They're not going to run out of angles...

I've been good about restraining myself on the whole Tiger Woods debacle; frankly, over the last couple of weeks, you could have been blogging day and night on the PR aspects alone, as new allegation followed new revelation over and over again.

There have been thousands of voices by now, I'm sure, singing the same tune: Tiger Woods should have just admitted to whatever he had to admit to, so there'd be nothing left for the media to discover, and then gone away and hid for a while until some other celebrity did something shocking and/or stupid to distract us.

More angles

But Tiger didn't listen, and two weeks later, we're still hearing about it. Every day or two there has been another addition to what is now a "string" of alleged mistresses; in the absence of Tiger's own statement, those women become a focus for the media, who can't resist the opportunity to keep feeding the public appetite for this scandal.

So, we hear about who's claiming an affair with him and who's not. We hear analysis of the state of the Woods' marriage and children. We hear conjecture about children conceived as a result of Woods' affairs. We hear about who reportedly hired which powerful celebrity attorney. We hear about mistresses' claims of having taken drugs while with him.

As they say, the media abhors a vacuum: if the story has the public's interest and you refuse to talk, they'll fill in the blanks. Not responding doesn't mean there won't be any stories -- it just means there won't be any stories reflecting your position.

And now, a new angle. Oh, Tiger.

I caught the national Headline News version of this story on TV this morning, which is what prompted me to write this post.

We've now moved past the salacious affair details (even if only until the next mistress is revealed), the marriage breakup conjecture (even if only until his wife is spotted meeting with an attorney), and the corporate sponsors' positions (they can say they're sticking with him all they want, but just watch: eventually, money has to talk...), and we've now moved on to:

Tiger Woods' affairs have prevented little children from going to Disney World.

Yes, you read that right.



This story won't be going away any time soon... unless Tiger does something about it. And even then, it's become so huge that it'll take some time.

Here's a good article on what Tiger should consider doing from here, from ESPN.com; thanks to Jarrett Moffatt for pointing it out to me.