List: 'The 10 Lessons of Tiger Woods'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. It’d be true to say, I think, that most people on Earth would know of the Tiger Woods scandal that’s gradually unfolded since late 2009. It started on 25 November when supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer exposed a Woods’ extramarital affair. Then 1½ days later it accelerated – or maybe decelerated – when at 2:30 a.m. Woods’ Cadillac, with Tiger at the wheel, collided with a hedge, then a fire hydrant and finally a tree, with his golf club wielding wife quickly on hand at the crash site to add to the damage. And so it went on: over a dozen mistresses, total golf tournament abstinence, sponsorship cancellations, sex addiction therapy and rehabilitation etc etc etc. It’s all too tawdry and sordid to recount. Yet even for me as a person who doesn’t value, respect or covet anything about Woods – including his golf talent and his wealth – even before his scandal became public, it holds a kind of morbid fascination. I don’t know why. Perhaps because I knew his public image of virtuousness was impossible to sustain, and I delight in events proving me correct. Anyway today’s list, from salon.com, is a 10-picture slideshow. It’s titled ‘The 10 Lessons of Tiger Woods’ and subtitled ‘What the golfer’s epic scandal taught us about sexting, porn stars and the power of a nine iron’. My favourite caption of the 10? ‘In a battle between a Cadillac Escalade and a golf club, bet on the golf club.’ Yes indeed. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 597

Maybe it’s a hangover from my Save Albert Park years, but I cringe whenever I hear someone utter the words ‘world class’. Because in my experience people who’re doing or making something genuinely world class – i.e. among if not the best in the world – simply go about their business without crowing or bleating about it. And conversely, those who bang on about doing or making something ‘world class’, are big-noting if not fooling themselves and others, for in the main they’re aspirational nobodies and wannabes but neverwillbes. This, I suspect, is a minority view among my countrymen. I see Australians as generally a parochial lot. Maybe because we’re a second-world country far from all the first-world countries which we aspire to emulate or surpass. And we don’t see third-world countries as fair dinkum competitors let alone national role models. Of course the media have a stake in perpetuating our faux sense of national self-importance on the world stage. That’s par for the course for them. Segueing across to golf, that’s why I found this item by sports journalist Jake Niall (pictured) in last Saturday’s Age, to be so insightful and thus refreshing. The fawning over Tiger Woods in Melbourne recently made me cringe. And clearly it made Niall cringe too. Also I like what he wrote about Olympic medals vis-à-vis Peter Carey and Tim Winton. So I hereby add Jake Niall to my list of favourite journalists.

farmdoc's blog post number 594

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

1. the Iraqi journalist who last December threw his shoes at President Bush, became the target when an exiled Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at him [1]. He deserves it. He’s a heel for disrespecting President Bush’s office.

2. Chelsea Clinton – Bill and Hillary’s daughter – became engaged to her long time boyfriend, 31-year-old investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, who is Jewish [2]. When the young couple have children, will Hill and Bill be Buba and Zayda?

3. television stations were clamouring to sign up Matthew Johns who few months ago was sacked by Channel Nine for being involved in a Cronulla Sharks group-sex scandal in 2002 [3]. This tells us not how talented our Matthew is, but how sick and warped our society is.

4. I read that Nicole Kidman has lent her voice to Australia's bid for the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups, by narrating promotional film spruiking Australia’s credentials to host one of these sporting extravaganzas [4]. That we’ve resorted to a celebrity voice with no sports let alone soccer credentials, means our bid is weak, and all things considered it should rightfully be doomed to failure.

5. the election of Tony Abbott as federal opposition leader means the opposition won’t support the Rudd government’s emission trading scheme legislation [5]. I agree that Rudd’s scheme is pathetic (cuts not deep enough, big polluters rewarded, citizens slugged). But Abbott, representing Big Business, may not propose anything better. Or anything at all.

6. Tiger Woods duffed his approach when driving home [6]. I’ve no sympathy for him. It counts for nought that he’s the best golfer ever and the world’s wealthiest sportsman. Because the measure of the man is that he hasn’t respected his wife and children.

7. the EU has proposed East Jerusalem becomes the capital of a future Palestinian state [7]. This comes at the end of 20 years of joy after the Berlin Wall came down. The EU should mind its own business – which Jerusalem is most definitely not.

8. free water bubblers are being reintroduced in central London [8]. You’re a man ahead of your time, PJ. [9]

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

farmdoc's blog post number 343

Long-suffering Victorian taxpayers are shelling out A$1.5M to Tiger Woods for him to play a local tournament in late 2009. The Brumby government’s spin heralded this triumph as an important addition to the stable of Victoria’s major events which, they said, is needed because Melbourne, unlike Sydney, has no opera house or a harbour. The proclaimed rationale for so-called major events is economic. But the government doesn’t require an individual major event to make an operating profit. Or even that its benefits outweigh its costs, because in the face of the Victorian Auditor-General concluding precisely that for the 2005 Grand Prix, a few months later the government signed a 5-year contract for 2011-2015. Due to the global economic crisis, corporate hospitality expenditure and non-corporate ticket sales are both well down – perhaps even 15% down. The government’s self-imposed annual major events cap of A$55M will undoubtedly be obliterated by the 2009 F1 Grand Prix which will certainly cost Victorian taxpayers a lot more than their $40M in 2008 – over A$10,000 for each second of the race at twilight today. Victoria’s economy is in recession. We can’t afford a Grand Prix economically (or environmentally either). And Leonards Hill CFA brigade still has no four-wheel-drive slip-on truck. Long-suffering indeed.