I’m creeped out. As a rule, I don’t get creeped out — I mean, you can’t afford to, if you write mostly about politics for a living — but this was different.
It began innocently enough when I was watching an NBA game on ESPN Wednesday night. The game went to commercial break, and like any red-blooded American, I immediately went into multi-task mode.
I put the TV on mute. I checked the computer, where I saw that the would-be DIA shoe bomber had apparently turned into a diplomatically immunized nicotine-fiend Qatari jokester. And just when I was about to rise from the chair, I saw the face on the tube. All I can say is, I’m just glad I hadn’t invested in 3-D.
Yes, it was that inescapable face, the face that has launched a million creepy stories, the face staring into the camera — and at me — from beneath the omnipresent Nike- swooshed baseball cap.
What made me look twice was that the picture was in black-and-white, and I didn’t think Tiger Woods was doing art movies.
Woods was staring into what seemed to be a hand-held camera, occasionally blinking, not saying anything at all, looking sort of chastened or maybe concerned or, I don’t know, just creepy in a cinema-not- at-all-verite way.
To be honest, I didn’t get the creepy part until I hit the sound button and heard the voice of Earl Woods, father to Tiger Woods. This was especially surprising, because Earl died in 2006.
And yet, it sounded like Earl Woods speaking from the crypt, lecturing his son in words that were taken from, we’re told, “Tiger — The Authorized DVD Collection” — and then used completely out of context.
The idea was to simulate what might be a real-life father-to-son talk — the kind many of us have had — on the dangers of dating porn stars while married.
You have to see the Nike ad for yourself to believe it — or, actually, to not believe it.
Here’s the script: “Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are and did you learn anything.”
I’m not sure what Woods has learned. I know what my feelings are, though. And what we could learn, if we didn’t know it already, is that there is no end to Woods’ shamelessness — although you have to give Nike huge points for helping to make the point so vividly.
The commercial is not just creepy. It’s cynical, manipulative and creepy in its black-and-white stab at faux authenticity, the kind in which the ad boys excel. When you watch the ad, you say to yourself: OK, I know what these guys were thinking, but what in the world were they thinking?
I’m trying to picture the shocked, and possibly sickened, focus group that saw the ad first. What’s the over and under on how many jaws actually hit the ground?
But this is Nike, sticking with its guy, unworried by the inevitable just-do-it jokes, trying to rebrand its biggest name, who has shown that, if nothing else, he can stare for 30 seconds at a time. This is clearly the start of a campaign, and we’ll assume it won’t be all voices from the grave.
But someone figured out that Woods’ storied relationship with his father takes the audience, and Tiger himself, back to the days when Tiger was phenomenal only on a golf course. Tiger was apparently fine with the ad. And Earl, let’s just say, no longer gets a vote.
It was Earl who had basically invented Tiger. It was Earl who put the golf club in his hand when Tiger was knee-high to a 9-iron. It was Earl who once said to Sports Illustrated that his son would “do more than any other man in history to change the course of humankind.” Asked if he included Gandhi, he said yes. And Buddha? Yes again.
OK, it was Earl who may have been part of the problem. I’m sure the therapists at the sex clinic — if that’s where Tiger goes — have heard all about it. The strange thing, or maybe not so strange, is that Earl apparently had dalliance issues of his own. You can read about them, once you get past the Playboy-style layout of Tiger’s sexting buddies, in Vanity Fair.
We can only wonder what Earl would have thought if he’d seen the plane flying over Augusta National Thursday. It carried a banner playing on Tiger’s words that, in his time of crisis, he had turned to his religion, Buddhism. The banner said: “Tiger: Did you mean bootyism?”
I don’t care who Tiger sleeps with. And his young fans, I’m guessing, will survive this crisis in role modelism. There are bigger worries.
The crowd cheered as Tiger shot a remarkable 68 Thursday. If a Tiger drive bounced off a tree and back into the fairway, well, there’s a TV ad lurking there somewhere. And as the cheers grow ever louder, all the former sponsors will be listening. And it won’t be just Nike out there alone. I hate to say it, but Earl may yet be getting plenty of work.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
