Thursday, December 3, 2009

Why Deny?

In case you've been living on Mars, in a cave, with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears, Tiger Woods is in trouble. Not with the law, just with the swift justice of a golf club swung by his wife. After a week of insistent denials, Woods issued a statement expressing that he regrets his transgressions and blah blah blah. This statement was released right after Us Weekly released a recorded voicemail he "allegedly" (quotation marks because we're only 99.99999% sure it was really him) left on a woman's phone asking her to change her voicemail greeting so it would not include her name. For a week we all suspected the worst and it was finally confirmed by a tabloid magazine. How might Tiger's week have been different if he would have handled the situation more proactively?

We live in an age where everything is recorded, videotaped and time and date stamped. If you are a major celebrity you cannot go to the grocery store without a pimply 19 year-old taking pictures and selling them to TMZ or X17 Online. Why would someone of Tiger's stature believe that he could indefinitely have affairs with an assortment of young women and have it be a secret? When the National Enquirer first made the allegation that Woods had an affair with a well-known New York socialite he should have known that the gig was up. He must have known that he had left voicemail messages and texted the various women he was cavorting with. How would he not know they would come out? Yet he insisted that all of the rumors were false and there was no substance to them. Then he gets into the car accident that didn't add up and people's imaginations ran wild. Let's examine what he should have done.

When the National Enquirer story, which was accurate, came out he should have known that others he had been with would come forth, either through investigation or seeking a payday. He should have immediately told his wife everything like Vic Mackey did at the end of The Shield. Perhaps if he would have come clean from the beginning she wouldn't have blown up at him like she did and cause the embarrassing accident that had him in the hospital and leading the network news shows. There would have not been visits by the Florida Highway Patrol and subsequent stonewalling the authorities. He and his wife could have begun to handle things on their own time. Tiger then should have issued a truthful statement which directly addressed the allegations. Mine would have looked like this.

"There have been reports from the National Enquirer regarding an affair I was reported to have with a woman by the name of Rachel Uchitel. I can confirm that the basic details of the story are true, that Ms. Uchitel and I had a sexual relationship. I can also confirm that there were other women I have had sexual relationships with since I have been married. Some of what will come out in the coming days and weeks will be true and much of it will not. I will not comment any further on any specifics regarding any additional allegations that will arise. My family and I ask that you please allow us to treat this matter privately. Thank you."

A simple statement that does not put himself down, make any promises, create any expectations. It states that he will not address any further allegations so no matter what comes up he can lean back on his statement and not feel compelled to confirm or deny. Sort of a believe it if you want stance. This is what Woods should have done. Instead he denied, stupidly, and let his reputation take a further hit. The public is forgiving and could have lived with a powerful, famous, rich athlete who traveled all the time and succumbed to temptation. Instead, the public feels like he tried to deny, cover up, deflect and not deal honestly with his fans and sponsors. People feel that if you avoid the authorities you have something major to hide. This hurts him more than any infidelity ever could. Tiger should have taken a lesson from Presidents of the late 20th century.

Lyndon Johnson lost the trust of the country regarding Vietnam not because the war was not going well (which it wasn't) but because he was not truthful about how the war was going. If Johnson had looked the American people in the eye and told them that many thousands were dying and he felt bad about that but that us leaving would imperil millions of Vietnamese and perhaps the freedom of Southeast Asia he might have garnered more support, albeit tepid support. I believe the public would have viewed the war similarly to our current wars, disliking the results but accepting our reasoning for still being there.

Richard Nixon lost the trust of the American people not because representatives of the Republican Party broke into DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel but rather because of the subsequent cover-up. Had Nixon taken the stance that the break-in was wrong, that he would cooperate fully with any investigations and not tried to take revenge on those running the investigation, he might have been able to absorb the blow and move the country forward. Instead he came across as a schemer and paranoid, and nobody trusted him or believed a word he said.

Bill Clinton had some Tiger-like indiscretions while President. As much as the left-wing tries to claim that he was impeached for cheating on his wife, this is patently untrue. If Clinton had admitted to his affair with Monica Lewinsky under oath and at the now infamous press conference, instead of wagging his finger, he would have taken a popularity hit but could have continued on with his administration. Lying under oath, regardless of what it is about, is something that one can never do, especially the person most entrusted to uphold the Constitution, and therefore, the law. The public had looked past his extramarital dalliances before, there is no reason to think it would not do so again, especially if he delivered an empathetic, contrite apology saying something to the effect of he regretted not fully learning the lessons of the past and that he would work on trying to restore the dignity of the Presidency. If he would have done this, Hillary Clinton would not have gone on The Today Show and notoriously claimed it was all "a vast right-wing conspiracy." Had she not taken this credibility hit, perhaps she would be sitting in the same Oval Office her husband had occupied 8 years earlier.

The lesson here is that in our digital and tabloid society, nobody of any fame or notability can do anything for very long without it being found out. Why celebrities would try to do something that could get them in trouble with the law or embarrassed publicly is beyond me. But as we've seen, if you do get caught, it is better to get ahead of the story, let the public digest it quickly, then move on to who Paris Hilton left Pure Nightclub with last week. We've all been in trouble with our parents, lied to cover it up, then been punished worse for the lying than for the act itself. Why can't we learn this lesson from our childhood, especially when everything celebrities do ends up in front of the eyes of millions anyhow?