. He was also the first family man with kept women. Sure, we didn't know about them when Jordan was in his prime. As soon as his star began to wane and his wife filed for divorce all of a sudden Jordan's mistresses, effectively kept women who he set up in NBA cities across the country, began to emerge. Maybe that's why it wasn't such a surprise that Tiger Woods, a man who has eclipsed Jordan to become the most famous athlete in the world, has had the family man rug pulled out from underneath his feet as well. What's more interesting than Woods' peccadilloes, titillating as those details may be, is what his descent tells us about the change in modern media in the 11 years since Jordan's career peaked as he drained a jumper over a flailing Bryon Russell.

In that time, we've moved from a society where sexual dalliances rely on a tenuous he said/she said dance to something more interesting, a "we said" society. No longer can athletes merely deny all accusations and move forward with their lives. And modern reporting has something that never existed before, a firm technological imprint of whether we're telling the truth. In 1998, Bill Clinton was felled because Monica Lewinsky kept a blue dress with a stain on it. In 2009, every single one of us has a technological stain that we can't escape.

Think about this for a minute. In 1998, Bill Clinton could have denied the relationship with Monica Lewinsky until the cows came home, and we might have believed him if Lewinsky hadn't kept a blue dress with his DNA on it. If the same situation happened in 2009, there would be a technological footprint the size of a small Pacific island. And that footprint is there for the ravenous media to consume. Text messages, email, video files, Facebook, Twitter, we've created a portable technological universe that reflects our every move and offers tangible evidence of whether or not we're being truthful.

What's more, that technological universe doesn't just reflect our every move, it also provides a copy to every recipient of that footprint. It isn't enough to scroll through your own phone or email frantically hitting delete, that bird has already flown the nest, it's copied out there somewhere in the wireless ether, a perfect record of what he said or she said.

That's why we've moved to a "we said" society. If you're in any sort of relationship with anyone, there's a technological record of it somewhere. Lawyers know, reporters know, and eventually the entire public knows. Not just if you're a sports superstar. That's true for all of us. Tiger's personal situation, therefore, isn't just a story of one star's flying too close to the sun, it's a story of one society's present ability to recreate the past in a more efficient manner than any before. In a more efficient manner than many of us would have ever believed. Today, it's easier to contact someone than it ever has been before in the history of the world, but once you contact them it's impossible to erase that contact forever.
Tiger's imbroglio and the resulting media craziness has created a modern day Rorschach test for the intersection of sports, media, celebrity and sex. And I think with our modern day "we said" society, we're going to be a seeing a ton more of these situations in the future.

Having said that, there are several details of this story that I can't stop thinking about. Let's dive in.

1. First, a lesson: if you're married, don't ask women who aren't your wife to send you naked photos via text message.

Text messages, like email, don't die. They can live forever. More importantly, so can your request for naked photos.

That's really hard to explain away to your wife or husband. It's also, often, admissible in courts as a hearsay exception.

(Pick up your jaw and stop silently cursing now.)

2. If you need a further sign that the media environment has completely changed, the fact that Tiger's situation unfolded on the early morning hours after Thanksgiving is a really instructive case study.

How often in the past has dirty laundry news been dumped heading into a weekend news cycle surrounding a holiday? More often than you can possibly imagine. The rationale is that people are traveling, not paying attention to most news stories. Holiday weekends is when stories go to die.

I'm sure that's what Team Tiger expected would happen with his car accident and the hospital report. News of the accident trickled out on Friday, and most people who advised Tiger probably said that the storm would die down before the new week's news cycle began. That he didn't need to be aggressive in getting his own story out there.

But those advisers were completely wrong.

Why?

Because the internet now drives the news and the internet doesn't pause for holidays. With mobile devices -- Confession: I have the TMZ app downloaded on my iPhone -- I could follow every breaking detail even while I was hanging out with my family. I didn't need television or the internet or, god forbid, my local newspaper. What's more, the celebrity scandal narrative has so overtaken our national conversation that many families spent their Thanksgiving gossiping about Tiger's situation. Meaning that, paradoxically, the timing of a domestic dispute might have actually worked against Tiger.

Everyone had an opinion because everyone could identify, to a certain degree, with someone in the story.

Prior to Tiger's case, if you had to construct an ideal scenario for marital discord to occur featuring a famous person, the early morning hours just after Thanksgiving would have been one of the top choices.

Now?

All bets are off.

There is no dead time.

3. Can you imagine being Tiger's neighbor and seeing this thing unfold and having to make the 911 call?

I can't stop thinking about this.

The world's richest pro athlete wrecks his car at 2:40 in the morning, he's bleeding and unconscious, and his wife is standing above him holding a golf club.

Seriously, think about this.

Take Tiger out of it, even.

What if this happened to your neighbor?

How shocked would you be?

That explains why the guy who made the 911 call sounds like he's just seen fornicating aliens on his front lawn.

4. What if we reverse the situation and Tiger is standing above a bleeding Elin holding a golf club after she's just wrecked her car?

Tiger's in jail, right?

I think it's pretty fascinating how society has a complete double standard when it comes to domestic disputes (of course, there's no proof that there was a dispute of any kind involved here, and Tiger has denied being physically attacked by his wife). The wife attacks the husband and we think it's funny. The husband attacks the wife and we want him locked up and the key thrown into the Atlantic.

Does that really make sense?

5. How are old white men going to respond to products that Tiger endorses now?

Remember when Kobe Bryant was charged with rape and people went out and bought his jerseys? This is really underdiscussed, but Kobe's criminal charges actually made him more popular with the most desirable market, young men with disposable income.

How are old white men, the top players of golf with the most disposable income to purchase the products he endorses, going to respond to Tiger's scandal?

Will they be as forgiving as younger fans were of Kobe's much more serious transgressions?

On a broader level, will golfers of all ages be as forgiving? Especially considering that golfers as a group are the most conservative sports fans out there?

Basically, how is Tiger's role as pitchman, the role that has made him a billionaire, going to be impacted by these stories?

6. Celebrity scandals are the new M*A*S*H.

Recently, I read an article in the New York Times lamenting that we no longer share stories as a culture. The idea was that the golden age of broadcast television, when families gathered in front of a television to share a story, has passed. I use M*A*S*H as the example because the 1983 season finale of that show is the most-watched show in television history, everyone watched together.

I think that theory is completely wrong. Because our new national narrative is scandal.

We've replaced, "Who shot JR?" with "What did Tiger do?"

People from 8 to 80 are talking about Tiger's mess. It's our national conversation.

7. There's no defamation suit spiraling out of this.

Several people have emailed me wanting to know whether Tiger will file suit against the National Enquirer if he didn't have a relationship with the first woman.

The answer is no.

Why?

Because then Tiger's entire sexual history gets opened up as part of the civil suit discovery. People forget that Bill Clinton got in trouble with Monica Lewinsky not because he had an affair with an intern, but because he lied about it in a deposition related to the Paula Jones case. Clinton lied when he was asked about his relationship to Monica Lewinsky and lying during deposition is perjury.

So even if the National Enquirer story is inaccurate, just about any lawyer would advise Tiger against filing suit in this case given that he appears to have a few skeletons in his closet.

...

In the meantime, before you point and laugh at Tiger, start scrolling through your sent text messages and emails. Chances are, you've got a metaphorical blue dress hanging in someone's closet.

Clay Travis is the author of three books. His latest, "On Rocky Top: A Front Row Seat to The End of an Era" chronicles the 2008 Tennessee football season and is on sale now.